Reducibly Complex

On this day in 1932, the “neutron” was described in an article in the journal Nature by its discoverer, James Chadwick, who coined the name for this neutral particle he discovered present in the nucleus of atoms. By bombarding beryllium with alpha particles, Chadwick discovered the neutron for which he received the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1935.

There was a time when it was believed that the atom was the smallest particle there is, that nothing smaller could be discovered. We knew nothing about the neutron, proton, electron, quarks, etc. I think of what has happened in the field of science in the last 150 years, and I’m astonished. It was only about 75 years ago that we first learned of neutrons, but think of the amazingly huge amount of knowledge that is based solely on that discovery. This same line of thinking can be applied to other aspects of physics, biology, genetics, astronomy, medicine, and all the sciences alike.

On this day in 1919, Professor Ernest Rutherford succeeded in splitting the atom. By bombarding nitrogen atoms with alpha particles emitted by radioactive materials he transmuted the nitrogen atoms into oxygen.

On this day in 1896, German scientist, Wilhelm Röntgen announced his discovery of x-rays. He sent copies of his manuscript and some of his x-ray photographs to several renowned physicists and friends, including Lord Kelvin in Glasgow and Henre Poincare in Paris. Four days later, on 5 Jan 1896, Die Presse published the news in a front-page article which described the discovery and suggested new methods of medical diagnoses might be made with this new kind of radiation. One day later, theLondon Standard cabled the news to other countries around the world about the “a light which for the purpose of photography will penetrate wood, flesh, cloth, and most other organic substances.” It printed the first English-language account the next day.

Röntgen’s discovery of X-rays was one of the truly popular scientific discoveries. Because of the availability of the simplicity of the parts he used to create these and the pictures he took using them, people from all over were able to go to hardware stores and for a not-unreasonable amount of money purchase everything they needed to be able to take their own x-ray photos. There is a story of a man whose wife broke her arm, so he subjected her to an x-ray photo session. After exposing her arm to x-rays for 12 hours, he sent his pictures to a doctor to ask for a diagnosis. The next day, he sent another letter asking how he should treat what looked like severe burns on his wife’s arm.

This is Part 8 of the ten part blog debunking the claims made on CreationEvidence.org’s “Evidence for Creation.” This blog examines point #8.

STATEMENT: “Astronomical estimates of the distance to various galaxies gives conflicting data.”

RESPONSE: The source used to derive this statement is a news item from September 9th, 1995, titled “Further Evidence of a Youthful Universe” by R. Cowan. The story tells of how astronomers at the University of Cambridge in England concluded that the distance to the Coma cluster of galaxies indicates that the universe’s age is approximately 9.5 billion years as opposed to the previous estimates of 13 to 16 billion years.

However, as the news story states, “[astronomers] must either embrace a more complex cosmological model or reexamine how they estimate stellar ages.” This is exactly what they have done in the thirteen years since this story was published. Because of a refinement in the process of estimating stellar ages, astronomers have been able to narrow the estimated age of the universe. Within a well-defined error bar, astronomers are now certain that the age of the universe 13.7 billion years. The story even quotes how the study may have been inaccurate in the first place: “cautions theorist Daved N. Schramm of the University of Chicago, ‘You have to be very careful about [drawing conclusions] because all of the [Hubble constant] measurements have huge systematic errors.’”

It should also be pointed out here that “Evidence for Creation” contradicts itself by using this source. If the universe is 6,000 to 10,000 years old, as is proposed earlier (here and here and here), then using a scientific measurement that dates the universe as 9.5 billion years old contradicts the idea of a young-earth. So which is it: 6,000 to 10,000, or 9.5 billion? How about the actual 13.7 billion?

STATEMENT: “The Biblical Record refers to the expansion of space by the Creator.”

RESPONSE: The two biblical passages used as evidence for this statement are Psalm 104:2, and Isaiah 40:22. From the King James Bible, they read as follows:

Psalm 104:2 - Who coverest thyself with light as with a garment: who stretchest out the heavens like a curtain:

Isaiah 40:22 - It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers; that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in:

I shall leave it to theologians to interpret what these verses really mean, but I will comment on their use: “Evidence for Creation” is attempting, as its title implies, to provide the scientific evidence that supports the hypothesis of a universe created according to the biblical record in Genesis. However, if their “scientific” evidence for the truth of the biblical record is the bible itself, creationists are essentially saying “The bible is true because the bible says so.” Also, the bible is not a scientific work but a mythological, theological doctrine of faith. Therefore, there is no validity in using the bible as scientific evidence for anything, let alone for evidence of its own truth.

STATEMENT: ”Astrophysicist Russell Humphries demonstrates that such space expansion would dilate time in distant space.”

RESPONSE: First, “Evidence for Creation” has misspelled the physicist’s name in the article as well as in the citations. The actual name is Russell Humphreys. This will help any readers that are wanting to find a review of his book or find it on Amazon.com.

Second, Starlight and Time, Humphreys’ book cited for this statement, addresses the rather complex “Starlight Problem” that comes up when considering a young earth/universe. Essentially, the starlight problem is this: if the earth and the universe is young (less than 10,000 years old), then everything in the cosmos is within 10,000 years old; this would mean that no object that we can see could be further than 10,000 light years from Earth because otherwise we would not be able to see them; furthermore, events happening at distant galaxies (say, 150,000 light years away) that are detectable on earth (i.e. gamma ray bursts) could not have actually happened, due to the distance the light would have to have traveled (150,000 light years) in less time than the universe has existed; in this example, the gamma rays that we are detecting on earth as having come from a star or galaxy 150,000 light years away would have to have been placed 10,000 light years away from the earth and 140,000 light years away from the star or galaxy, and be on a trajectory towards the earth, at the beginning of the universe.

Did you follow all that? Basically, the starlight problem means that if the universe is truly only 10,000 years old and created by God according to the biblical record in Genesis, then God purposely set up a universe with a false history, making the universe appear as though it is older than it actually is. However, this argument is rather absurd; why would God do this? Not only that, but how do we then know that the earth is only 10,000 years old and not 100 years old with a similar false history, or 2 seconds old with a false history that includes every memory of your life up until 2 seconds ago? Ockham’s Razor, the idea that the explanation of a phenomenon should introduce as few new assumptions as possible (i.e. assuming God created the universe 10,000 years ago with a false history making the universe look older than it is), dictates that we reject this theory for the simpler idea that the universe really is as old as appears, or 13.7 billion years.

Humphreys’ book “presents a controversial cosmological model in which the Earth is several thousands of years old, but the outer edge of an expanding and rotating 3-dimensional universe is billions of years old, with various ages in between. The model places the Milky Way galaxy relatively near the center of the cosmos (in line with observable data if one disregards the Copernican Principle), though it is not a geocentricmodel of the solar system” (Wikipedia page on Russell Humphreys). In 1998, David E. Thomas wrote of Humphreys’ work, stating that “Humphreys creates a slick, scientific-sounding argument for a ‘young’ Earth, but in the process seriously misrepresents modern consensus. All serious dating methods (radiometric age dating, dendrochronology, ice core analysis, varve deposition, and more) yield ages far older than Humphreys’ methods. [...] D. Russell Humphreys breaks all the rules of science. He uses flawed logic, overly simple models, and twisted data to sell his young Earth” (“‘Creation Physicist” D. Russell Humphreys, and his Questionable ‘Evidence for a Young World’”).

STATEMENT: “This could explain a recent creation with great distances to the stars.”

RESPONSE: Sorry, but no, it cannot.

CONCLUSION: The evidence presented in this argument is so off the mark that it is barely worth considering. Astronomical estimates showing that the universe is about 9.5 billion years old that have since been overturned is not evidence for young earth of 6,000 to 10,000 years. Biblical verses cannot confirm the validity of the bible; just like I cannot confirm that I am the greatest juggler in the world by telling you that I’m the greatest juggler in the world. And oversimplified models of the universe that essentially say that the universe is set up in such a way as to fool us into thinking it is older than it actually is, or that space expansion “dilates” time in distant space (but not local?) is also not scientific evidence. The argument for creation based on the expansion of space fabric is pseudoscience at its best.

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“Truth is ever to be found in simplicity, and not in the multiplicity and confusion of things.”

-Sir Isaac Newton, born on this day in 1642. Newton was an English physicist and mathematician, who made seminal discoveries in several areas of science, and was the leading scientist of his era. He was the first to describe the moon as falling (in a circle around the earth) under the same influence of gravity as a falling apple, embodied in his law of universal gravitation.

Hope everyone is having a good break from the daily routine today.

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).

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