Divine Intervention in Geology: How the “Heat Problem” is Reshaping Creationist Theory

In this video linked below, the YouTube channel Gutsick Gibbon, which focuses on paleontology and primatology, addresses a significant challenge to Young Earth Creationism known as the “Heat Problem.” I thought I would summarize some of the main points here but encourage you to watch the video for much more detail including calculations of the enormity of the problem.

The Heat Problem is presented as a compelling argument against Young Earth Creationism, with the video’s author claiming it makes the idea not just implausible but impossible. The problem arises from Young Earth Creationists’ attempts to explain the formation of the entire geologic column, representing millions to billions of years of processes, within the single year of Noah’s flood.

Central to this issue is radiometric dating, which uses the decay of radioactive isotopes to determine the age of rocks. The video explains how radiometric dating works, noting that many Young Earth Creationists accept the validity of the dates obtained but argue for accelerated decay rates in the past. However, this accelerated decay would produce an enormous amount of heat.

The video quantifies this heat, concluding that 500 million years of decay compressed into one year would produce energy equivalent to 44 hydrogen bombs exploding in every cubic kilometer of the planet. This is enough to vaporize the Earth’s oceans and granitic crust multiple times over. Additional heat sources from other flood model processes, such as the lithification of limestone and continental movements, further compound the problem.

The video then discusses various Young Earth Creationist responses to the Heat Problem. It mentions articles by Answers in Genesis and the RATE (Radioisotopes and the Age of the Earth) project, which have attempted to address this issue. The author notes that while these efforts acknowledge the reality of the heat problem, to date there has been no proposed hypothesis among YECs that has found any plausibility as a satisfactory solution.

Several interviews and debates on the Heat Problem are referenced, including appearances by Jason Lisle, a young Earth creationist astronomer, and David McQueen’s “blob model.” Also highlighted is the ever changing stance of YouTube channels’ Donnie Budinsky of Standing For Truth Ministries, a Young Earth Creationist YouTuber, on accelerated nuclear decay which is one of the possible solutions, illustrating the ongoing struggle within the creationist’ community to address this issue.

Critiques are provided of several proposed solutions to the Heat Problem. It analyzes the “hypercane” solution, which suggests that massive hurricanes could have dissipated the heat. However, calculations show that even year-long, global hypercanes would only remove a fraction of the heat generated. The idea of using space as a heat sink is also dismissed, as the heat would need to be transported there first. The suggestion of transferring heat to Earth’s core is similarly rejected, as it contradicts known principles of heat flow and would disrupt essential Earth processes.

A significant portion of the video focuses on a recent interview with John Baumgardner, the creator of the YEC Catastrophic Plate Tectonics model, a prominent flood geology theory. Baumgardner admits that cooling oceanic slabs from near melting point to their current temperatures within the biblical timeframe is “simply impossible.” He acknowledges that his model requires divine intervention, marking a shift from purely naturalistic explanations to the inclusion of miraculous events.

Baumgardner also discusses the necessity of miraculous intervention in explaining accelerated nuclear decay, which is required to account for the apparent age of rocks in a young Earth framework. This admission is presented as a significant departure from previous attempts by YECs to explain these phenomena through natural processes alone.

The video argues, and I agree, that these developments signify a critical shift in Young Earth Creationist approaches. The need to invoke divine intervention for key aspects of flood geology models is seen as conflicting with the goal of presenting creationism as a scientific alternative to conventional geology and evolutionary theory. The author suggests that this represents the “death knell” of scientific creationism, as it moves away from empirically testable hypotheses to a undefined mix of natural and supernatural causes for the origins of earth’s present day geographical features.

For the full exploration of the Heat Problem and its implications for Young Earth Creationism, I encourage you to watch the full video linked at the beginning of this post.