Reducibly Complex

“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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“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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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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This is Part 3 of the ten part blog debunking the claims made on CreationEvidence.org’s “Evidence for Creation.” This blog examines point #3.

STATEMENT: ”The Biblical record clearly describes a global Flood during Noah’s day. Additionally, there are hundreds of Flood traditions handed down through cultures all over the world.”

RESPONSE: The biblical “record” does describe a flood. And yes, there are hundreds of flood traditions handed down throughout the world. This proves nothing. The bible is not scientific, so its story proves nothing. The traditions are not scientific and also prove nothing.

Floods are not an unusual thing. In ancient times, it would not be unusual for a flood (especially in a desert climate) to wipe out vast quantities of the population, as warning systems wouldn’t have existed, waterway control was primitive, etc. Unusually strong rains could and would bring destructive floods, but this is not a biblical event. For instance, I live in Wisconsin. This past spring we had very strong rains, much stronger than usual. Despite the system of dams and controlled waterways (rivers, spillways, etc.), we had large flooding throughout southern Wisconsin and into Illinois and Iowa. These floods (particularly in more rural areas) caused massive destruction and some deaths and injuries. The loss of life was less than it could have been because of early warnings, controlled waterways, and (importantly) a well-functioning healthcare system and emergency response system.

So take this flood and localize it in ancient times when a large rain would produce catastrophic flooding. Is it unreasonable to assume that survivors of such a flood would pass down the story of this flood to their offspring and that this would eventually become a culturally traditional story? And is it unreasonable to assume that a large flood could happen in more than one place on the earth in more than one time period, causing multiple cultures to have their own traditional flood story? The biblical account of such a flood is no proof of a “world-wide” flood. At best, it is the recounting of one large-scale local flood that all but wiped-out an entire community’s or country’s population.

(for the sake of this response, we are ignoring the account of Noah, as it is not mentioned in the article’s argument).

STATEMENT: “M.E. Clark and Henry Voss have demonstrated the scientific validity of such a Flood providing the sedimentary layering we see on every continent.”

RESPONSE: I scoured all over the internet for anything I could find on M.E. Clark and Henry Voss and came up with nothing. Supposedly they have demonstrated validity of the flood at an International Conference on Creation in 1994. I would very much like to know their qualifications, credentials, and what they said! Until this is brought to my attention, I am left to believe that, because they made this demonstration at a creation conference, that they are, like many other proponents of a creation, biased in their findings; why else would the geologic community at large otherwise disagree with the idea of a world-wide flood event.

STATEMENT: “Secular scholars report very rapid sedimentation and periods of great carbonate deposition in earth’s sedimentary layers.”

RESPONSE: Cited as evidence for this statement is Derek Ager’s The Nature of the Stratigraphical Record. Here is Ager’s response to the use of his work to support creationist arguments:

“For a century and a half the geological world has been dominated, one might even say brain-washed, by the gradualistic uniformitarianism of Charles Lyell.  Any suggestion of ‘catastrophic’ events has been rejected as old-fashioned, unscientific and even laughable.  This is partly due to the extremism of some of Cuvier’s followers, though not of Cuvier himself. 

On that side too were the obviously untenable views of bible-oriented fanatics, obsessed with myths such as Noah’s flood, and of classicists thinking of Nemesis.  That is why I think it necessary to include the following ‘disclaimer’: in view of the misuse that my words have been put to in the past, I wish to say that nothing in this book should be taken out of context and thought in any way to support the views of the ‘creationists’ (who I refuse to call ’scientific’)” [Ager's emphasis] (Ager, Derek, 1993, 1995 (paperback edition), The New Catastrophism: The Importance of the Rare Event in Geological History, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, Great Britain). (thanks to Dr. Kevin R. Henke)

As Ager shows, his comments have been taken out of context. Like many pseudosciences and their proponents, creationists cherry-pick scientific material for the one or two factoids that seem to support their view, dismissing the context of the work and the voluminous evidence that contradicts the creationists’ claims.

STATEMENT: “It is now possible to prove the historical reality of the Biblical Flood.”

RESPONSE: This final statement in the argument contains a citation for John Anthony West, who has proposed, with the help of Robert Schoch, an alternative hypothesis as to the age of the Great Sphinx of Giza based on erosion supposedly due to heavy rain. However, mainstream archaeologists and egyptologists do not accept this hypothesis, arguing that the erosion has been caused by wind, sand, acid rain, exfoliation, or poor quality of the limestone used in the Sphinx’s construction.

All this aside, it is not possible to “prove the historical reality of the flood.”  How does the erosion of the Great Sphinx in Egypt (possibly do to rain) have anything to do with the supposed flood of Noah’s time? And how does it prove that the flood happened.

CONCLUSION: None of the supposed evidence given to support the creationists’ argument proves a flood. Traditions are not proof, nor are evidences from scientists that are taken out of context, nor is an argument for the possible erosion of the Great Sphinx due to rain (rain does NOT equal flooding). The supposed ‘great flood’ never happened.

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“I believe in God, only I spell it Nature.”

-Frank Lloyd Wright

During my youth, if you were to say to me something about “nature” I would have had visions of forests and trees, wild animals, grassy plains, winding rivers, etc. As I have gotten older and studied more about the world and about science I think of nature in more discreet ways. I envision small things like microbes, cellular components, atomic particles. I envision large things like stars, planets, galaxies. I do still have a place in my heart for nature as I once knew it, but my broadened sense of what Nature truly is has instilled in me an awe, contentment, and happiness I never found in religion.

This is Part 2 of the ten part blog debunking the claims made on CreationEvidence.org’s “Evidence for Creation.” This blog examines point #2.

STATEMENT: ”Dr. Thomas Barnes, Emeritus Professor of Physics at the University of Texas at El Paso, has published the definitive work in this field.”

RESPONSE: Dr. Thomas Barnes did NOT write the “definitive work in his field.” Barnes arguments are considered by the scientific community to be pseudoscience or fringe science. His arguments on the decaying magnetic field were never published in mainstream science journals because they lacked validity in model. Nevertheless, nowhere else in this argument is he mentioned. It simply states that he published the definitive work in his field, but never states what he wrote. So why is he mentioned? This statement completely fails to give validity to the argument as a whole; if anything, it detracts from the argument.

As there is no one else cited within this argument, we will assume that the remainder of this argument is based on Barnes’ work.

(Note: Barnes was a young-earth creationist, believing that the earth was no more than a few thousand years old, and was prone to taking data and fitting it to meet his preconceived conclusion. Henceforth, his model of magnetic decay lacked validity.)

STATEMENT: “Scientific observations since 1829 have shown that the earth’s magnetic field has been measurably decaying at an exponential rate, demonstrating its half-life to be approximately 1,400 years. In practical application its strength 20,000 years ago would approximate that of a magnetic star. Under those conditions many of the molecules necessary for life processes could not form. These data demonstrate that earth’s entire history is young, within a few thousand of years.”

RESPONSE: ”Empirical measurement of the earth’s magnetic field does not show exponential decay. Yes, an exponential curve can be fit to historical measurements, but an exponential curve can be fit to any set of points. A straight line fits better” -Claim CD701 (talkorigins.org) (italics added). As stated before, Barnes’ model was invalid; further, his methods were questionable, having relied on “an obsolete model of the earth’s interior” (CD701).

CONCLUSION: The entire argument made in point #2 is based on Thomas Barnes’ work on magnetic field decay. However, as has been shown, Barnes’ work was based on a false premise (an obsolete, invalid model). Barnes’ conclusion is therefore inaccurate, and the argument for a young earth based on magnetic field decay is therefore false.

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This is Part 1 of the ten part blog debunking the claims made on CreationEvidence.org’s “Evidence for Creation.” This blog examines point #1.

STATEMENT: “Evolutionists have constructed the Geologic Column in order to illustrate the supposed progression of “primitive” life forms to “more complex” systems we observe today.”

RESPONSE: This is true, although it should be clarified that Geologists created this. There is no such thing as an evolutionist; evolutionism implies that evolution is a scientific ideology (which it is not) instead of a scientific theory (which it is).

STATEMENT: “Yet, ’since only a small percentage of the earth’s surface obeys even a portion of the geologic column the claim of their having taken place to form a continuum of rock/life/time over the earth is therefore a fantastic and imaginative contrivance.’”

RESPONSE: This is a quote from John Woodmorappe, which is a “pen name of an author who has published several articles and books with the creation science groups Answers in Genesis and the Institute for Creation Research. His main works are Noah’s Ark: A Feasibility Study and the The Mythology of Modern Dating Methods. He has also written several articles in creationist journals” (quoted from the Wikipedia page on John Woodmorappe). In other words, the quote used as evidence is coming from a person with the biased opinion of the creation “scientists” rather than an objective observer. Thus, this quote has little, if any, strength. Also, the geologic column is not an absolute, as is noted below (see CONCLUSION).

STATEMENT: “‘[T]he lack of transitional series cannot be explained as being due to the scarcity of material. The deficiencies are real, they will never be filled.’”

RESPONSE: This quote from botanist N. Heribert Nilsson is a great example of the logical fallacy “argument from authority.” Creationists make the mistake that since Nilsson was a scientist, he is an authority in his field. Nilsson was a geneticist and botanist…and a loon. His theories were quack, to say the least. Tom McIver wrote in Anti-Evolution: An Annotated Bibliography:

[Nilsson believed that] During these catastrophic periods, new organisms are created by “emication” — a drastic alteration or production of gametes. A few survive as totally new forms. Inspired by Oparin’s theory of spontaneous origin of life, Nilsson argues that these gametes, of entirely new organisms, could form spontaneously and polyphyletically, out of the mix of biocatalytic substances engendered during the catastrophic episodes. “During paleobiological times whole new worlds of biota have been repeatedly synthesized.” Nilsson declares that organisms such as orchids and elephants were “instantly created out of non-living material.”

Nilsson himself in this argument is guilty of confusing the currently unexplained with the unexplainable, which is itself another logical fallacy. Just because the “deficiencies are real,” (which they are not (see CONCLUSION)) does not mean that they “cannot be explained” or “will never be filled.”

STATEMENT: “This supposed column is actually saturated with ‘polystrate fossils’ (fossils extending from one geologic layer to another) that tie all the layers to one time-frame.”

RESPONSE: This statement is very misleading in that it attempts to say that fossils of a particular type can be found throughout the column. What is actually the case is that these fossils can be found in multiple parallel layers. This does NOT “tie all the layers to one time-frame” but ties some species to multiple time-frames, something completely different and logically feasible.

STATEMENT: “‘[T]o the unprejudiced, the fossil record of plants is in favor of special creation.’”

RESPONSE: This quote from E.J.H. Corner is commonly used by creationists as proof that even a botanist like Corner believes in a creation. However, this quote is taken out of context. The full quote is:

The theory of evolution is not merely the theory of the origin of species, but the only explanation of the fact that organisms can be classified into this hierarchy of natural affinity. Much evidence can be adduced in favour of the theory of evolution - from biology, bio-geography and palaeontology, but I still think that, to the unprejudiced, the fossil record of plants is in favour of special creation. If, however, another explanation could be found for this hierarchy of classification, it would be the knell of the theory of evolution. Can you imagine how an orchid, a duckweed, and a palm have come from the same ancestry, and have we any evidence for this assumption? The evolutionist must be prepared with an answer, but I think that most would break down before an inquisition. Textbooks hoodwink. A series of more and more complicated plants is introduced - the alga, the fungus, the bryophyte, and so on, and examples are added eclectically in support of one or another theory - and that is held to be a presentation of evolution. If the world of plants consisted only of these few textbook types of standard botany, the idea of evolution might never have dawned, and the backgrounds of these textbooks are the temperate countries which, at best, are poor places to study world vegetation. The point, of course, is that there are thousands and thousands of living plants, predominantly tropical, which have never entered general botany, yet they are the bricks with which the taxonomist has built his temple of evolution, and where else have we to worship? (E.J.H. Corner 1961, from ‘Evolution’, p. 97, in “Contemporary Botanical Thought”, Anna M. Macleod and L. S. Cobley (editors), Oliver and Boyd, for the Botanical Society of Edinburgh)

E.J.H. Corner is not somebody that creationists should be quoting as believing in creation. Corner, among other achievements, was awarded the Darwin award in 1960 and the Linnaean Gold Medal in 1970 for his contributions to science. He was far from a creationist and certainly attested to the validity of evolution.

CONCLUSION: The geologic column is poor evidence against evolution because of one very simple fact: the geologic column is not an absolute, it is an abstract tool. It is a concept, not a physical thing. The column is simply an illustration of the earth’s strata in terms of a chronological order. We know this order exists, and this is what we mean when we refer to the geologic column. Different localities will display the chronological order of the strata to different degrees, sometimes not displaying a particular strata, sometimes displaying a particular one to an extended degree.

Also, the “lack of transitional series” is a bogus claim as well. Creationists will state that there is a lack of transitional fossils showing how one species could have evolved into another species. However, these transitional fossils are discovered all the time. When this happens, of course, the creationists will now claim that there is a lack of transitional fossils between the first species and the new discovered species, and between the new discovered species and the second species. Thus, two new gaps are created that now need their own set of transitional fossils. In this way, this argument is another logical fallacy; namely it is The Moving Goalpost fallacy. Basically, the criteria for proof (the goalpost) is set as needing a transitional fossil between two species. When that criteria is met, the goalpost is moved and now there is new criteria for proof. In this manner, there becomes no way to ever prove evolution.

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Over the next few days/weeks, I will be looking at the ten bits listed in an article called “Evidence for Creation” on the Creation Evidence Museum website. Needless to say, the evidence given on this website is weak at best, fallacious at worst. I intend to create a new post for each of the ten items, detailing as to why each of them is incorrect.