Creation Science Rebuttals

     The June 2005 issue of Creation contains an article about a fossil find, which young earth author Carl Wieland claims is a problem for long ages and evolution. ¹
     As Dr. Wieland explains in an article titled 'Holy grail' or another evolutionary tale?, this fossil comes from the Flinders Ranges in southern Australia. The geological formation in question is thought to be pre-Cambrian in age (older than 543 million years). For a long time, paleontologists have noted that life exploded in the Cambrian period, but there were no apparent predecessor lifeforms in the preceding rocks.
     Now many new lifeforms are being discovered in this time period just before the Cambrian. So many, that some have proposed a new geologic period, called the Ediacaran (called Vendian by some). This period, from 620 to 540 (probably 543) million years ago, is now yielding fossils. However, in many cases, these fossils are completely new, and do not appear to be ancestors of the life that we see in the Cambrian period.
     Wieland goes on to describe the fossil that he writes about. It is a vertebrate, about 2.4 inches long, and is about 560 million years. At first, evolutionists fought this fossil, saying it could not be a vertebrate.  Apparently now, it is confirmed as the oldest known vertebrate.
     Naturally, Wieland claims this is support for young earth creationism. He says “It would have been too much to hope for the evolutionized media to acknowledge the fact that this find is great news for creationists (because with a stroke it appears to wipe out all, and any, previous multicelled fossils as candidates for the ancestry of all vertebrates).”
     Despite such claims, this fossil find does nothing to support young earth creationism. When a new fossil is discovered, the books do have to be re-written, but nothing more can be inferred. Yes, paleontologists are looking for fossils which might be the ancestors of the Cambrian organisms. Just because this one is not one of those predecessor organisms means nothing. The fossil record, as we all know, is very sparse. It is not surprising that it would be hard to find ancestors for the Cambrian organisms.
     Finally, Wieland ties it to the Flood of Noah. However, there is no evidence to suggest that this rock formation was formed during a worldwide flood. The reason for this…there is no geologic evidence for a global flood. There is no scientific evidence that supports the young earth model. They continue to claim that individual evidences such as this support the flood, but when you combine all the evidences together, their model falls apart.

For More Reading
Living Fossils

Flinders Fossil
 

¹  Creation Magazine, Volume 27, Issue 3.  Published on the web at https://creation.com/holy-grail-or-another-evolutionary-tale