Dear Editor,
Jonathan Castro (en letters, January 2017) claimed that, in responding to the deficiencies of ‘the evolutionary narrative’, it would be wrong to retreat ‘into the cocoon of Young Earth Creationism’, because ‘the evidence against a recent creation is simply overwhelming’. By this, he is implying that Young Earth Creationists (YECs) are closing their eyes to scientific facts.
He suggested that we should turn to a website called ‘Rationalwiki’ to discover the truth – a website set up and maintained by atheists and humanists. A look at their page which supposedly exposes the errors of YECs reveals that many of their so-called evidences are totally wrong. A couple of examples will suffice. 1. The claim that stalactites only grow four inches in 1,000 years. This is easily refuted by examples of stalactites growing on modern structures such as railway bridges and tunnels. 2. The claim that the rocks of the Grand Canyon would have taken millions of years to form ‘using the normal rate of erosion seen in water.’ But what is ‘the normal rate of erosion’? There is no such thing. Under catastrophic conditions, erosion can be extremely rapid. Rationalwiki’s claims are based on uniformitarian principles and a misplaced trust in radiometric dating, which has many flaws. Has Jonathan considered what happened following the Mount St Helens eruption in 1980, where 185 metres (600 feet) of water-laid sediment were deposited in around two years? I suggest your readers would be better served by referring to www.creation.com/evidence-fora-young-world.
