ACTS III Global Ministries

"Sometimes what you need the most...you don't even know you need."

The Battleground of Apologetics

Chapter 6: The Solar System

            This section will take us on a voyage through our own solar system. Most of the discussion of Earth will be in the next chapter.  Let’s jump right into it:

“The solar system used to be a simple place… But 30 years of planetary exploration have replaced that simple picture with a far more complex image.  ‘The most striking outcome of planetary exploration is the diversity of the planets,’ says planetary physicist David Stevenson of the California Institute of Technology.  Ross Taylor of the Australian National University agrees: “If you look at all the planets and the 60 or satellites, it’s very hard to find two that are the same.”[1]

            This causes a big problem for the evolutionists, because if all of the solar system was formed from the same dust cloud, the planets should be uniform in composition.  They obviously are not.  This next quote demonstrates the problem:

 “The challenge will be to understand how…’you can start out with similar starting materials and end up with different planets.’ Stevenson and others are puzzling out how subtle differences in starting conditions such as distance from the sun, along with chance events…can send planets down vastly different evolutionary paths.”[2]

              To illustrate this problem, imagine that you were going to bake 60 cakes.  You mixed all of the batter into an industrial mixer.  You then poured out the batter into 60 cake pans and baked them in the same oven, same temperature, etc.  However, when you opened the oven up, you got 60 different things.  Some were cakes of different kinds, one was a brownie, one was a meatloaf, a couple were casseroles, and there were even some fish sticks in there.  Did something magic happen in the oven?  YES…Evolution happened!

            While researching this information, I came across an encyclopedic source that had a picture of how the solar system could have been formed.  In essence, it illustrated that there was a single large mass at the center of what is now our solar system, and it was spinning.  Eventually, material got slung out form this central mass.  This stuff that slung out according to this evolutionary theory became the planets and other bodies in our solar system.  I have recreated a simple graphic to the left of how this might have looked.  Take a look at it.  What do you notice?

There are a few things that came to my attention when viewing such an evolutionary illustration.  First, the picture fits the law of physics dealing with angular momentum—the smaller objects that spun off of the larger one are all spinning the same direction.  However, that is not the case in our solar system.  We have planets and moons that spin backwards for example.  This alone disproves this concept, but there is still more.

Let’s consider the table below with accumulated data on all of the planets in our solar system as well as the sun.

Table of Measurements & Facts about our solar system[3]

I tried producing various graphs, charts and statistical relationships to see if there could be any  logical explanation for how the solar system could have been formed in this gas spin off theory.  Even though it goes against the previously discussed laws of physics, I wanted to check.

The first thing that I noticed was that no discernable pattern to the mass or the densities of the bodies in the solar system existed.  If they were all made at the same time from the same spin-off you would think they would all have the same materials, comparable mass, and similar densities.  As you can see, that is clearly not the case.  My next thought was maybe there is a pattern in the masses or densities that show a steady increase or decrease as you move away from the sun.  NOPE.  I was wrong again.  Well then maybe there was a similar pattern between the densities and the masses of the planets…NOPE…wrong again.  Look at the comparison of the data itself, and you will notice no discernable pattern.

Another problem I noticed was the tilt of the planets.  Notice how they vary greatly, again with no discernable pattern as to why they are tilted the way they are.  The same holds true for the length of days.  (This is the time it takes the planet to rotate once on its axis like earth’s nearly 24-hour day.)

You would think that Venus, being both close to us physically and close to the size of Earth, with 82% of our Mass and 89% of our density would have about the same length day as us.  NOPE.  Wrong again.  Venus’s day last longer than its year!  It takes Venus 243 days to turn it a circle on its axis, but only 225 days to go around the sun.  Why is it so different from earth?  I think it is God again showing evolutionists how silly their religion is and how flawed and comical their theories are.  He is trying very hard to show then that He is the answer that they are searching for.

These kinds of problems continue for evolutionary theory throughout the table of data.  Nothing makes any sense in light of evolutionary theory.  There are no mathematical or theoretical models that can save the theory here.

The next few sections will be devoted to looking at many of the bodies in our solar system individually.  Much of this information was derived from the previously cited Designs and Origins in Astronomy. 

Mercury

Mercury is just a little larger than our moon, but only has a density very close to that of the earth.  This is interesting because our gravitational field is the primary cause of earth’s density.  However, that is not the case on Mercury.  The most likely reason that Mercury is so dense is it is made mostly of a denser material—probably iron. 

            There are 2 problems with Mercury for evolutionists and their time scale.  First, since Mercury is so close to the sun, it should be uniformly cratered, but that is not the case.  NASA’s Mariner 10 showed large areas of fairly smooth plains.  This might mean that Mercury was not formed as or when the evolutionists expected.  Surely a planet that close to the sun would be bombarded by innumerable meteors and comets and such as the sun’s gravity lured them in over the billions of years contained in the evolutionary time scale.  These smooth plains are bad news for evolutionists.

            Secondly, Mercury has shrunk and is wrinkled like a withered apple.  Scientists believe Mercury cooling off could cause the shrinking.  Objects do tend to shrink when they cool.  The obvious problem is that if Mercury has been cooling for 4.6 billion years or so, then the core should be completely cooled.  That is not the case as the lobate scarps (shallow cliffs) should be much larger.[4]

Venus

Venus is the brightest thing in the sky to us except for the sun and the moon, and is also the closest planet to us.  One of the first problems encountered with Venus for evolutionists is the fact that it has a retrograde rotation.  It spins backwards from Earth and most of the other planets.  This should not be the case with the evolutionary big-bag theory.  According to evolution, everything should spin the same direction. 

            Another problem with Venus for evolutionists is the temperature on the planet.  Surface temperatures there heat up to around 900⁰ Fahrenheit.  As a first thought, it is tempting to say that is because Venus is closer to the sun than the earth.  However, that is not the reason.  Measurements taken from Venus show that the combination of the sunlight that reaches Venus and the greenhouse effect from the gasses in the atmosphere cannot create those extreme temperatures.  This only leaves heat from the initial formation as the most likely source for the high temperatures.  This again shows that the solar system is not billions of years old—otherwise Venus should be cooled by now.

The Moon

The moon causes problems for the big-bang’ers beginning as well.  The primary predicament stems from their lack of a viable theoretical model as to where it came from.  In brief, there are 3 evolutionary theories of how our moon came into existence and none work. 

The first postulates that the moon spun off the earth at some time in the past.  This is called the fissure theory.  There are too many impossibilities with this theory—mainly that the earth could not have been spinning fast enough to spin the moon off.  Even if it had, it would have spun off rings not a chunk.  It is also impossible because of the differences in the composition of the earth and moon.  They do not appear to be made from the same composition as would be predicted by this theory.

The second theory, accretion, states that the moon was made at the same time as the earth…already in orbit.  The problem here is that the moon is receding from the earth slowly but measurably.  Using the evolutionary ideology of uniformitarianism and taking the rate in which it is moving away and extrapolating backwards, we determine that this would have put the moon in direct contact with the earth 1-2 billion years ago.  Again, this is impossible.  Keep in mind that the moon has a major role to play in our tides as well.  Due to a law of physics known as the inverse square law, as the moon moved closer, the attraction it exerts on the earth and tide would have become exponentially greater.  As such, the moon could not have been much closer than it is today without drowning and washing away everything on the planet.

The third possibility, the capture theory, does not work either.  This theory hypothesizes that the moon was just passing by one day when the earth’s gravity captured it in its present orbit.  The largest problem here is the mass ratio between the earth and moon.  The moon is too big relative to the earth for this to have happened.  Also, the moon would not have the circular orbit it does now with this theory.  This means that evolution cannot satisfactorily explain the moon.  (Too bad they just can’t ignore it too.)

Evolution is a Bit Dusty

Some other interesting things about the moon deal with its alleged age by evolutionists.  Basically all three theories of its origin would date the moon at the same imaginary age as the earth-- 4.6 billion years.  Read the following quotes using the evolutionary concept of uniformitarianism as a guide.  This first one comes from the previously cited evolutionary scientist, Isaac Asimov.  In his first published essay in 1958, he wrote:

"I get a picture, therefore, of the first spaceship [to the moon], picking out a nice level place for landing purposes, coming slowly downward tail-first and sinking majestically out of sight.”[5] (emphasis mine)

            What he is referring to when he discusses the ship sinking out of sight was the evolutionary theory that the moon would have very deep layers of dust on its surface—so much in fact as to cause the whole spaceship to sink out of sight.

Asimov was not alone in this evolutionary thought pattern.  If you look at pictures of the lunar lander, you will notice that it had large pads for feet.  These were supposed to act like snowshoes and keep it from sinking in the dust.  In the 1950s, a highly respected astronomer by the name of R.A. Lyttleton, had this to say:

"The lunar surface is exposed to direct sunlight, and strong ultraviolet light and X-rays [from the sun] can destroy the surface layers of exposed rock and reduce them to dust at the rate of a few ten-thousandths of an inch per year. But even this minute amount could, during the age of the moon, be sufficient to form a layer over it several miles deep.”[6] (emphasis mine)

In the 5 to 10 billion years that the moon was thought to exist at the time, 3 or 4/10,000ths of an inch per year accumulation (their calculations) would produce 20-60 miles of dust.  In view of this, NASA was afraid to send men to the moon.  They knew that in landing there, the astronauts would be instantly buried in dust and would suffocate!

So NASA first sent an unmanned lander to the moon, which made the surprising discovery that there was hardly any dust on the moon at all!  In spite of that discovery, the famous astronaut Neil Armstrong was truly worried about this dust problem more and more as the date for his Apollo flight neared.  He too feared that the lunar lander would sink deeply into it, and that he would perish.

Luckily for him, the moon is young, so he had no problem. There was only 2 or 3 inches of dust on its surface! That is the amount one would expect if the moon was about 6000 years old. Imagine that, it coincides perfectly with the creation timeline!

Jupiter

Jupiter is the largest planet in the solar system, and it also turns the fastest.  It also has the most influential magnetic field.  We can even notice its effects here on earth.  Something interesting is that it radiates between 2.4 & 2.7 times more radiation than it receives from the sun!  Where is this extra energy coming from?  There are two options—contraction or left over heat from the formation.  Either way, this causes a problem for evolutionists. 

Giving off 2.4 – 2.7 times more heat than you receive tends to make a planet cold relatively quickly.  Imagine having a bucket with a hole in the bottom that leaked out 2.7 gallons per minute.  Now if you were only putting in 1 gallon per minute, it would empty out pretty quick.  While science does not know what the temperature was in the beginning for Jupiter, working backwards it becomes inconceivable hot using the evolutionary principle of uniformitarianism. 

Keeping with the bucket and water analogy, consider the following illustrative table.  The Bucket represents the planet Jupiter – the water in represents the energy it receives from the sun – the water out represents the energy given off by the planet.  (Numbers are in gallons)

            While this is only an example, you can see how fast a bucket would empty or a planet would cool off.  There is no way for the planets to be billions of years old. 

Another interesting fact about Jupiter is that it also has a ring around it.  Are there any clues in the ring that tell how old Jupiter might be?  Take a look at the quote below:

“A faint glow was seen inside the ring implying that it really continues right down to the surface of Jupiter.  This, plus the fact that the particles are extremely small, implies that the particles are continually spiraling down toward the surface of Jupiter… The fact that the particles are small makes them subject to a number of forces which tend to make the ring short-lived... The effects of sunlight [on these particles] are enough to cause the rings to disappear within one million years.”[7]  (emphasis mine)

 The article continues to talk about other forces acting on the particles in Jupiter’s ring that shorten its potential life span to “less than 20,000 years.”[8]  These other forces include Jupiter’s harsh environment and its magnetic field.  Other such evidence exists in the moons around Jupiter as well.

 “Our amazement at the large number of discoveries made by the Voyager visits to Jupiter in March and July was really just a measure of our ignorance of physical conditions in that corner of the solar system.  Much of what we had assumed turned out to be wrong, and some things we had not even imagined were found to exist.”[9]  (emphasis mine)

            The previous quote came from an associate professor of planetary science at the University of Arizona that was the leader on the Voyager imaging science team.  As underlined above, it demonstrates but one of countless such instances of the humbling that our brightest minds have received as their assumptions and theories have been abruptly cast down in light of reason and evidence. 

One last interesting note about Jupiter is that it is predominantly made of Hydrogen and Helium, much like the sun.  The question is then, why is it not a star also?  It has the theoretical elements and gravity…why is it a planet and not a star?

Saturn

Saturn is much like Jupiter in that it gives off more heat than it receives from the sun.  An important difference between the two giants is that Saturn is less massive and dense than Jupiter.  “Saturn is the only planet in the solar system with a density less than water.”[10]  This difference in mass prevents the contraction explanation that was used for Jupiter to explain Saturn’s giving off more heat than it receives.  According to scientists, this means that Saturn should have been completely cooled within 2 Billion years after forming.[11]  Yet it still has not cooled off—meaning—it is much less than 2 Billion years old.

            The famous rings of Saturn also give us clues as to the age.  Like Jupiter, one of the rings of Saturn is approaching the planet.  Notice the next quote regarding the rings approaching the planet:

“Recently it was stated that this was taking place at a rate of 13,000 miles per hundred years.”[12]

            Using the evolutionary doctrine of uniformitarianism and working backwards from these calculations as well as the current distance of the rings, around only seven million years ago these rings would have touched the sun.  Conclusion – neither these rings nor Saturn can be billions of years old!

             Next, there are at least 17 bodies that are counted as moons for Saturn.[13]  There are some really neat things about Saturn’s moons as well.  First, there are two moons that share almost the same orbit.  There is also another pair in another orbit and a set of triplets in yet another orbit.  Another moon of Saturn, Phoebe, is so far away from Saturn that it takes longer for it to orbit Saturn than the Earth takes to orbit the sun.  The real problem for evolutionists with Phoebe is that it, like many other moons in the solar system, has a retrograde orbit.  This means that it orbits backwards around the planet.  This of course conflicts with the law of angular momentum.  All things should be spinning the same direction.

             There are of course other planets and moons that we could talk about in our solar system, but they all present the same problem for evolutionists.  We have planets that lay on their side, bodies that rotate and revolve backwards, diminishing rings, bodies that should be made out of the supposed same materials (according to evolution) and yet are so vastly different, and so on.  Evolution cannot explain them…only Creation can!  God wants us to know that the imagination of evolutionary ‘scientists’ is not enough to explain the majesty and mystery of His creation!

 Witnessing & Apologetic Point  This is a great place to interject an Apologetic Point.  Let’s take a look at Genesis 1:14 to see what the Lord our God has to say about the stars:

“And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years:” ^[14]

            A neat word here to look up in the original Hebrew text is the word that is translated as “signs.”  It means either a Literal or a Figurative piece of evidence or a monument![15]  God is telling us that the heavens were made to be viewed as a literal or figurative … monument or evidence.  God again is showing us that no matter whether we are looking through the most powerful telescope or microscope, His fingerprint is there. 

            When discussing this same information with an atheist in the past, after seeing that evolution and the big bang did not work, he asked me, ‘then why did God make all these countless stars and planets?’  And I told him that it was for evidence that He is our Creator!  I shared with him the above verse and highlighted the meaning of the word sign.  I told him that God foreknew that evil and sinful men would come seeking after their own lusts and desires to try and prove there was no God.  He knew His creation would be attacked with this evolution nonsense.  That is precisely why He made it so complex and so diverse so as to confound all of man’s “Scientific and Intellectual Theories.” 

            It would be much easier for the evil heart of man to explain away one planet and one sun and one moon than the vastness of our universe the way God created it.  God knew what He was doing and still does!

            His heavens—that He created—are a monument to His Sovereignty over His creation and evidence of it to us.  Just as His words told us thousands of years ago!  Now let’s take a look at a few other bodies in our solar system.

Asteroids

The largest asteroid currently known of is Ceres.  It has a diameter of 630 miles.  Many other asteroids are no larger than a mile.  In 1991, an asteroid only 33 ft in diameter was found.[16]  Most of the asteroids in our solar system can be found between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.  Many however, known as Apollo asteroids, actually come within the orbit of the earth.  These are of obvious concern because they could collide with the earth.           

“There are at least forty known Apollo asteroids with diameters of a kilometer or more, and there may be as many as one thousand.  It has been calculated that a collision of a Apollo asteroid with the earth could occur about once every 250,000 years.”[17]

            This is significant to our debate because if there are as many as a thousand, there should have been none left after around 250 million years.  It could be argued that the thousand are merely left over from a much larger population in the past.  The problem here is that you are dealing with half-lives.  This means that one half-life ago, there were twice as many Apollo asteroids.[18] 

Continuing the calculation out to the supposed age of our solar system, this means that 4.5 Billion years ago, there would have been many times the mass of the sun in Apollo asteroids.[19]  This would have made the formation of earth impossibly difficult to say the least since they cross earth’s orbit.  Evolution cannot explain them without conceding that the universe is not billions of years old.

Comets

Generally speaking, comets are made mostly of ice and are widely accepted as having short lives.  This is due to the fact that they lose some of their mass each time they approach the sun.  This loss of mass is caused by the heat from the sun evaporating the ice.  This evaporation causes the comets to lose dust and gases that we can see as the comet’s tail.  What makes this important to the Creation – Evolution debate is that it means they will cease to exist after only a few hundred or few thousand orbits around the sun.[20]

            How is that relevant you may ask?  Well astronomers know that short-period comets typically have orbits around the sun that take roughly 100 years or less.  So, doing the math, we end up with this basic equation:

100 years per orbit x 1,000 orbits maximum until gone = Max age of 100,000 years for all short-period comets.

            So the fact that there are still short period comets causes more problems for cosmological evolutionists and the Religious Scientists-of the Big Bang Order.  If the maximum age of these comets is 100,000 years then we should have never known about them if the earth is 4.6 billion years old.  The problem is so bad in fact that evolutionists have been forced to imagine and have faith in yet another unseen phenomenon—another false savior.  Obviously the evolutionists realized they must invent a replenishing source for all of the short-period comets we see today. 

On the other hand, Creationists have no problem with this data relating to the existence of short-period comets and do not require an alternative theory to fix God or His Creation.  This is yet another major victory against the foe of evolutionary thought!  The fact that comets that only last 100,000 years are still alive and well fits acceptably and predictably within the limits of a 6,000 year old created universe, but not the billions of years the evolutionists need for their fable.

            Evolutionists have tried to patch this hole in their religious theory with another theory known as the ‘Oort Cloud.’  Just as we saw in the definition of the big bang earlier, not only do evolutionists have faith in things unseen, but they give their false saviors names as well.  They named this false god of the big bang after the scientist that imagined it.  Isn’t it neat how they deify each other when another ‘savior’ is born?!  Sounds like the kind of prideful glory Satan was after when he fell doesn’t it?

            Here is a direct quote from Science Year: The World Book Science Annual that details this issue:

“Each time a comet passes around the sun, its frozen nucleus is heated, causing it to shed the duct and gas, which then form the coma and tail.  Eventually this material is lost in space.  One estimate suggests that Halley’s Comet loses a layer about 10 feet thick every time it goes around the sun.  If the nucleus were originally about 30 miles in diameter, much larger than the average comet is estimated to be, the nucleus would be reduced to nothing after fewer than 8,000 passes, or about 60,000 years.  The calculation is a crude one, but the implication is clear: The expected life of Haley’s Comet in its present orbit is vastly less than the 5-billion-year age of the solar system.  At that rate of dissipation, there would be no comets left to visit us today, unless they were constantly being replenished from some distant source.”[21]  (emphasis mine) 

STOP & THINK:  Notice a Pattern Yet?

Have you noticed the pattern in which this evolutionary faith is treated?  Every time they run into a major problem with it, they are forced to come up with more and more ridiculous imaginary solutions: let’s call them false messiahs since evolution is a faith system.

            As we have seen thus far, according to evolutionists, evolution is not subject to laws, probability, evidence, testability, repeatability, common sense, or even the general principles of science.  It is whatever they want it to be. To put it in secular terms, evolution is nothing more than a religion for closet atheists cleverly disguised as ‘intellectuals.’  It is simply a type of New Age Religion. 

Chapter Summary

Ask the person you are witnessing to this question, “Is it easier to believe a theory that speaks of an eternal loving and righteous God that has showed Himself in every area tested, or to believe in a fictitious series of continuously flawed theories that are created only out of necessity in order to save the previous one which in turn tries to save the very first one that has no foundation or beginning?”

What are they putting their faith in?  Even more important, what are the consequences if they are wrong?

            The truth is that it takes a lot of blind faith and willful ignorance to believe evolution.  Believing in special creation is actually the only logical and rational choice.  There is one last celestial object to consider -- the earth.

Index

Foreword

Overview
Chapter 1
Chapter 2

Creation vs. Evolution
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10

Biblical
Apologetics
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16

Volume II Cults & False Hopes
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23

Glossary

Appendixes
A
B
C
D
E