According to NASA-funded research on drill-cores from Australia, Earth’s atmosphere contained significant amounts of oxygen nearly 2.5 billion years ago, millions of years earlier than previously assumed. Let’s see the Young Earth Creationists spin that one.
[tags]science, Earth, atmosphere, oxygen[/tags]
You forget that the creationists don’t believe in science. The world was created in six days (God rested on the seventh). It’s 6,000 years old. Evidence of oxygen in the atmosphere 2.5 billion years ago was put there by God to test our faith, just like fossils and dinosaur bones.
That’s what makes the struggle with the creationists such a problem — they are unwilling to look at or understand scientific evidence. As far as they are concerned, it’s a matter of belief, not of rational interpretation of facts. To even listen to the evidence, creationists must give up their literal belief in the bible, and they’re not willing to do that.
Besides, the Creationists know that the oxygen was there from the start. Clearly. Otherwise, what would Adam and Eve have breathed?
And that comment failed to include my actual point, which is this: Creationists will obviously spin this as science catching up with what they know to be true — because Creationists love any scientific result that they can believe supports their thesis. (It’s not results they dislike, it’s the process.)