Reducibly Complex

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“Science is simply common sense at its best - that is, rigidly accurate in observation, and merciless to fallacy in logic.”

-Thomas Henry Huxley (aka “Darwin’s Bulldog”)

I am planning to write a few posts soon on logical fallacies. They will be forthcoming sometime after I finish the “‘Evidence for Creation’ Debunked” posts.

“The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd; indeed in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widespread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible.”

-Bertrand Russell

This is a perfect response to the logical fallacy of argumentum ad populum (appeal to the people). Just because a lot of people think that God exists doesn’t mean that he does. It is not evidence for God’s existence; it is evidence of the popularity of that belief and nothing more.

This is Part 5 of the ten part blog debunking the claims made on CreationEvidence.org’s “Evidence for Creation.” This blog examines point #5.

STATEMENT: Physicist Robert Gentry has reported isolated radio halos of polonuim-214 in crystalline granite. The half-life of this element is 0.000164 seconds! To record the existence of this element in such short time span, the granite must be in crystalline state instantaneously. This runs counter to evolutionary estimates of 300 million years for granite to form.

RESPONSE: The work that is the basis for this argument is Creation’s Tiny Mystery by Robert Gentry. Gentry’s overall scientific process was done well, but his interpretations of his data were faulty. Geologist Lorence Collins notes: ”The geology of the sites at which Po halos are found clearly shows that Gentry’s proof of instantaneous creation and a young Earth is nothing of the sort. Gentry’s Po halos simply do not occur in primordial granites, but instead were formed in relatively young dikes that demonstrably crosscut older sedimentary and igneous rocks. Gentry claims to be an objective scientist but he has, in fact, ignored the very extensive published evidence that disproves his hypothesis. In addition, when confronted with this evidence he simply denies its existence. Such behavior is not characteristic of scientists, but of pseudoscientists.” (Dr. Lorence Collins)* Furthermore, Geologist Gregg Wilkerson, in a review of Creation’s Tiny Mystery, stated: “the book is a source of much misinformation about current geologic thinking and confuses fact with interpretation.” I could go on, but I digress.**

CONCLUSION: As with many of the arguments from so-called creation “scientists,” Gentry’s work is biased by his preconceived conclusion. In this case, Gentry was actually doing real science, but was misinterpreting his results based on his biased point of view. The objectiveness of his science is completely lacking, invalidating it all together.

*Dr. Lorence Collins has several articles critiquing the claims of Robert Gentry. The article cited is off of his website, but lacks a title.

**For more information on Gentry’s work, try here.

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“Education has failed in a very serious way to convey the most important lesson science can teach: skepticism”

-Dr. David Suzuki

Science education has proved worthless in this country at teaching skepticism. Indeed, despite my own coming from one of the best public school systems in the country I, too, found myself believing in pseudosciences until recent years.

“I don’t believe in astrology; I’m a Sagittarius and we’re skeptical.”

-Sir Arthur C. Clarke

I’m excited tonight because I’ve discovered that a meetup.com group has been started recently for Madison Skeptics. I hope it turns into something really cool. We’ll see, I guess.

“I know this is painful for the ladies to hear, but if you get married, you have accepted the headship of a man, your husband. Christ is the head of the household and the husband is the head of the wife, and that’s the way it is, period.”

-Pat Robertson

He said that in 1992, yet he is still, now 16 years later, a major figurehead of the Christian fundamentalists. How it is that someone as intolerant and bigoted as he is could still have notoriety blows my mind…

And pisses me off to no end.

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“The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not ‘Eureka!’ (I found it!) but ‘That’s funny…’”

-Isaac Asimov

I love this quote. I love how every discovery in science is not a discovery of single concept, but a single component. No discovery is final; every discovery is an insight into new possibilities.

Recently, it was announced that the first exoplanets had been imaged. Well, it is now quite possible that another exoplanet has been imaged.

Rather than going into detail about this, I will deflect to Phil Plait, the Bad Astronomer. Phil’s got an excellent breakdown on his blog.

This is Part 4 of the ten part blog debunking the claims made on CreationEvidence.org’s “Evidence for Creation.” This blog examines point #4.

NOTE: Because of the nature of the argument presented in point #4, this blog will not examine the argument sentence by sentence, but will address the argument as the whole.

STATEMENT: “World population growth rate in recent times is about 2% per year. Practicable application of growth rate throughout human history would be about half that number. Wars, disease, famine, etc. have wiped out approximately one third of the population on average every 82 years. Starting with eight people, and applying these growth rates since the Flood of Noah’s day (about 4500 years ago) would give a total human population at just under six billion people. However, application on an evolutionary time scale runs into major difficulties. Starting with one “couple” just 41,000 years ago would give us a total population of 2 x 10⁸⁹. The universe does not have space to hold so many bodies.”

RESPONSE: The basis for this argument is a work by Henry Morris called Scientific Creationism. It has several flaws in it, but I will deflect to Lenny Flank, Jr., author of Deception by Design: The Intelligent Design Movement in America, who states:

“Contrary to Morris’s fanciful assumptions, there is no reason to believe that the global human population has been increasing exponentially, and good reason to believe that it was in fact stabilized by environmental factors (just like the housefly population has been) throughout most of human history, right up until the agricultural and industrial revolutions which have allowed population growth rates to climb sharply. Morris’s population argument is nothing more than an exercise in story-telling, and in it we see the basis for the other stories told by the creationists–selecting a short term trend and then projecting and extrapolating it backwards until it reaches the desired result.” (Lenny Flank, Population Rates and the Age of the Earth)

Regarding the statement about evolution, I would like to know why we must assume that we are starting from one couple 41,000 years ago. Why? Evolution does not ask that we start from one couple, as evolution is a slow, progressive process. And no one thinks that the human species originated 41,000 years ago. Actually, it is believed to have been more like 200,000 years ago. So why these arbitrary numbers? While the math they present is accurate, the argument itself is based on the false premise that population growth occurs at a constant, exponential rate. As Flank says, “While Morris’s mathematics are impeccable, the reasoning behind his argument is shoddy at best.”

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