The Institute for Creation Research recently aired an interview with geologist Dr. Timothy Clarey, in which many major issues of the creation/evolution debate were touched upon. I decided to summarize this video (note 1) partly because I’ve taken interest in creation geology since I’ve been a professing Christian, and partly because I think there are many people around the world who never get a chance to hear or read such evidence in support of Biblical Scripture.

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Dr. Clarey has a very active mind. In fact, he has so much to say and is so experienced and informed that you have to listen hard to follow what he’s saying. I met him at a conference given by ICR and found him to be warm, friendly, humble and helpful I’m convinced he is an incredible witness for our God in many ways.

WHY DOES IT MATTER? Dr. Clarey takes the “young earth” position, as I do, for reasons which are discussed as the video proceeds. Some professing Christian believers will insist that it doesn’t matter what you believe about the age of the earth. The position of Dr Clarey and ICR (and myself) is that Scripture teaches a young earth. It’s important to believe what the Bible clearly teaches, which includes the fact that all major doctrines have their genesis (excuse the pun) in the early chapters of the Bible. For example, the origin of death is found at the Fall of man into sin, whereas before it God said that all He had made was “very good”. The old earth view supports death before the Fall.

Mary Clair Kelly asks Dr Clarey why he considers belief in a young earth to be so important. Skeptics, even within the Church, often ask this question rhetorically, insisting that the earth “must be” very ancient because it looks old and because “all scientists” agree that it’s old. Clarey replies that while our society is “infused” with the teaching that the earth is very old, just two hundred years ago everyone in the Western world, including pioneering scientists, believed that the earth was young. They believed the Biblical chronologies and genealogies found in Genesis and elsewhere in Scripture, which indicate that the earth is thousands of years old, not billions. “It’s very, very important because the Bible teaches that” says Clarey. Conventional science began to teach that the earth is very old at the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth.

DEEP TIME. James Hutton, sometimes called the “father of modern geology”, openly discussed the idea of uniformitarianism (though not yet by that name), pointing to the fact that the erosion of rocks occurs very slowly; deposition takes a long time, and rock layers therefore take many ages to form. He suggested time periods for such things to occur, bringing the idea of millions of years into scientific consideration. Clarey observes that even just one million years of time is “so abstract you can’t even grasp it”. Other scientists began to run with the view of millions of years of earth history, and this teaching provided the opportunity for Darwin to create his theory of evolution, since vast amounts of time are required to even consider that all the life we see today arose by countless small steps and changes. One little “critter” evolved from non-life and became the ancestor of us all over eons of time. The two pillars of science today are deep time and evolution, and you can’t have one without the other.

The Bible’s message about origins is completely different, says Clarey. It tells us that God created specific forms of life and certain aspects of creation over a period of days, not billions of years. Many Christians are not aware that there is plenty of evidence for a young earth and for creation, because they aren’t being taught it even in the Church.

Mary Clair Kelly asks Clarey why people suddenly began accepting the principle of millions of years. Clarey tells us correspondence of the time reveals that while the pioneers of science accepted the earth to be thousands of years old some in society were anxious to push God, and in particular the writings of Moses (who wrote Genesis) out of science. Charles Lyell, a geologist, took the old earth idea and incorporated it into his textbooks. Everything in nature progresses at the slow pace we see today, he wrote, and therefore it must be very old. Clarey observes that this attitude is the fulfilment of a prediction or prophecy the apostle Peter made two thousand years ago. Peter warned that people would begin to claim that the world had always been as it is and will remain so perpetually, thus denying the Biblical creation, the Flood and the second coming of Christ.

“But they deliberately forget that long ago by God’s word the heavens came into being and the earth was formed out of water and by water. By these waters also the world of that time was deluged and destroyed. By the same word the present heavens and earth are reserved for fire, being kept for the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly” (2 Peter 3:5-7).

OIL IS NOT ETERNAL. Dr. Clarey is asked about his thoughts during the early days of his career as a geologist. Working for oil companies, Clarey began looking for oil around the world. No matter how old you think the oil is, he says, it’s either there or it’s not there, as is coal or any mineral you could name. However, oil cannot be the age it is said to be, or it would have decayed away by now. Oil just doesn’t last that long. There’s bacteria down there (in the ground) and the oil is biodegrading. At the surface and in the ocean it degrades more quickly because there’s more oxygen, but the principle is the same down below.

More to the point, says Dr. Clarey, is the fact that as a young earth geologist he was able to find oil just as well as any old earth geologist, and the only reason it’s there at all, he says, is because it is young.

MISUNDERSTANDING GEOLOGY. What do people misunderstand most about geology? Clarey answers that they think there’s no evidence for a young earth. He says that on the contrary there is, and ICR has a wealth of information on the evidence as do other good creationist organizations and individuals. This evidence is never discussed in the public schools or in movies – instead it’s just assumed that extremely old ages in the literature are factual. When people are told that dinosaurs went extinct sixty-six million years ago, they just accept the date as truth. In science classes students are given ages with a plus and minus, meaning give or take some time, but in media settings there is no plus or minus. An age is given as hard, set in stone fact, but there’s evidence, says Clarey, that dating systems and methods are flawed.

SEDIMENTARY ROCKS. How do scientists interpret ages as they do? When looking at rocks, for example, what information are they gathering? Clarey tells us that one of the things they look for is sedimentary structures: indications which were left in the rocks as they were being deposited. Clarey holds out a lump of sandstone in which waves have left ripples. Here you can see the direction of the water flow as sand was shaped by waves just as it is on a beach today. In order for the ripples to be preserved, says Clarey, another layer must have buried them quickly. The evidence, then, is that the ripples and layers of sandstone were deposited by water. In some cases, the layers consist of different materials such as sandstone, limestone and shale. Geologists piece together what they think happened by the evidence they see in the layers. These layers are in turn affected by folds, faults, fractures and cracks, and every rock has fractures.

It’s sometimes argued that large sandstone ripples are created by wind-born sand dunes. However, we can cut thin sections of the sandstone, put it under a microscope, and look at how well rounded the grans of minerals are or are not, and learn a lot about how much energy was required to deposit the stone. The “bottom line” is that even conventional, old-earth scientists will agree that ninety percent of all sedimentary rocks were deposited by water. ICR, affirming the Biblical Flood, would say the number is closer to one hundred percent.
“We see layer upon layer of rocks like pancakes” says the doctor. He demonstrates how sandstone is sometimes cross bedded, showing that waves will drop thin layers over the ripple and then continue laterally with the water flow.

MARINE FOSSILS IN THE MIDDLE OF AMERICA. On the subject of fossils in relation to this type of environment Clarey says that ocean-dwelling creatures are found fossilized all across the north American continent (and other continents). That is, they are found inland in sedimentary layers of rock. “This tells me that they were deposited in quick succession with not a lot of time in between”. Evolutionists put this down to the repeated existence of “ancient seas” which covered some of the land, and in some cases repeatedly rose and fell over vast stretches of time, but creationists such as Clarey believe the entire north American continent was covered during the Biblical Flood. Evolutionists insist that there was no global flood such as Genesis records, but the evidence is that there are similar or identical sedimentary layers of rock all over the earth, on every continent. Following the Flood there was large scale erosion followed by the single ice age creationists see rather than numerous ice-ages. Almost all if not all of the sediments were deposited by water.

FLOOD DATA. Clarey explains briefly what has to be considered when searching for oil: joints, fractures, stress-fields and folds – often using seismic data. There’s a lot of data gathering, says Clarey, eventually leading to maps, and then oil can be detected or predicted in certain places. In Clarey’s case, since working for ICR, he says the data has led him to evidence for the Biblical Flood.

RAPID BURIAL. One topic of debate is over whether geological features formed by slow processes or by one giant geological event as in the story of the Flood. Kelly asks Clarey what evidence leads him to conclude that features formed rapidly rather than gradually. One indicator, he answers, is that footprints, fossils, ripples and cross beds do not last for thousands or millions of years before hardening into rock: they must be buried rapidly by another layer. These things are not seen to be forming today.

FLUME EXPERIMENTS. Secondly the example of the eruption at Mt St Helens in 1980 demonstrated that deep layers of rock can form in a matter of hours, several different times (as did canyons). They did not require millions or thousands of years to form. In a spot between Scotland and England sedimentary rock was found to have coins and bottle tops buried inside, showing that it was only decades old at most. It’s been recognized that limestone, shales and clays are deposited much faster than was once thought – by moving water. This has been discovered and researched by “flume” experiments, and thin layers called “laminations” have been shown to form rapidly.

A flume dispenses grains of rock – sediment – with fast-moving water within a large, long tank. One sized grain may be released followed by another and the results observed. These sediments naturally get laid down almost horizontally and in order by the water. During the Flood, says Dr. Clarey, there were many tsunamis-perhaps thousands per day- moving in rapid succession, depositing layers of rock. As the layers got higher the waves also got higher, resulting in tens of thousands of feet of sediment over the course of a year. Some sediments sank, creating basins. These layers must have been deposited quicky because there is no evidence of erosion between them.

THE GRAND CANYON. Clarey moves to the example of the Grand Canyon. There you can see many layers on top of one another, lying flat and with no evidence of erosion between them. Secular geologists claim that these layers took many thousands or millions of years to form, and that there were periods of perhaps millions of years between some of the layers. If this were the case, we would see evidence of valleys, gulleys, canyons and animal-caused erosion in and between the layers, but we don’t. The layers are flat on top of each other. Clarey says that throughout the world such sequences are found, like pancakes one on top of another. These must have been deposited rapidly and in quick succession. Flume experiments support the evidence and logic of this. As Mary Kelly observes, the Biblical Flood was like a giant flume experiment all over the earth.

THE BIBLICAL FLOOD. In speaking of the Flood at this point, Dr. Clarey says that many people think the Biblical Flood took forty days. However, the forty-day rainfall we read about was just the beginning, he says. According to Genesis it took six months for the Flood to reach its peak, and more than another six months to retreat. Genesis was written as real history, and the rocks show that it is real history.

A GLOBAL, NOT A LOCAL FLOOD. Kelly draws attention to Christians who believe in the Flood but insist that it must have been only local and on a small scale. In response Clarey tells us secular scientists and observers work hard to push the facts out of the picture, but says that in his research he’s seen that in every continent the same patterns of progressive flooding, the same order of fossilization-including fresh and marine life being mixed together along with the same rocks-is found in the same order. Clarey studied this phenomenon for thirteen years, apart from his earlier findings in secular work.

To these comments I would add the observation that God said he would “never again” flood the earth, yet the world has seen countless local floods over the millennia. Was God lying? Did He make a mistake? No, He was saying that He would never again flood the whole earth.

RAPID SUBDUCTION OF EARTH’S CRUST. Clarey says that hardened secular geologists simply choose to ignore the findings of his work. They also ignore the work of John Baumgardner, a government scientist who designed a computer program supporting the concept of rapid subduction of tectonic plates, a phenomenon which would be instrumental in a global flood. His work was justified to a large degree when giant plates of earth’s crust were detected deep down inside the mantle, being much cooler than the surrounding mantle, meaning that they were subducted rapidly in relatively recent times and not millions of years ago. If they had moved slowly down they would be warmer.

Old earth believers, including those in the Church, tend to believe in the local Flood idea. This is because they are more willing to accept the views of conventional science. Clarey says “I think I’ve looked at more rocks than most conventional scientists in the last thirteen years”. If you believe in an old earth, he says, you almost have to accept the local Flood, because a global Flood would have killed everything on land, and the evolutionary theory does not allow for that. However, the marine animals throughout the fossil record, all the way across the land, does show that the world was flooded.

FOR THE BIRDS. Why bring birds on the ark if the Flood was going to be local? says the doctor. They could just fly away then fly back. Similarly, Noah and his family could have left the locality and then come back later. He didn’t have to build a huge ark over decades. Lot was protected by God at Sodom: he didn’t need to build anything to escape because the destruction of God’s judgment would only be local.

THE LENGTH OF GENESIS DAYS. Kelly asks Clarey to respond to the old earth view that the chronological view of the early chapters of Genesis is not literal. Clarey responds by saying that these days were clearly each one turn of the earth. This is why the words “evening” and “, “morning”, “first day”, “second day” and so on were included in the text. How much more clearly could God have said that this was one turn of the earth, and not a vast amount of time? The days being numbered provides more specificity.

My addition to this observation is this: If you can’t believe that God can create as the Bible clearly states He did, how can you believe the miracles of healing, of salvation, of atonement and of resurrection in the New Testament? Either God is mighty or He is not. Either He is able to speak truth or He fudges the truth and so confuses us.

Genesis is not poetry, says Clarey. People are wanting to believe that conventional science “must be” right and so judge the Word of God by the word of man. However, conventional science in large part wants to push God out of the picture completely: are we also to believe their insistence that there is no God? Clarey gives the example of the ark as a warning: only eight people got onto the ark, while up to a billion people did not believe and died in the Flood. They were wrong, and only eight people were right. The majority is not always right.

DAY-AGE? If the days of creation represent long ages, Clarey asks rhetorically, why would God make the sun and the moon on day four? Why did He make the plants on day three? Didn’t the plants need the sun? Today it’s said that dinosaurs evolved into birds, but God created birds on day five and land animals which includes dinosaurs on day six. The narrative makes no sense if these things created themselves over vast sequential stretches of time. The order doesn’t match modern science anyway. Modern science, he says, isn’t scientific.

Mary Kelly raises the matter of the word “Yom” being used in the Genesis narrative to represent days. Many people claim that the word can speak of periods of time and not just twenty-four-hour days. While this is true for the word when used on its own, it speaks specifically of a literal day when numbers, mornings and evenings are linked to it. Clarey says that God had no intention of confusing us in this matter and made it abundantly clear that the days of the early chapters of Genesis were literal twenty-four-hour days. He points to Exodus chapter 20 in which the Lord tells the Israelites to work for six days and rest for one, because He made the heavens and the earth and everything in it in six days, and rested on the seventh. The genealogies of Genesis and other places in Scripture give us an age for the earth of between six and at most ten thousand years.

TRUE SCIENCE AGREES. At this point Clarey states that there are also indications within science that the earth is young. The mutation rate in humans, for example, with many and regular degenerations of the human genome, indicates strongly that this six-thousand-year age is very reasonable. The decay of the earth’s magnetic field strongly suggests a young earth. Were you to extrapolate its effect backwards beyond ten thousand years the earth’s magnetic field would be too strong. Scientists have been finding soft tissues in dinosaurs and other fossilized creatures: tissues which should have decayed long ago and could certainly not last sixty-six million years or more. Worms which supposedly existed half a billion years ago according to the secular geological column are found to contain protein molecules, which should have decayed away long ago.

While people in the Church insist that the world is very ancient, Clarey observes, they have not been told the whole story or even the correct one. In some cases, the Church, being convinced that man’s word must be true above the Bible, began to look for ways to compromise Scripture long ago.

RADIOMETRIC DATING. Mary Clair Kelly and Dr Clarey then go on to talk about radiometric dating, since this is commonly used as “hard” and indisputable evidence that the earth and its rocks are millions and billions of years old. Clarey begins with the subject of Carbon 14, which many people mistakenly believe addresses millions of years of earth history. The truth is that radioactive Carbon can only be consulted in materials up to, at the very most, one hundred thousand years old. If anything were that old there would be no Carbon 14 left as it would all have decayed away due to its short half-life. It cannot be used to date anything supposedly millions of years old.

This is a fascinating subject because since this is the case there should be no Carbon 14 in diamonds, for example, and yet it has been found in diamonds. ICR sent twenty diamonds to secular laboratories to be dated, and they all dated to thousands of years old: there was measurable C14 in all of them. Carbon 14 is found by secular scientists in dinosaurs and in coal supposedly two hundred million years old.

ISOTOPES AND AGES. The discussion moved onto other parent/daughter dating materials such as Rubidium-Strontium. Clarey explains that isotopes are elements with a different atomic mass to the norm, having more or less neutrons. Protons determine the element. In Carbon, for example, the nucleus will have six protons but a differing number of neutrons in isotopes of the element. C14 has six protons and eight neutrons. As a tire which is out of alignment will eventually blow, Clarey says, a radioactive element will be unstable and eventually decay and become another element. A “half-life” is the measure of how slowly or quickly half of any amount of radioactive element will decay into other elements. Clarey insists that while the decay rate of an element can be measured today and so suggest an age for the element of perhaps millions of years, we don’t know that the decay rate has always been the same. There’s evidence that many elements went through a period of rapid decay at some time in the past-perhaps at the time of creation.

Additionally, scientists assume the original ratio of “parent” to “daughter” element – what it turns into when it decays – in the rock and assign an age to it. They also assume that the rock has been a closed system: that it has not been leeched or changed in the past. Uranium, for example, is highly soluble. We don’t know what the original ratio was. Scientists make assumptions based on their belief system. How do they know what the original ratio was and whether the decay rate has been constant? They don’t, says Clarey. “The bottom line is that they get the numbers they want”. Often, they get wildly conflicting results and just toss away the results which they don’t agree with. In regard to C14 it’s very likely that the ratio was very different during the ice age and before the Flood. This means that everything can look older today than it is.

FAULTY RESULTS. Clarey concludes that the entire dating system conventional scientists use can’t be trusted. He tells us that another creationist, geologist Steve Austin, collected a rock sample from the Mount St Helens eruption in 1980 and sent it off to a lab for analysis. He wanted the whole rock and a mineral within it dated separately. He received two different ages for the materials which were both produced by the same eruption. The two dates varied by a couple of million years, even though the rock was only ten years old.

In the 1960’s secular geologists took samples from volcanoes around the world whose eruption dates were known. Some of the results gave ages of billions of years, and all of them were off by millions of years or many thousands. If rocks of known ages give faulty results, says Clarey, why should we trust dates for events supposedly millions of years ago? However, he repeats, secular scientists cannot give up on the idea of millions of years, because they are necessary for evolution to be even considered.

Clarey notes how scientists insist that any planets in the galaxy which may have water may also have life on them, but they can’t even understand the creation of life on this world because it’s too complex. “Only God can create life”. We can modify life but we can’t create it. The more we look into life the more complicated it is. Jesus Christ was the great designer and creator, says Dr Clarey.

When people suggest to Clarey that he’s insinuating scientists are “making up’ things just to fool us, he answers that most are not, but some are. The rest get drawn into it all and passively accept it all.

MORE INFORMATION. What should seekers do to investigate the whole issue of creation and time for themselves? Clarey suggests that they go to the wealth of information the Institute for Creation Research produces (note 2). He also brings the sacrifice of Jesus Christ into the discussion, because the ultimate goal of ICR is to point to the creator and the savior. He stresses that while real scientific evidence is true and trustworthy, “science” in the form of evolutionism is not. Rocks are real enough, but the way they are interpreted may not be. Only God’s word is objectively true, and this is where we should go to for truth. His last comment is, “God’s word is true, and the earth is young”.

NOTES

1 YouTube Video, “Christian Geologist: I Studied Rocks for 13 Years-What I Found Will Shock You”. Published by @icrscience

2 icr.org

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