While the writers at the Secular Outpost go out of our way to be charitable to our opponents and represent them in the best possible light, there is also value in pointing out the fringe positions held by some of our opponents. With all due respect to friends and family who are young earth creationists, I put the belief in Young Earth Creationism (YEC) in the “fringe” category. In other words, I don’t claim that YEC is representative of the strongest versions of theism and I don’t claim that disproving YEC disproves theism.

Having said that, I had to chuckle when I saw the following pop up in my feed reader. From the official blog of Answers in Genesis (AIG), we find a post titled, “Pluto’s Surface is Young!” The teaser for the article reads: “What recent photos of Pluto revealed was a shock to conventional uniformitarian scientists who believe in a 4.5-billion-year-old solar system.” I guess that’s one way to spin it.

What the author fails to mention, however, is that scientists were shocked, not because of their belief in a 4.5-billion-year-old solar system, but because of their belief in a 4.5-billion-year-old solar system combined with their belief that Pluto does not have active geology.  As NASA scientists have explained in more than one press conference, having active geology would explain the lack of craters on Pluto.

The fact of the matter is that there is zero debate in the scientific community about the age of the earth and the solar system. Their ages are measured in billions, not thousands, of years. The recent images of Pluto and its moon Charon provide no reason to doubt that conclusion.