Reducibly Complex

I wanted to clear something up before it becomes a potential issue:

I am an atheist. I am a skeptic. But I do NOT think that the two go hand in hand. I have a fair amount of this page dedicated to religion. While this site is a skepticism/science blog, it is my personal blog and atheism is a topic dear to me.

Skepticism and atheism are two different things. They are related in many ways, but they are not one in the same. Skepticism follows the principles of scientific inquiry, providing evidence for claims. Atheism is simply a lack of belief. If you are a religious person for purely personal reasons and make no claims of “proof” of your beliefs, I don’t have a problem with you. If, however, you say that you can prove that your god or belief exists, then I want you to present me with your supporting evidence. If you cannot or do not do so, then I have a problem with you.

We all have our sacred cows, myself included (which I will not go into for, as fits my statement above, personal reasons). I am a skeptic despite this.

This is Part 7 of the ten part blog debunking the claims made on CreationEvidence.org’s “Evidence for Creation.” This blog examines point #7.

STATEMENT: “Physicist Melvin Cook, found that helium-4 enters our atmosphere from solar wind and radioactive decay of uranium. At present rates our atmosphere would accumulate current helium-4 amounts in less than 10,000 years.”

RESPONSE: Admittedly, the scientific data regarding this argument is a bit complicated, but Dave E. Matson has written a paper titled “How Good Are Those Young-Earth Arguments?” and addresses the subject of atmospheric helium-4 amounts. Matson goes into great detail, and I shall summarize as best I can:

Helium-4 is the result of radioactive alpha decay. (definition: alpha decay occurs “because the nucleus [of an atom] has too many protons which cause excessive repulsion. In an attempt to reduce the repulsion, a Helium nucleus is emitted” (“Three Types of Radioactive Decay”, thinkquest.org).) Helium-4 is “produced” as it escapes from within the earth to the atmosphere. It is hypothesized that a small amount of helium-4 is lost as it is heated and escapes the atmosphere altogether. However, the “most probable mechanism for helium loss is photoionization of helium by the polar wind and its escape along open lines of the Earth’s magnetic field” (Matson). Polar wind accounts for an escape of helium-4 that is nearly identical to the estimated production. Similarly, helium-4 may escape from the atmosphere through a “direct interaction of the solar wind [...] during the short periods of lower magnetic-field intensity while the field is reversing. Sheldon and Kern (1972) estimated that 20 geomagnetic-field reversals over the past 3.5 million years would have assured a balance between helium production and loss” (Matson).

CONCLUSION: What’s missing from creationevidence.org’s argument (aka what is implied by their argument) is that if helium-4 is being produced at the rate that it is, the amount of helium-4 observed in the atmosphere indicates a young earth. As has been shown, however, there are several mechanisms that account for the loss of helium-4 in the atmosphere. “Thus,” Matson states, “the helium balance calculations provided by creationist Melvin Cook [...] cannot provide a reliable minimum estimate of the earth’s age. [The creationists' argument from helium-4 production] is a fatal oversimplification of a complex problem” (Matson).

Please visit our advertisers!

(the views expressed by our sponsors are property of the individual sponsor alone, and do not reflect the opinion of ReduciblyComplex.com)

“I respect faith, but doubt is what gets you an education.”

-Wilson Mizner

Education has kept me very busy lately. Faith never does.

“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.

Please visit our advertisers!

(the views expressed by our sponsors are property of the individual sponsor alone, and do not reflect the opinion of ReduciblyComplex.com)

Now it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that anything so mindbogglingly useful [the Babel fish] could have evolved by chance that some thinkers have chosen to see it as a final and clinching proof of thenon-existence of God.
   The argument goes something like this: “I refuse to prove that I exist,” says God, “for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.”
   “But,” says Man, “the Babel fish is a dead giveaway isn’t it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don’t. QED”
   “Oh dear,” says God, “I hadn’t thought of that,” and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.

-Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Universe

Douglas Adams is one of my favorite authors, and certainly my favorite fiction author. Its a shame that he is now dead, because we sure could use an skeptic and atheist with his creative wit.