One of the world’s most breath taking sights is the Great Barrier Reef off the coast of Australia. During World War II, some of the reef was damaged and destroyed by ships, anchors, bombs and other military activity, so the environmental scientists went out there to see how fast it grows back. They watched it grow for 20 years.
After watching the reef grow for 20 years, they decided the Great Barrier Reef is less than 4,200 years old. While that is pretty old, I have a question.
If the earth is billions of years old, why don’t we have a bigger reef someplace?
Why is the oldest reef less than 4,200 years old?
Well, I have a theory about that:
I believe about 6,000 years ago, God created the world; 4,400 years ago there was a Flood that destroyed the world.
Therefore, the oldest reef in the world ought to be less than 4,400 years old.
And by golly…it is!
Across the Fruited Plain 
Firstly, I’m curious as to how this is an age limiting factor, since a reef being young doesn’t preclude the fact other things can be older.
Secondly, it took me a while to hunt down the source of this information (links to your sources would be nice in the future) but an age of between 4-10 thousand years seems to be given for the current great barrier reef formation. This isn’t the only aspect of the reef, with their being “dead”* reef located underneath this current formation.
If you age the entire thing, including the older parts of the reef below the current formation, you come up with an age well outside what a young earth would permit.
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*I put “dead” in quote marks because the current formation also includes dead parts. The distinction is that the older reef is totally dead whilst the newer one is still growing.
Hello Adam!
I am very happy to see that time permitted you to look around a little and even took the time to address some of my ideas on your own website.
I see your point. Perhaps a more accurate title would have been “Age ‘Indicating’ Factors.”
My main aim and purpose at Across the Fruited Plain is to demonstrate that the Bible is scientifically accurate and reliable. One of the ways I try to do that is by making scientific observations based on the evidence all around us, and then show how that evidence is completely consistent with the worldview and timeline of ‘thousands of years’ laid out in the Bible–while inconsistent with the theorist’s ‘billions of years’ timeline. Therefore, the purpose of my “Age Limiting Factors” is to prove there is an incompatibility between that which can be observed and timelines offered by the Big Bang Models.
In many of these “Age Limiting Factors” I demonstrate that there is a backstop in time that you will hit regarding various observable, naturalistic variables, despite the “longer ago and farther away” adjustments that have been forced upon your worldview’s timeline. My point about the Great Barrier Reef is that from my research, it is completely compatible with the biblical timeline. You are right to point out that “a reef being young doesn’t preclude the fact other things can be older. “ But it does not address why after billions of years, we would not have a larger reef someplace or why entire oceans have not been covered in coral.
My theory is that the dead layer of reef underneath was possibly from before the Flood, while the living layer estimated to be between 4 – 10 thousand years old according to your research remains compatible with the biblical timeline of a 4,200 year old post-Flood Barrier Reef.
I’m not sure if this posted or not so here it is again.
I have been looking at your work and I do find it rather interesting. I’ve certainly learnt a fair bit whilst I’ve been here, both from you and from researching topics you bring up. I’d like to thank you for that opportunity.
I’d also like to thank you for your honesty in admitting the reef itself isn’t an age limited factor, rather an age indicating factor. If that was your claim then my first criticism would’ve been rendered moot. Hopefully you’ll remember this distinction in the future and nobody else can use it to disagree with you.
As for why we don’t see older reefs it is worth noting the Great Barrier Reef isn’t the oldest reef in the world. A study similar to the one which concluded the new part of the GBR was 4-10 thousand years old also found that the Eniwetok Atoll was at least 130,000 years old. Many creationists attempt to dispute this figure by suggesting coral might grow quicker. However, even if you pretend the coral making up the Eniwetok Atoll is the fastest growing coral we know of it still would’ve taken at least ~54 thousand years to form. Even experts picked out by creationists to say coral could grow faster give figures of coral growth like 70mm. Such a growth rate would still make Eniwetok several times older than a young earth.
In all of that you’ll note I say “at least.” This is because coral is a very fragile substance, easily disturbed by storms and erosion. Such factors would easily set back coral growth quite significantly, meaning that it would take much longer than these estimates in reality. This is also why you don’t see coral all over the ocean or lots of very old corals. They need specific conditions to grow and can easily be disrupted or destroyed.
This also makes me wonder about how the older part of the GBR could’ve survived the flood. Modern storms are tame by comparison but can still severely damage reefs. How could such a easily disturbed structure survive the greatest disturbance of all time? I have heard people point to rapid burial to explain similar phenomena, but surely the forces associated with a massive flood depositing lots sediment on coral would also probably destroy it.
At any rate, the older part of the GBR is quite large. Would there have been enough time before the flood for it to grow?
Adam,
I love your feedback and what you have to say. Keep the great comments and questions coming. I have since adjusted my title from “Age Limiting Factors” to “Age ‘Indicating’ Factors”. Thanks for keeping me sharp and on point.
I am not familiar with your Eniwetok Atoll example, and I have not personally verified your dating method or sample of 130,000 years, but personally and Biblically speaking, I do not have a problem with a dating result of 130,000 years old because I believe that God can and did create things with the appearance of age. After all, if you saw Adam, a grown man, a moment after he was created, how old would you think Adam was? Certainly God created trees that were already mature with fruit. He didn’t give Adam a handful of seeds and say, “Plant these quickly, you’re gonna need dinner.” In like fashion, Jesus also created with the appearance of age when he turned water, not only into wine, but according to the passage, the “best” wine, which of course is aged wine at the Wedding Feast in Cana (John 2).
Therefore, if coral is legitimately dating 130,000 years old, that too is within the power of my God.
Now, you mention, “many creationists”, though I must caution you that there is quite a wide variety of creationists and I certainly do not claim to speak for all or any of them for that matter. For instance, there are “Old Earth” Creationists like Dr. Hugh Ross that actually believe in the Big Bang and try to prove it from the Bible using the “Day/Age” Theory to interpret the six days of Genesis Chapter 1. Other creationists deny the Biblical Worldwide Flood in the days of Noah, or place death before sin, etc. Therefore, I am here to defend what the Bible says on these matters and not what critics think and profess, creationist or otherwise.
Regarding your comments on the older part of the GBR, I’m afraid our collective knowledge and perspectives on something we did not have the opportunity to personally observe is only conjecture.
However, regarding your last question, I can tell you that the Pre-Flood Earth was a very different place, both atmospherically and geographically. For instance, we find oxygen bubbles trapped in amber with 50% more oxygen than we find in the atmosphere today. As a result, I believe the Pre-Flood Earth probably had double the air pressure and increased oxygen. And those are just some of the differences we know about. We don’t know about the atmospheric variables that we don’t know about. =)
Therefore, coral may have grown faster and larger Pre-Flood as I imagine did all flora and fauna.
Well it is nice to see you’re willing to change in the face of contrary evidence, even if this is only a grammatical point. I myself made some mistakes and you were correct to point them out – when I said creationists I should’ve said “young earth creationists.” Hovind, along with Answers in Genesis, are two key proponents of the data I was referencing.
As for the Eniwetok Atoll, here are the figures.
The Eniwetok Atoll reef is ~1,405,128mm thick. That kind of ‘flat’ reef grows ~8mm per year, although more branchy reefs can grow up to 125mm per year. However this obviously won’t produce the kind of reef found at Eniwetok. Work into the reef growth propagated by Answers in Genesis, amongst others, suggests reef growth could be up to 80mm a year.
Regardless of which figure you use to estimate the age of the Einwetok Atoll the result is significantly different to 6,000 years. The closest you get is ~12,000 years if you assume the reef is branchy. But it isn’t, so that’s kind of a moot point.
Increase all these figures by 66% (the amount of additional O2 in the air when it was at its maximum concentration) and the branching growth rates begin to align with a younger earth but those for the kind of coral found at Einwetok the results are still outside of a Biblical time frame, taking ~8,000 years to form.
Of course, increasing the calculations in this manner isn’t ideal. A 66% increase in atmospheric O2 might not result in a 66% increase in ocean O2. Increasing oxygen might not result in a linearly increasing coral growth – it will probably plateau at some point. However, these uncontrolled variables will probably only decrease the rate of coral growth and so the fact they aren’t included in this estimation doesn’t serve to strengthen a young earth case.
Now, all of this can be voided by simply claiming that earth was just created old. At that point you’ve gone beyond all scientific inquiry. Claims like this are akin to the conspiracy theorist pointing to all the lack of evidence as evidence for the conspiracy. Sorry, but that line of thinking is essentially unprovable and very unconvincing.
Adam, you are missing the big picture.
I already conceded that my views are based on faith. I am under no obligation to prove or convince you of anything, nor can I do so.
You on the other hand, claim to have evidence from Science, yet all you’ve authored are theoretical conjectures.
Where is the evidence for billions of years?
If you want to accept something on faith that’s your prerogative and there’d be little I can say to convince you otherwise. However, if you want to bolster your faith with the coral data then the facts are simply against you.
Whilst the calculations I’ve provided are incomplete the omissions bias the results towards a young earth. Thus the fact that despite this bias the data does still not align with a 6,000 year old planet simply hammers home how wrong this claim is.
As for evidence for billions of years there is a rather elegant piece of evidence I stumbled across the other day. Asteroids can either rotate regularly (around a principle axis) or randomly. The former state of being requires less energy so eventually a random, tumbling asteroid will settle around the principle axis as its energy dissipates.
How long it’ll take for an asteroid to enter this low energy state can be calculated from the diameter of the object and how long it takes to make a single rotation. Its basic Newtonian mechanics. Over 1,000 asteroids have had the length of time it would take to settle down calculated.
As you look at the results a funny pattern emerges. If an asteroid would take longer than the age of the solar system (~4.5 billion years) to settle down then it has not, it is still tumbling. However, all the asteroids which would take less than the age of the solar system to settle have indeed settled.
“As for evidence for billions of years there is a rather elegant piece of evidence I stumbled across the other day.”
Thank you for acknowledging that we are in fact debating 2 religious belief systems.
You placed your faith in the theory PRIOR to stumbling across the “evidence.”
Therefore, this isn’t Science vs. Religion.
This is Religion vs. Religion.
Oh no, I had other evidence prior to learning about the tumbling asteroids, I wasn’t accepting it all on faith. I just though that the asteroids would be a rather nice example to bring up because it’s something you don’t hear much about. I’ve recently written two essays about radiometric dating and am a bit weary of the subject. Have yet to write any on asteroids so the subject is still fresh and interesting in my eyes.