Are Coal And Oil Deposits Millions Of Years Old?
Within the Flood-caused sedimentary strata of the continents are vast mats of coal, and pockets of oil and gas. These formed from massive accumulations of organic material (plants and animals) which had been covered by more sediments, and thus compressed, and were subsequently heated. If the oil and gas pockets are millions of years old, all the gas pressure in the pockets should have been relieved, as the gas would have percolated up through the semi-porous and semi-permeable over-lying rock layers. In fact, all of the gas within the strata should have bled up through the overlying rock layers, and escaped into the atmosphere, in less than 100,000 years.1 And yet, when exploratory drill pipe enters a pocket of oil and gas (which is supposedly hundreds of millions of years old), great gas pressure often releases up the drill hole, a "gusher." The presence of this gas pressure, within the sedimentary strata, tells us that these deposits were formed less than 100,000 years ago. Imagine an oil and gas field 10,000 feet underground which is said to be 300 million years old. Highly pressurized gas within this deposit would percolate up through the sedimentary rocks (as escaping gas can be monitored on the earth’s surface). If this gas percolated up at a rate of only one inch per year, it would escape within 100,000 years; if it percolated up at a rate of .003 inch per year, it would escape to the atmosphere within the alleged 300 million years that the deposit is purported to be. One inch per year is plausible; .003 inch per year is not, as much more viscous matter (water and oil) percolate through rocks at much greater rates than .003 inch per year. (For instance, water tables rapidly rise after long and heavy rainfall.) The vast mats of coal that we see within the layers of sedimentary strata cover extensive areas, often hundreds of thousands of square miles. The old earthers say that coal was formed in swamps over millions of years as plant debris slowly built up in swamps, and then was covered with new sediment from an-other ocean encroachment. Ever heard of a swamp, hundreds of miles by hundreds of miles in area, with yards of swamp muck depth? (Like the coal bed that underlies parts of Oklahoma, Missouri, Illinois, In-diana, Kentucky, and Pennsylvania?) These are the dimensions that some of the swamps must have been for the formation of some of the extensive coal beds of the earth, according to the old earth hypothesis. Old earthers say that coal must have formed over millions of years, because the huge volume of organic material in the deposits requires millions of years worth of plant growth, and then decay, in ancient swamps. However, the volume of organic material in the earth’s coal beds represents only 128 years of plant growth, or stated another way, only three times the plant growth as is extant in the world today.3 So, plant debris accumulations over millions of years would have been millions of times greater than the plant accumulations reflected in coal deposits. The types of vegetation that compose coal are not often found in swampy environments, but are usually from a mountain-rainforest type environment.4 Apparently, this vegetation was knocked down and carried by water, until vast mats of vegetation accumulated, and were then rapidly covered by sediments, in a cataclysmic flood event that uprooted trees, eroded the land intensely, then redeposited this material in sedimentary layers that cover the continents. According to the old earth thesis, most of the coal beds were formed about 250 million years ago. But a young earth geologist took a piece of wood from a coal bed in Australia5 and sent it to a carbon 14 dating lab, without telling the lab that the wood came from a supposed 250-million-year-old layer. The carbon 14 date calculated it to be about 30 thousand years old. (Even this figure is too high, carbon 14 dating gives inflated ages for reasons to be discussed in Chapter12.) But how can this be? The wood still had enough radioactive carbon 14 in it to show an age in the thousands of years; yet, according to mainstream geologists and evolutionists, the wood was deposited in a swamp from 10,000 times farther back in the past than the residual carbon 14 indicates. Obviously, this coal formed a short time ago in one awesome flood, the Flood of which the tribes of the world are well aware (as discussed in Chapter 5). Old earthers claim that all the measurements of carbon 14 in coal is due to contamination, but this has been shown to be highly unlikely.6 The amounts of carbon 14 in most samples are at least five times greater than margins of error pertaining to contamination considerations.
If coal beds really were formed from the vegetation of a swamp, the bottom of the coal beds should show evidence of the roots and soil responsible for the growth of the swamp vegetation. No such evidence is seen. The coal material rests on clean underlying sediment that has no signs of roots or soil.7 Again, this is further evidence that the vegetative debris must have been transported from another location to the deposition site in a massive flow of water and mud.
Coal layers often contain large tree trunks that were ripped out of the ground from a different location, and transported by a huge flow of water. These tree trunks are ripped at the roots, proving they did not grow where they were deposited.8 Many of these trunks are the vertical polystratic trees which were discussed in Chapter 3.
Most people think that millions of years are required for vegetative debris to transform into coal. Nothing could be further from the truth. High-grade coal (anthracite) has been manufactured in a lab within a matter of weeks. Vegetative matter was heated and pressurized for a short period of time, and voila, coal.9 Earth crust dynamics during and after the Flood caused this rapid coalification, and shall be discussed in Chapter 9.
The origin of oil is somewhat a mystery. However, it has been produced in the laboratory in a matter of hours from sewage sludge.10
We do know that all the high gas pressure from oil deposits should have percolated up through the semi-porous overlying rock layers and escaped into the atmosphere in under 100,000 years, and that the coal layers of the world contain measurable amounts of carbon 14 that are reflective of their recent deposition; therefore, pressurized oil and gas deposits and extensive coal beds surely formed only thousands of years ago, not millions.
What About Radiogenic Rock Dating?
Doesn’t radio carbon dating prove that rocks are millions of years old?
You may have heard of lava rocks being "potassium-argon dated" or "uranium-lead dated" in the millions of years of age. The old earthers say that these dates of origin for rocks are virtually infallible and scientifically reliable. In reality, these dating methods are extremely unreliable, and are predicated upon several unknowable presuppositions. (The reasons for exaggerated carbon 14 dates for organic remains will be explained in Chapter 12.)
The radiogenic rock dating methodologists measure the amount of radioactive material relative to the amount of stable material in lava rocks. (In the uranium-lead dating method, radioactive uranium decays and becomes stable lead.) The older a rock is, the more radioactive material has decayed and become stable material. So, since the rock daters know the current rates at which radioactive materials decay into stable (non-radioactive) materials, they calculate the amount of time it would take for the original amount of a radioactive material to decay to the current amount of stable material. The time it supposedly took for this decay to occur is the calculated age of the lava rock.
One problem with this scheme is the impossibility of knowing if stable material (like lead) crystallized during the solidification of the rock from lava. If some of the lead formed in this way, radiogenic rock date results would be exaggerated because it would appear that a greater quantity of radioactive uranium had decayed into stable lead than reality would indicate.1
The rock daters do know the current rates of radioactive decay, but they do not know that these rates were not different in the past. Once again, they were not there in the distant past to measure decay rates. Decay rates have been altered in the laboratory,2 so to say that rates have not been different in the past is to deny the possibility that some catastrophic astronomical and/or geophysical event provided an environment for decay rates’ variances from today’s norms. If the decay rates had been higher, date results would be too old; if the rates were lower, dates for the rocks’ formations would be too young.
Lava rocks make up much of the earth’s geology. They are found associated with sedimentary rocks in the mountains, and flatter lands, as well. Groundwater is constantly percolating through these various kinds of rocks, from rainwater and subterranean sources. Lightly acidic groundwater removes radioactive material from lava rocks.3 Rocks dated that had incurred groundwater percolation would show an exaggerated age because much radioactive material had been removed by the lightly acidic groundwater. The rock daters would under-estimate the original quantity of radioactive material in the rock because they couldn’t factor in an amount that had been lost to groundwater, and so, inflated rock dates would result.
These three problematic presuppositions of the rock dating methods deal a mortal wound to the believability of these methods. After all, how can the daters know the initial amount of stable material, the constancy of decay rates, and occurrence, or not, of radioactive material removal by lightly acidic groundwater percolation? The dating methods are analogous to someone supposedly knowing how long a burning candle was when it was new, without having measured it when it was new: he knows how fast it is now burning and he knows how much candle remains, so from that, he knows the original length of the candle? Incredible.
Mount St. Helen’s blew up in 1980 in the state of Washington. It was a massive volcanic event and the landscape was devastated for miles around. A lava dome rose up during this eruption. Radiogenic rock daters calculated the age of this volcanic extrusion to be about one million years old.4 And yet, the dome was formed only a few years before it was dated, not one million years before.
In Hawaii, a lava flow known by the natives to be about 200 years old (as described by their immediate ancestors) was rock dated to be 1.5 million years old.5 Clearly, the flawed presuppositions that underpin these dating methods cause absurd results.
Rock daters play a little game that makes their work look better than it is. They are briefed by evolutionists regarding the evolutionary level from which the rock to be dated came. For instance, the evolu-tionist might say, "the rock you are to date comes from deep in the geologic strata, and was formed at a time when fish were evolving into reptiles, say 300 million years ago." The rock dater then will throw out any rock samples that don’t show dates near 300 million years. He will then say that the throwaways were bad samples; but you see, he thought the samples were good enough to date, until the results came in, then they became "bad samples."6
There is a huge bias toward jibing with fanciful, scientifically baseless, evolutionary and old earth dogma; it’s a case of the blind leading the blind. The evolutionist has an old earth view that the rock dater incorporates and uses as an excuse to eliminate the widely varying rock date results that don’t conveniently agree with the evolutionists’ view of earth history. The fix is in; old earthers have dreamed up a billions-of-year-old earth, and tailored their dating "science" to agree. ~
