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Faint Sun and New Paradoxes

James 1:11-12
For the sun is no sooner risen with a burning heat, but it withereth the grass, and the flower thereof falleth, and the grace of the fashion of it perisheth: so also shall the rich man fade away in his ways. Blessed is the man that endureth temptation: for when he is tried, he shall receive the crown of life, which the Lord hath promised to them that love him.”

Many people do not realize that there is a fundamental disconnect between deep-time astrophysics and deep-time biology. This disconnect is known as the “Faint Sun Paradox”, first formulated in 1972 by astronomer and broadcaster Carl Sagan.

Single-celled life is supposed to have evolved in the Earth’s primordial oceans 4,000 million years ago. Water should have collected into oceans about 4,400 million years ago – 140 million years after the formation of the earth.

At that timescale, the Sun would still have been a young star, with only 70% of its energy output today. This would not provide enough heat to melt ice into water, so all the Earth’s water should have been frozen – meaning that single-celled life could not evolve in it.

Creationists see flaw after flaw with these evolutionary ideas. There is no mechanism for life to have evolved from non-living molecules in that primordial ocean. But it turns out that other evolutionary scientists don’t even have a model for the existence of water. So a fiddle factor would be something that could produce a greenhouse gas to warm the earth up. Canadian scientists are suggesting that bacteria obtained from Lake Kivu in DR Congo, which metabolize by producing iron oxides and methane, could be the key. Large iron ore deposits are offered as evidence. But the study fails to give a mechanism for where the methane went.

Once again, evolutionary ideas are seen to be unscientific, while biblical ideas of design are more logical.

Prayer: We pray that You will confound those who do not honor Your Name, Lord. We thank You for the truthfulness of Your word. Amen.

Author: Paul F. Taylor

Ref: University of British Columbia. “How ancient microbes created massive ore deposits, set stage for early life: The research provides a possible explanation to the ‘faint-young-sun’ paradox, originated by astronomer Carl Sagan.” ScienceDaily, 2 December 2019. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/12/191202102059.htm>. Image: Lake Kivu, CC BY-SA 2.0 Generic.

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