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Post by Wasp on Dec 9, 2009 17:05:08 GMT
I would like to know how members view this subject and what they believe one must do to be saved etc.
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Post by Jim on Dec 9, 2009 17:26:30 GMT
I dont believe there is anything to be saved by or from
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Post by Wasp on Dec 9, 2009 21:23:35 GMT
I dont believe there is anything to be saved by or from Fair enough Jim, what do you think happens when we die regardless of age etc? |
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Post by Wasp on Dec 9, 2009 22:37:16 GMT
Just to add to the thread here is some of what the bible says about hell and salvation.
Revelation 14:11, And the smoke of their torment ascendeth up for ever and ever: and they have no rest day nor night...
Revelation 20:12, 15, And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life...And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire.
Matthew 10:28, And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.
Luke 12:5, But I will forewarn you whom ye shall fear: Fear him, which AFTER he hath killed hath power to cast into hell; yea, I say unto you, Fear him.
Matthew 18:8, 9 Wherefore if thy hand or thy foot offend thee, cut them off, and cast them from thee: it is better for thee to enter into life halt or maimed, rather than having two hands or feet to be cast into everlasting fire. And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: it is better for thee to enter into life with one eye, rather than having two eyes to be cast into hell fire.
Matthew 25:46, And these shall go away into EVERLASTING punishment: but the righteous into life eternal.
II Thessalonians 1:9 Who shall be punished with EVERLASTING destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power.
Isaiah 66:24, And they shall go forth, and look upon the carcasses of the men that have transgressed against me: for their worm shall not die, neither shall their fire be quenched; and they shall be abhorring unto all flesh.
Mark 9:44 (speaking of hell), Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.
For salvation the bible says;
"That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved" (Rom.10:9)
I John 5:20 And we know that the Son of God is come, and hath given us an understanding, that we may know him that is true, and we are in him that is true, even in his Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God, and eternal life.
Mark 2:7 Why doth this man thus speak blasphemies? who can forgive sins but God only?
Heb 12:2 Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith;…
Ephesians 1:6-7 To the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved. In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace.
Romans 3:24 “Being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.”
Titus 3:5. Not by works of righteousness, which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us.
Romans 4:5 But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness.
Romans 11:6 And if by grace, then is it no more of works: otherwise grace is no more grace.
Galatians 2:16 Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Jesus Christ, that we might be justified by the faith of Christ, and not by the works of the law: for by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified.
I John 1:7 If we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin.
Acts 8:20 But Peter said to him, ‘May your silver perish with you, because you thought you could obtain the gift of God with money.’
Romans 4:5-6, “But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness. Even as David also describeth the blessedness of the man, unto whom God imputeth righteousness without works.”
For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast (Ephesians 2:8-9).
PSA 49:7 No man can redeem the life of another or give to God a ransom for
him
ISA 57:12 I will expose your righteousness and your works, and they will not
benefit you.
64:6 All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags; we all shrivel up like a leaf, and like the wind our sins sweep us away.
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Post by leeside on Dec 10, 2009 0:56:16 GMT
I would like to know how members view this subject and what they believe one must do to be saved etc. Saved from what? |
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Post by Jim on Dec 10, 2009 15:38:16 GMT
I dont believe there is anything to be saved by or from Fair enough Jim, what do you think happens when we die regardless of age etc? Nothing, to be honest. You die. There are a lot of things I can't answer, do we have a soul or not and why are we self aware, but at the minute I would say when we die, thats it. Its a bit cold but I cant bring myself to believe in an after life. |
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Post by Wasp on Dec 10, 2009 21:53:58 GMT
I would like to know how members view this subject and what they believe one must do to be saved etc. Saved from what? I think the thread expalins itself and it is obvious we are talking about the afterlife etc. |
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Post by Wasp on Dec 10, 2009 21:56:23 GMT
Fair enough Jim, what do you think happens when we die regardless of age etc? Nothing, to be honest. You die. There are a lot of things I can't answer, do we have a soul or not and why are we self aware, but at the minute I would say when we die, thats it. Its a bit cold but I cant bring myself to believe in an after life. Many things happen that makes me wander the same wt times Jim. Being human and being selfish I take the view that if there is an afterlife (which I firmly belive there is0 I want to be going to the right place. As things stand right now with myself according to the bible I am straight for hell along with millions of others. Scary thought when you compare how short life really is with eternity. |
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Post by leeside on Feb 22, 2010 16:06:02 GMT
Personally I believe this whole 'salvation' thing to be complete nonsense. Its like how parents scare their kids into believing that if they dont behave then santa isnt going to bring them gifts at xmas. Bronze age beliefs based on fear and control. Religion is used by many as a vehicle and justification for ones own ignorance, racism, sectarianism, sexism, bitterness and hate. Sad really as well as belonging more to medieval times when critical and rational thinking didnt exist. And the fact that some people believe the Bible to be gods word verbatim is frightening. Especially considering that some take genesis to be historical fact which includes young earth creationism, even though there is a mountain of scientific evidence to prove otherwise.
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Post by Wasp on Feb 22, 2010 18:40:23 GMT
Personally I believe this whole 'salvation' thing to be complete nonsense. Its like how parents scare their kids into believing that if they dont behave then santa isnt going to bring them gifts at xmas. Bronze age beliefs based on fear and control. Religion is used by many as a vehicle and justification for ones own ignorance, racism, sectarianism, sexism, bitterness and hate. Sad really as well as belonging more to medieval times when critical and rational thinking didnt exist. And the fact that some people believe the Bible to be gods word verbatim is frightening. Especially considering that some take genesis to be historical fact which includes young earth creationism, even though there is a mountain of scientific evidence to prove otherwise. There is also a mountain of evidence concerning biblical prophecies and proof of a young earth. My own take on things is that the years given in Gensis may not be the same timeline as what we know as years today. I do no disregard evolution because I believe to an extent some of it is true but I also believe it to be a tool used by our Lord. I am not a Christian, I am not saved but I am a believer and I accept with no problem at all that there are many many people with differing views, its answering these views and keeping the faith that is important. |
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Post by leeside on Feb 22, 2010 23:13:01 GMT
Could you share some of that mountain of evidence concerning biblical prophecies and proof of a young earth?
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Post by Wasp on Feb 23, 2010 21:59:35 GMT
Could you share some of that mountain of evidence concerning biblical prophecies and proof of a young earth? Ok and then could you give me yours. TOPSOIL AND EROSION CONSISTENT WITH YOUNGER EARTH The earth's topsoil has an average depth of seven or eight inches. Top soil is produced at an estimated rate of six inches in 5,000 to 20,000 years. If the earth is billions of years old there should be a lot more topsoil -- 300,000 inches or more! Because of erosion, the amount of sediment in the ocean is gradually increasing. If the ocean had existed for a billion years, there should be at least thirty times more sediment in it than there is. LIVING THINGS AND POPULATION SPEAK OF YOUNGER EARTH The oldest living things on earth, the bristle cone pine trees in Nevada and California, are 5,000 years old. California redwoods are 4,000 years old. If trees can live that long, why couldn't they live several thousands of years longer? Why are there no trees older than 5,000 years? If the population of the earth increased 1/2% per year for a million years (2.5 children per family), the present population of the earth would be 102100 (1 with 2,100 zeros after it). Earth's present population could have developed in 4,000 years given the 1/2% per year growth rate. THE EARTH COULD BE YOUNGER THAN PREVIOUSLY THOUGHT Based on physical indications, the earth could be much younger than evolutionists think. Measurable amounts of helium gas are continually gathering in our outer atmosphere. The decay of the earth's uranium is one of the sources of helium. This helium cannot escape into outer space. If the earth was billions of years old, there would be as much as a million times more helium than is there now. Given the amount of helium in our outer atmosphere, the earth is estimated to be 10,000 to 15,000 years old. Now for the biblical prophecies; Daniel the prophet predicted in about 538 BC (Daniel 9:24-27) that Christ would come as Israel's promised Savior and Prince 483 years after the Persian emperor would give the Jews authority to rebuild Jerusalem, which was then in ruins. This was clearly and definitely fulfilled, hundreds of years later. Many of the principles of modern science were recorded as facts of nature in the Bible long before scientist confirmed them experimentally; ¡öRoundness of the earth (Isaiah 40:22) ¡öAlmost infinite extent of the sidereal universe (Isaiah 55:9) ¡öLaw of conservation of mass and energy (II Peter 3:7) ¡öHydrologic cycle (Ecclesiastes 1:7) ¡öVast number of stars (Jeremiah 33:22) ¡öLaw of increasing entropy (Psalm 102:25-27) ¡öParamount importance of blood in life processes (Leviticus 17:11) ¡öAtmospheric circulation (Ecclesiastes 1:6) ¡öGravitational field (Job 26:7) In Isaiah 7:14, WROTE in about 734 BCE that a "a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel." The bible says Genesis 22:17 Blessing I will bless you, and multiplying I will multiply your descendants as the stars of the heaven and as the sand which is on the seashore; and your descendants shall possess the gate of their enemies....... Today scientists admit that they do not know how many stars there are. Only about 3,000 can be seen with the naked eye. We have seen estimates of 1021 stars¡ªwhich is a lot of stars.[2] (The number of grains of sand on the earth¡¯s seashores is estimated to be 1025. As scientists discover more stars, wouldn¡¯t it be interesting to discover that these two numbers match?) Scientists state now that everystar is different, in the bible 1 Corinthians 15:41 There is one glory of the sun, another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; for one star differs from another star in glory. The Bible describes the precision of movement in the universe. Jeremiah 31:35,36 Thus says the LORD, Who gives the sun for a light by day, The ordinances of the moon and the stars for a light by night, Who disturbs the sea, And its waves roar (The LORD of hosts is His name): ¡°If those ordinances depart From before Me, says the LORD, Then the seed of Israel shall also cease From being a nation before Me forever.¡± The Bible describes the suspension of the Earth in space. Job 26:7 He stretches out the north over empty space; He hangs the earth on nothing. And when did scientists state that the earth was round suspended on nothing?? The fact that air has weight was proven scientifically only about 300 years ago yet the bible says in Job 28:25 To establish a weight for the wind,And apportion the waters by measure. The book of Leviticus (written prior to 1400 BC) describes the value of blood. Leviticus 17:11 ¡®For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it to you upon the altar to make atonement for your souls; for it is the blood that makes atonement for the soul.¡¯ The blood carries water and nourishment to every cell, maintains the body¡¯s temperature, and removes the waste material of the body¡¯s cells. The blood also carries oxygen from the lungs throughout the body. In 1616, William Harvey discovered that blood circulation is the key factor in physical life¡ªconfirming what the Bible revealed 3,000 years earlier The Bible refers to the surprising amount of water that can be held as condensation in clouds. Job 26:8 He binds up the water in His thick clouds, Yet the clouds are not broken under it. Job 37:11 Also with moisture He saturates the thick clouds; He scatters His bright clouds. Well theres a start. |
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Post by leeside on Feb 23, 2010 23:32:40 GMT
Those "scientific" creationists who trot this plum about must be delirious! Do they really believe that we should wind up with x miles of topsoil (or some such nonsense) after billions of years?
Geologically speaking, any given patch of land is seldom in equilibrium for long. Either it is collecting sediment or being eroded away, usually the latter. Suppose it collects sediment. Water-borne sediment will be washed in from higher ground, perhaps hills and mountains hundreds of miles away. Such sediment, even if from nearby hills, would normally carry very little organic material as the weathering slopes, themselves, would not have much to begin with. Sediment, in the form of dust, would normally come from very dry areas where organic material would be quickly oxidized. The sediment added to our patch of land may be great for building new soil, but if it accumulates too quickly it will merely bury the existing soil. The soil-making process would have to start over. In any case, the old topsoil, now compressed and deeply buried by sediment and soil, is no longer turned over by earthworms or small animals. It is deprived of oxygen and fresh organic material, such as rotting leaves. It is no longer a paradise for bacteria, and fungi. What organic material it did have is often lost by decay and slow oxidation. (Peat bogs and coal-forming swamps are an exception, but we would not count them as topsoils. Under unusual conditions a layer of topsoil can be "fossilized," even to the point of preserving the three-dimensional shape of tree leaves, as is the case at Yellowstone National Park.) In the long run, buried sediments are usually cemented into sedimentary rock, which brings us back to the beginning of this cycle. Thus, topsoil does not accumulate like most sediment, by simply piling up.
In the case of erosion, the topsoil, of course, is removed. This is usually the fate of every plot of land which remains above sea level long enough. Large areas of Canada, for instance, have been eroded down to the Precambrian basement rock! The geologic history of the strata making up the Grand Canyon is as much a history of erosion as it is of deposition! Consequently, a patch of soil cannot be older than the last local erosion--whenever that might have been. Forget about billions of years of soil accumulation!
Where sediment is neither being collected nor eroded, soils necessarily take their mineral components from the underlying parent rock. As more and more of that rock is weathered by the mechanical effects of freezing and thawing, the chemical and mechanical action of roots, or by other means, the soil is deepened. However, the deeper that soil gets, the more insulated the parent rock becomes to weathering. Fewer roots now reach the parent rock, and, in the bottom layers, the organic content of the soil is greatly reduced. That means less chemical weathering from bacteria and fungi. Sudden changes in temperature will have a smaller effect on the deeper parent rock. With the exception of the organic content, drawn mostly from the atmosphere, and the larger volume that broken rock takes up (which may raise the soil some distance above the original surface), in situ soils build downwards. Consequently, there is a practical limit to how deep the soil can get even if erosion never occurs. The accumulating humus will also reach an equilibrium, when new material balances that lost by decay and oxidation. (Topsoil is full of microbes that love to munch away on organic material, and don't forget the earthworms. Those earthworms don't get their calories from rock and clay!)
Just because a patch of topsoil takes x centuries to build up doesn't mean that the land is x centuries old. Most likely, that topsoil began to build up only recently, geologically speaking, and has either reached a practical limit to its depth or has been subject to erosion. Take the soil in my mother's backyard, for example. After about 18 inches the soil grades into a two-foot matrix of solid, smooth clay mixed with boulders. At about the three-foot level (in the center of the yard) the red-brown clay is abruptly terminated by a reddish conglomerate we call hardpan. A few sickly-looking roots, long dead for all I can tell, do penetrate the clay, usually by hugging the surfaces of the boulders, before being stopped cold by the hardpan. I suspect that most of them belong to plants which were chopped down years ago. There's not much down there in that clay to completely rot them away. Whatever damage is done to the clay by the few penetrating roots may, for all I know, be patched up by clay particles sifting down through the soil. The yard is located, along with much of San Diego, on a plateau, and meandering streams over thousands or millions of years have brought rocks down from the hills and rounded them into boulders. The numerous boulders in the clay and soil testify to much erosion since the limestone or chalk (just beneath the hardpan) was laid down. Further erosion is evident in the deeply etched edges of the plateau. Given the geologically recent erosion of the area and the difficulty of weathering the hardpan, is there any wonder that the soil is not thicker?
In summary, we're dealing with a dynamic and continuing cycle of topsoil formation and destruction, including periods of equilibrium, not a one-way accumulation of topsoil. Is that really so difficult to figure out? The whole idea of using topsoil-formation rates to prove that the earth is young just boggles my mind!
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Post by leeside on Feb 23, 2010 23:34:19 GMT
What does the age of a tree have to do with the age of the earth? If, in fact, the oldest tree is 4300 years old, so what? Perhaps Dr. Hovind is impressed by the fact that such a tree would have sprouted at about the time Noah's flood ended. If that is the case, then it is time for a reality check.
It might interest you to know that trees go back at least 8000 years without being disturbed by Noah's flood! Dr. Charles Ferguson of the University of Arizona has, by matching up overlapping tree rings of living and dead bristlecone pines, carefully built a tree ring sequence going back to 6273 BC (Popular Science, November 1979, p.76). It turns out that such things as rainfall, floods, glacial activity, atmospheric pressure, volcanic activity, and even variations in nearby stream flows show up in the rings. We could add disease and excessive activity by pests to that list.
Different locations on the mountain also affect tree growth in that factors such as temperature, moisture, soil thickness, soil type, susceptibility to fire, susceptibility to wind, and the amount of sunlight received vary, sometimes dramatically. For example, a tree growing near a stream would be less susceptible to the effects of drought. Even the genetic inheritance of a tree plays a role in that it will magnify or retard the above factors. Thus, even trees on the same mountain, of the same species, don't always cross-date as nicely as one might think.
Creationists sometimes seize upon such isolated facts in their desperate bid to discredit tree-ring dating. They either don't understand--or don't want to understand--that careful statistical studies have settled the issue beyond a reasonable doubt.
Creationists will even quote statistics for species of trees which no dendrochronologist would ever think of using! Some species of trees are not sensitive enough to the year-to-year climatic changes whilafter 158 generations, e others sport such an irregular growth rate as to be worthless for precise tree-ring dating. We hear horror stories about how easy it is for a tree to produce two or more rings in one year. What their readers don't hear is that such problems are minimal for some species of trees. Dr. Andrew E. Douglass, who pioneered the field of dendrochronology, found that ponderosa pine and douglass fir are especially excellent for dating purposes. In such species spotting a double ring was "...easy to do by eye after a very little training..." (American Scientist, May-June 1982).
In the case of the bristlecone pine, the problem of double rings is hardly any problem at all!
The dendrochronological check on radiocarbon dating is not without its own problems, the main one being that some species of trees may, under certain climatic conditions such as late frost, produce more than one ring per year [Glock and Agerter, 1963]. Fortunately, however, this has been "extremely rare" in the carefully checked history of bristlecone pines [Ferguson, 1968, p.840].
(Bailey, 1989, p.101)
Dr. Charles Ferguson goes on to say that the growth-ring analysis of about 1000 bristlecone pine trees in the White Mountains, where these tree-ring studies are done, turned up no more than three or four cases where there was even a trace of extra rings. In fact, the case for partially or totally missing rings is much more impressive. A typical bristlecone pine has up to 5 percent of its rings missing (Weber, 1982, p.25). Thus, if anything, one is likely to get a date that is too young! A careful statistical study, of course, minimizes even that problem. That's why statistics were invented!
Other species of trees corroborate the work that Ferguson did with bristlecone pines. Before his work, the tree-ring sequence of the sequoias had been worked out back to 1250 BC. The archaeological ring sequence had been worked out back to 59 BC. The lumber pine sequence had been worked out back to 25 BC. The radiocarbon dates and tree-ring dates of these other trees agree with those Ferguson got from the bristlecone pine.
(Weber, 1982, p.26)
The great Sierra redwoods have a different tree-ring pattern than does the bristlecone pine, and the other two cases mentioned by Weber probably have yet another pattern. Thus, because of the completely different environments in which these trees live, their tree-ring patterns do not directly correlate with each other. However, as Weber notes, the carbon-14 dating method bridges these differences. In other words, a specific date, say 200 AD, can be located in a redwood, a bristlecone pine, and a douglass fir by counting their tree-rings. A carbon-14 test can then be made on the wood of each of those three tree-rings to see whether they really do point to one date, namely 200 AD. (Actually, carbon-14 dating is not that precise, so a carbon-14 date really corresponds to a small range of tree-ring dates.) Thus, since this test has been passed, we not only have a partial check on the carbon-14 method, itself, but we have additional proof of the accuracy of tree-ring dating. We now have several species of trees whose ring counts agree with each other.
Our confidence in tree-ring dating is, therefore, established beyond a reasonable doubt. Dr. Hovind must now explain how it was that groves of bristlecone pine trees were living in the White Mountains before Noah's flood! Did all the antediluvian bristlecone pines just happen to collect in the White Mountains after the flood, perhaps to miraculously take root? Even that straw is fatally flawed. A new generation of bristlecone pines, starting from scratch as it were, would have no overlapping tree-rings with respect to their antediluvian cousins. Overlapping tree-rings means a shared environment, and any tree which has grown in both the antediluvian environment and the modern environment is a tree which has survived Noah's flood.
Thus, we begin with trees that are supposedly designed for a tropical, lowland, pre-flood environment. Those poor trees are then uprooted and churned about in salt water for a year, in a flood loaded with grinding sediments--a flood that was violent enough to rip up the earth's crust and pulverize great rocks. Those trees then float around, at least those that can still float, buried in mats of decaying vegetation for weeks or months. Unlike other mats of vegetation, which are buried and become instant, coal seams, they are dumped on mountain peaks where extremes of temperature, harsh winds, and desert-like conditions now prevail much of the year. Finally, enough of those trees survive to produce scattered forests, which grow nowhere else to this very day. Fortunately, that is something best explained by creationists. While at it, they might also explain why there is no dramatic difference between the antediluvian tree-ring pattern, supposedly grown under lush, tropical conditions, and the present day tree-ring pattern which reflects a harsh, dry environment. One would expect to see a dramatic change between big, fat tree-rings and thin, hard ones upon crossing that boundary in the tree-ring sequence! Nothing of the sort is found in the 8000-year-old, tree-ring history of the bristlecone pine.
Nor are the bristlecone pines the only plants with a history refuting Noah's flood!
The King Clone creosote bush, today a patch of shrubbery 70 by 25 feet in the Mojave Desert about 80 miles northeast of Los Angeles, goes back 11,700 years! (This item comes from The Washington Post, December 10, 1984 and was noted in the Creation/Evolution Newsletter of November-December, 1984.) The evergreen shrub is called a creosote bush because it has a pungent odor like that of creosote, an oily liquid produced from coal tar.
Frank C. Vasek, a botany professor at the Riverside campus of the University of California, who found the bush, has determined that the patch of shrubbery originally began as a single plant sprouting from one seed. As the plant grew outward the interior portions died out, thus leaving a huge ring with each clump becoming a clone of the first growth. I guess Noah's flood didn't bother this desert shrub any! Did I say "desert shrub?" What is a desert doing in the supposedly tropical antediluvian world?
The government (the Department of the Interior) puts out a booklet entitled "Tree Rings: Timekeepers of the Past," which is a highly readable presentation of the basic facts of tree ring dating. (Look under "U.S. Government" in the bibliography.)
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Post by leeside on Feb 23, 2010 23:36:08 GMT
The age of 175,000 years is a little steep for creationist purposes, so Dr. Hovind informs us that "God must have started the earth with some." Heaven forbid that the earth should be older than about 7000 years!
Helium-4 is the product of radioactive alpha decay whereas Helium-3 is primordial. The rates of their "production" are simply the rates of their escape from within the earth to the atmosphere.
A fair amount of helium is lost from the earth's atmosphere by simply being heated up in the elevated temperature of the exosphere (Dalrymple, 1984, p.112). The exosphere is the outermost layer of our atmosphere, beginning after the ionosphere at about 300 miles above the earth. When a lightweight helium atom is heated up, especially Helium-3, which is even lighter than Helium-4, it can easily pick up enough speed to escape Earth's gravity altogether and head off into outer space. Heating gas is a little like swatting rubber balls with a paddle; the lighter balls travel a lot faster after being swatted. In this manner about half of the Helium-3 produced is lost to outer space. The amount of the heavier Helium-4 lost by this method appears to be far short of the amount produced. Hence, the point of Morris' argument which is based on calculations by Cook. However, there are other mechanisms of helium escape which Morris and Cook have overlooked. Creationist Larry Vardiman (ICR Impact series, No.143, May 1985) at least recognizes some of these other factors. However, he has not fully addressed the matter, let alone proven that the earth is young.
The most probable mechanism for helium loss is photoionization of helium by the polar wind and its escape along open lines of the Earth's magnetic field. Banks and Holzer [1969] have shown that the polar wind can account for an escape of 2 to 4 x 106 ions/cm2 sec of Helium-4, which is nearly identical to the estimated production flux of (2.5 ± 1.5) x 106 atoms/cm2 sec. Calculations for Helium-3 lead to similar results, i.e., a rate virtually identical to the production flux. Another possible escape mechanism is direct interaction of the solar wind with the upper atmosphere during the short periods of lower magnetic-field intensity while the field is reversing. Sheldon and Kern [1972] estimated that 20 geomagnetic-field reversals over the past 3.5 million years would have assured a balance between helium production and loss.
(Dalrymple, 1984, p.112)
Dr. Dalrymple goes on to explain that even though our understanding of the helium balance in the atmosphere is incomplete, the situation being very complicated because of various hard-to-calculate factors, we do know one thing. "...it is clear that helium can and does escape from the atmosphere in amounts sufficient to balance production." (1984, p.113)
Thus, the helium balance calculations provided by creationist Melvin Cook (which are used by Henry Morris) cannot provide a reliable minimum estimate of the earth's age. Their argument is a fatal oversimplification of a complex problem.
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