It was indeed a pleasure to be the speaker at our September general meeting. The night was, for me, a sort of show and tell night as I brought along a few handouts, some maps, and a series of slides, which were all intended to show some factual evidence of an old earth.

In the last few years I have become increasingly concerned with the growing popularity of the pseudoscience known as "Creation Science." This concern is why I decided to give a presentation about the age of the earth and why I named it "What Would I Have To Give Up To Believe In A 6000 Year Old Earth?"

It may have appeared at times that I was attacking religion, (and to some extent I was) but my intent is not to change people's beliefs about whether there is a god. Anyone having deeply held beliefs about the existence of those gods is certainly free to do so. That is, as long as it doesn't interfere with other peoples' lives. But I will not back away from criticizing religion when creationist beliefs spill over into and attempt to discredit what is well known about the reality of the physical and historical nature of this planet in this solar system in this galaxy in this universe.

Well, for me, creationist assertions interfere with my life, they insult my intelligence when they attempt to discredit and degrade the things I have learned through study and observation. It offends me when they imply that belief in an ancient earth is not only incorrect, but is evil and will lead to other sins and end in our destruction. This nasty attitude is now startlingly on display at the recently opened Creation Museum. Along with displays showing humans and dinosaurs living happily along side each other, there is one depiction that disgusts and offends me. It depicts a wrecking ball with a label, "Millions of Years." This wrecking ball is shown smashing the ground around the foundation of a church, causing cracks to reach from the church to a home where a teenager is sitting at a computer and, we are told, looking at pornography.

There is a deep division between those who believe in a 6000-year old earth and those who believe that the earth is indeed ancient in terms of billions of years. I am on the side of the argument that believes that the universe is probably in the realm of 14 billion years old and that the earth has been around for the last 4.5 billion years. So much of the information that is available about earth history is firmly on the side of antiquity.

So, what would I have to give up to believe in a young earth? To start with, much of physics, deep space astronomy, any astronomy, planetary sciences, geophysics, plate tectonics, physical geology, historical geology, anthropology, paleontology, archeology, geomorphology, biology and genetics, and several other disciplines and sub-disciplines. The point is that to go with a young earth, you would have to believe that the vast amounts of evidence for an old earth are incorrect. I refuse to do that.

I have an understanding of the earth that is informed by a degree in physical geography, namely geomorphology. It is also informed by a lifetime of observing the real world as it is laid out and apparent to us. Geomorphology gives us a way to do a considerable amount of classroom study, lab studies, and field studies. It is also very enjoyable, in that field trips or studies often mean going out to some beautiful and interesting places. That is truly a bonus.

For me, as a geographer, the landscape is a large part of the evidence for an old earth, and it tells its own story of age and all the changes that take place when there is lots and lots of time for the story to be told. The story needs some interpreting but the story is there and very interesting. We use a number of tools to gain an understanding of how landforms came into existence, and none of them supports the idea of a 6000-year-old earth.

In my presentation I used a series of slides to show some of the landforms while talking about how they arose. Obviously we can't do that here, but we can mention a few areas that I touched on.

We looked at the Uintah Mountains and talked about their glaciations in the past, and looked at some of the remnants left by the glaciers' retreats such as large boulders called erratics, and the rocky terrain called glacial till. I also talked about Lake Bonneville and we looked at slides of sedimentary layers that have distinctive features in the layers that show a long history and variety of climates in the past. We looked at slides of Pavant Butte near Fillmore, Utah, which erupted in Lake Bonneville and shows a distinctive shoreline. I talked a little about a real flood when Lake Bonneville overflowed near Downey, Idaho, and eroded quickly into an enormous flood. These are just a few of the many pieces of evidence that combined give us a good understanding of the history of earth.

While looking at the slide of lake sediments I posed the question to the creationists: How did the flood do this? How did one single flood lay down all these diverse layers that are indicative of lake bottoms, salt flats, river sediments, soils, and how did it include a few ash layers from volcanoes? My answer to the question is that the biblical flood could not and did not create any of the diverse features of the landscape.

The earth is wonderfully and intriguingly old; it displays its age grandly with mountains and arches, and thousands of other features. It displays its age in the fossil record with huge dinosaurs and fossils of microscopic size. It shows its age in a multiplicity of ways that are all around us and apparent to anyone who is willing to take a look around.

--Robert Lane
President, HoU