Here we have a list of common challenges to a young Earth. That is an earth that was created within Biblical time scales. In this article, we only discussed the challenges. The solutions that have been proposed will be brought up in other articles.
- Impact craters.
Every solid body in the solar system except Earth, Venus, Titan, and Io are covered with large numbers of impact craters. Earth, Venus, and Titan have significant atmospheres. Meanwhile, Earth, Venus, and Io are known to be volcanic enough to erase impact craters from the past. From a young Earth creation perspective, there is also the question as to where asteroids and meteors would actually originate, after all, God could have created a much cleaner solar system. Furthermore, there is the question as to when these impacts occurred. The time of the Genesis Flood is a natural time but so many impacts in such a short period of time would have turned most objects into balls of magma.
- Radiometric dating.
Radiometric dating is probably the single most commonly used argument against a young Earth, after all, it is promoted as an objective dating method that consistently produces ages in the millions and billions of years. Furthermore, these dates are based on well-established nuclear physics and nuclear decay rates.
- The standard geologic column.
The standard geologic column is another commonly used argument against a young Earth. It has the advantage of showing a nice neat evolutionary progression of life on Earth. It is not only a frequent argument for an old Earth for universal common descent evolution as well.
- Distance Starlight.
This is one of the best arguments not only against a young Earth but also against a young universe. The fact that light travels at a finite speed requiring tens of thousands of years just to reach us from stars within our own Galaxy and billions of years from galaxies at the edge of the visible universe is a good argument against Biblical creation. The simple fact of the matter is that as long as space and time are absolute this problem is actually unsolvable. It has the advantage of having very few and easy to understand assumptions.
- The mud problem.
The mud problem is from a recent paper published in the Creation Research Society Quarterly about sedimentation and how long it should take sediment to be laid down during the Genesis Flood and become rock. The claim is that this process would take too long for your Earth even assuming the Genesis Flood.
- The heat problem.
This is without question the best argument against the young Earth. This is because naturalistically accelerating many of the processes observed today for results to have occurred within a Biblical time frame would produce tremendous amounts of heat. The combined result potentially could have vaporized the entire planet.
None of these challenges are insurmountable. In each case, they ultimately are only problems from a purely naturalistic perspective. However, solutions will be shown in a subsequent article. The first four have fairly well-established answers. The last two will be responded to in their own articles because they do not have well-established answers and need more detailed discussion.
