Mercury follow-up: A watery beginning?

How were the planets formed?   While young earth creationists appear to be fairly unified in their convictions about the origin of the geological features of the earth, the question of how the planets and the moon came to appear as they do seems to be one for which there is little consensus  among YECs other than they must be young.   An example of this is found in another recent article by Brian Thomas at ICR (Institute of Creation Science) entitled “Mercury’s Fading Magnetic Field Fits Creation Model.”   I am not interested in the article other than one statement that related to my last post.

“A decade later, creation physicist D. Russell Humphreys published a magnetic field model based on clues from the Bible. He reasoned that earth and the planets all shared a watery beginning, in accord with Genesis 1 and 2 Peter 3:5.² He calculated what the magnetic field strength would have been at the creation by using a mass of aligned water molecules equal to the masses of each planet.”

“All shared a watery beginning” is the phrase that caught my attention.   To me this is another example where science is driving creation theology rather than the text.   Many young earth creationists come up with ideas of how the planets formed with only the assumption that they must be old in their minds.  Once they have an idea they look for Biblical texts to support their views.   Humphreys from Answers in Genesis uses Genesis 1.2 and 1.6-10 to suggest that all the planets had a watery origin.  Rather than the text speaking of the earth and the separation of waters above and below being clouds and the deep (ocean/lakes) they are taking the waters being separated to be the separation at a universal level.  But the planets in most YEC thinking weren’t even created until the 4th day and so why if the firmament has already been separated do the planets need to be formed in a watery state?

Just as I commented in my previous post about asteroids and impact craters on other planets, the lengths that some will go to avoid the creation with apparent age can be quite staggering.  If all the planets began as balls of water on the 4th day then all their distinctive geological features need to be explained by subsequent events.   This puts the YEC into a situation where they are claiming that Noah’s Flood or the days of Peleg or even the plagues on Egypt! resulted in solar system effects rather than just global or local effects.    This would seem speculative at best to put it charitably.