Creation Science Reviews
Creation Ministries International Daily Feature
Limestone Deception
14 October 2013
Review by Greg Neyman
Old Earth Ministries
Review Published 24 September 2013
In a recent article on the Creation Ministries International website, author Jonathan O'Brien makes the claim that limestone can form quickly. The article is titled "Frozen in stone...or just decades."1
The author proves his point to his young earth audience by showing pictures of a large wooden waterwheel at a lighthouse site in Australia. The site is no longer a working site, but the springs that turned the water wheel still flow, and the water has a high mineral content, which deposits calcium carbonate on the waterwheel. After many decades, the calcium carbonate built up, and encased the waterwheel. About this, the author then claims:
Natural formations whose ages are not known may lead some to believe that they have taken thousands or even millions of years to form. Given the right chemical environment, the thousands of years since Noah’s Flood are actually a vast amount of time adequate to explain the sorts of geological features we have grown up to believe speak of millions of years.
Comparing this water wheel to natural limestone beds, which can be
 |
| Dropstone animation, from this page |
Beds of limestone form from a completely different process. Whereas precipitate forms minerals at the molecular level, thick limestone beds form from grains of CaCo3, typically the skeletal fragments of marine organisms. This process takes much longer, with accumulation rates of millimeters/per thousand years, or 1,000 times slower than precipitation.
Is He Talking about Limestone Beds?
Some may say the author is not be speaking about limestone beds that are hundreds of feet thick, but may be referring to items such as limestone caves, with stalagtites and stalagmites, as well as other geologic features made by precipitation. In his statement, he says the time since Noah's Flood is adequate to explain geological features "we have grown up to believe speak of millions of years." Since he is talking about the post-flood era, and he believes limestone beds were a result of Noah's Flood, the geological features he refers to cannot be the thick beds of limestone...right? He must be referring to things like stalagtites, stalagmites, and limestone caves. However, no geologist claims that stalagtites and stalagmites take millions of years to form. We can measure the rates of precipitation in caves, and know that they can form rather quickly. As for limestone caves, the longer time that the limestone in a cave dissolves, the larger the cave. Whereas a small cave can form in thousands of years, a larger cave may take millions, such as Carlsbad Caverns, which is about 4 million years old. Of course, this does not take into account the amount of time it takes to deposit the limestone in the first place.
Since geologists know these features don't take millions of years (although larger ones can), then the author is probably referring to limestone beds, which do take millions of years to form. But since YEC's have painted old earth proponents as believing in slow processes that take millions of years, the rock forming process does not matter. To the typical YEC in the pew, limestone is limestone, no matter how it formed.
Conclusion
The worst part of this article...the author actually has training in geological sciences, so he knows the difference between these two methods of calcium carbonate deposition. This makes this article a deliberate attempt to deceive the reader.
Unfortunately, this is a very common YEC argument. You can see other YEC articles about quick rock formation in these articles.
Claims that Make You Want to Choke
More Petrified Young Earth Claims
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1 Frozen In Stone ... In Just Decades by Jonathan O'Brien, Creation Ministries International Daily Article, 14 October 2013. Also from Creation Magazine, page 47, July 2013.
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