There are several journals and magazines and publications I receive and plenty of online resources are at my fingertips. The glory of the still-free internet is the plethora of information that the ruling paradigm has not yet managed to control and censor to any extent. Therefore truth is still to be found here in the USA and most other nations where the government does not censor the internet. We know that Communist China filters the internet and Google helps with the process, which is one reason I do not post Google ads despite the fact that I would be paid to do it. I believe it would be wrong to do. Wrong. Do you know that word? Of course, what I think is wrong and what atheistic naturalists think is wrong are two different things. I believe that God decides right and wrong.
In any event, Jerry Bergmann wrote a fantastic article that appears in the AIG Answers Research Journal and was available for distribution today, so here is the beginning of the article. The entire article is available to read or download as a PDF now.
Answers Research Journal 5 (2012): 1–12.
www.answersingenesis.org/articles/arj/v5/n1/evolution-myth-biology
Darwinists commonly claim that evolution is the foundation of all of the sciences, especially the ife sciences and that “nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.” To evaluate this claim I reviewed both the textbooks used for life science classes at the college where I teach and those that I used in my past university course work. I concluded from my survey that Darwinism was rarely mentioned. I also reviewed my course work and that of another researcher and came to the same conclusions. From this survey I concluded that the claim “nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution” is false.
Keywords: Teaching of evolution, the application of evolution, creationism, college text books
Introduction
In 1929, an article in Popular Science was written to encourage the teaching of the theory of evolution in spite of the laws that were passed by several states to curb the teaching of Darwinism. The article claimed that “The theory of evolution is altogether essential to the teaching of biology and its kindred sciences” (Armstrong 1929, p. 135). The most popular biology book in the 1920s by Dr. Truman Moon, entitled Biology for Beginners, stated that the theory of evolution is “the cornerstone of all recent science and the foundation of all modern thought” (quoted in Armstrong 1929, p. 133). Almost a half-century later, the eminent American evolutionist, Theodosius Dobzhansky (1900–1975), claimed that “evolution” is the cornerstone of biology and is central to understanding both living and extinct organisms (Dobzhansky 1973, p. 125).
His statement that “nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution” has been repeated in thousands of articles to argue that Darwinism must have a central place in all areas of life-science education, including biology, anatomy, medicine, agriculture, and biotechnology (for example, see Antolin and Herbers 2001, p. 2379). Orthodox Darwinism is defined as the evolution of all complex life forms on earth from a single common ancestor as a result of natural selection acting on random mutations in the genome over vast periods of time through strictly naturalistic processes. A recent internet search revealed over 50,000 hits for Dobzhansky’s quote. As a result of this oft-repeated assertion, many argue that evolution must be a central part of all public school and college life science classes. In the words of the National Academy of Science, evolution is “the most important concept in modern biology, a concept essential to understanding key aspects of living things” (emphasis mine) (National Academy of Science 1998, p. viii). This claim is made because Darwin’s
Origin of Species has had more influence on Western culture than any other book of modern times. It was not only a great biological treatise, closely reasoned and revolutionary, but it carried significant implications for philosophy, religion, sociology, and history. Evolution is the greatest single unifying principle in all biology (Prosser 1959, p. 539).
Dawkins opines that, without Darwinism, “biology is a collection of miscellaneous facts.” He adds before children “learn to think in an evolutionary way” the material that students learn
will just be facts, with no binding thread to hold them together, nothing to make them memorable or coherent. With evolution, a great light breaks through into the deepest recesses, into every corner, of the science of life. You understand not only what is, but why. How can you possibly teach biology unless you begin with evolution? How, indeed, can you call yourself an educated person, if you know nothing of the Darwinian reason for your own existence? (Dawkins 2002, p. 58).
The claim that evolution is central to biology has been around for decades. For example, the Scopes Trial transcript included the following words penned by Vanderbilt University biology professor Dr. E. N. Reinke:
To deny the teacher of biology the use of this most fundamental generalization of his science would make his teaching as chaotic as an attempt to teach . . . physics without assuming the existence of the ether (Reinke 1927, p. 8).
The ether idea has now been fully refuted, a fact that illustrates the fallibility of the biology claim if the analogy were true. The evolution-is-central-to-biology belief has even made the Doonesbury cartoon; the lead character stating that “Evolution is the foundation of all life sciences. Without it, whole fields from genetics to ecology can’t exist!” (Trudeau 2011).
Although Darwinists often talk about the central importance of “evolution” in gaining a basic understanding of the natural world, in the daily work of both scientific education and scientific research, evolution is rarely mentioned or even a concern. This has been my experience as a research associate involved in cancer research in the department of experimental pathology at the Medical University of Ohio and as a college professor in the life and behavioral sciences for over 30 years. As Conrad E. Johanson, Ph.D., Professor of Clinical Neurosciences and Physiology and Director of Neurosurgery Research at Brown Medical School in Rhode Island noted, research scientists
rarely deal directly with macroevolutionary theory, be it biological or physical. For example, in my 25 years of neuroscience teaching and research I have only VERY rarely had to deal with natural selection, origins, macroevolution, etc. My professional work in science stems from rigorous training in biology, chemistry, physics, and math, not from world views about evolution. I suspect that such is the case for most scientists in academia, industry, and elsewhere (Johanson, pers. comm.).
Renowned chemist and National Academy of Science Member, Dr. Philip Skell, Professor Emeritus of Pennsylvania State University (see Lewis, 1992), surveyed his colleagues “engaged in non-historical biology research, related to their ongoing research projects.” He found, in answer to the question, “Would you have done the work any differently if you believed Darwin’s theory were wrong?” that “for the large number” of the Darwinist researchers he interviewed, “differing only in the amount of hemming and hawing” was “in my work it would have made no difference.” Some added they thought it may make a difference for other researchers (Skell, pers. comm.).
Another scientist, Professor Henry F. Schaefer III, the Graham-Purdue Professor of Chemistry and Director of the Center for Computational Chemistry at the University of Georgia, added that
Darwinian assumptions are not needed for the day-to-day work of science. If you look at the biochemical literature for scientific papers that try to explain how biochemical systems developed step-by-step in Darwinian fashion, there aren’t any. It’s startling. Most biologists completely ignore evolution in their work, and the ones that think about it simply look for relationships and don’t bother with Darwinism. My University of Georgia colleague in biochemistry, Professor Russell Carlson, has expressed the same sentiment to me privately (Schaefer 2004, p. 102).
From 1981 to 1997, Professor Schaefer was the sixth most highly cited chemist in the world out of a total of 628,000 chemists whose research was cited at least once. The Science Citation Index reported that, as of December 31, 2010, his research had been cited over 47,000 times.
Of interest is that the fact that molecular, cell, and developmental biology majors at Yale University Graduate School are no longer required to complete courses on evolution (Hartman 1997). I have noted from my own research, both to my frustration and over my objections, that many of the subscriptions to journals focusing on evolution at both the University of Toledo Medical College and Bowling Green State University have been dropped. I was told by the reference librarian that there was little demand for them.
I also interviewed several biology professors. Typical is Tony Jelsma, who obtained his Ph.D. in Biochemistry in 1989 and did postdoctoral research for almost eight years before landing a position teaching at the Department of Biology, Dordt College (Sioux Center, Iowa). His B.Sc. (1983) and Ph.D. (1989) were both completed at McMaster University. He stated that he did not encounter Darwinism in his work or studies except in one undergraduate biochemistry class where he studied the abiotic synthesis of adenine (Jelsma, pers. comm.).
A Survey of Textbooks
Having taught biology, genetics, zoology, psychology, and related courses at the college level for the past 40 years, I evaluated this claim by examining the content of the major textbooks that I have used to teach science courses. I found most of the biochemistry/molecular biology, genetics, and cell biology texts we have used never, or hardly ever, mentioned Darwinism (see Table 1). The only courses that covered it in any detail were Biology 101, zoology, and anthropology. In my experience, even in these classes, many instructors skipped the section on evolution.
Even those textbook chapters labeled “evolution” often spend much time on non-evolution topics, such as basic genetics, human development, population genetics, and similar areas. None of the anatomy and physiology textbooks we have used ever mentioned evolution. The only reference to Darwinism in the microbiology texts we used was on the development of bacterial resistance (which is not a concern for intelligent design or even creationists because many of the mechanisms producing resistance are well known and do not support orthodox evolution, see Bergman 2003).
The fact is that in the real world of science, evolution is never observed nor is it in any way helpful to the study of the cell or DNA or the structure and systems of living organisms. New scientific disciplines have arisen to study the design of nature and to copy or mimic such designs to make man-made objects better or to attempt to copy the designs intact. While Darwinists proclaim with all the enthusiasm of snake-oil salesmen the need to understand evolution, science is studying the DESIGNS of nature and applying them to improve the world of man. For example:
Fish-o-pus: Slinking through Indonesian waters is a master of impersonation: an octopus that can elude predators by imitating a fish. But that’s just part of the story. Scientists have now found a fish that imitates the octopus that imitates the fish! Story on Science News. The jawfish apparently hangs around with the mimic octopus to share in its protective strategy.
Mind meld with apes: German scientists studied the four anthropoid apes, chimps, bonobos, gorillas and orang-utans, Science Daily said, and found that some (but not all) appeared to be able to calculate risks before acting. Their experiment involved choices between small banana pieces in reliable spots, and larger banana pieces hidden behind variable locations. The gorillas didn’t do so well. It’s not clear whether readers will be as impressed with this as the researchers were, considering that birds seem to do even better at these kinds of brain teasers. Last month, Live Science reported that pigeon brains are on par with primates.
Brazilian worm-eating plant: A new kind of carnivorous plant has been found in the Cerrado of Brazil, a unique tropical biodiversity hotspot. Reported in PNAS(January 9, 2012, doi: 10.1073/pnas.1114199109), the plant Philcoxia apparently uses sticky underground leaves to trap and eat roundworms. PhysOrg has a picture and summary of the predatory plant.
Flower power: PhysOrg featured a researcher at Kansas State that is trying to untangle sunflower genetics. Different species living in different climates have apparently become successful through gene duplications, hybridization and mobile genetic elements – pieces of genetic code that can relocate and insert themselves in different parts of the genome. Although Mark Ungerer is couching his explanations in evolutionary terms, the article seems to indicate a kind of controlled adaptability that has occurred recently. It seems premature to credit unguided processes with success at adapting to climates as different as Texas and Canada, considering Ungerer’s humble admission, “Although virtually all plants and animals have these types of sequences in their genomes, we still know very little about what phenomena cause them to amplify and make extra copies of themselves.”
Rhinoceros foot puzzle: The Royal Veterinary College is playing footsie with rhinos to see how their “stumpy little feet” can support so much weight. Their weight-bearing strategy is apparently different from that of elephants. According to the BBC News article, Dr. John Hutchinson has another reason for investigating this unknown marvel: “From understanding the feet of rhinos, as an example of a big land mammal, we could draw inspiration and understand how to build devices that can handle heavy loads and carry them around while moving.”
Pause for paws: Speaking of feet, why don’t dogs get frostbite from walking in the snow? Think of those brave Alaskan huskies on the Iditerod. Actually, dogs can get frostbitten paws, depending on the breed, but they rarely do. PhysOrg told how scientists from Tokyo checked out the paws of four dog breeds and discovered an ingenious heat-exchanging system in the blood vessels that not only transfers warmth to the bare surfaces of paws but ensures blood returning to the heart is warm enough. Cool pet tip: spray the paws with cooking spray before taking your best friend into the snow.
Gecko fish: Ever heard of the northern clingfish? These are small fish on the north Pacific coast that have mastered the art of clinging to shoreline rocks as they search for food. Remarkably, their modified fins use a similar adhesion technique as geckos, reported Science Magazine (20 January 2012: Vol. 335 no. 6066 p. 277, doi: 10.1126/science.335.6066.277). Their modified belly fins have tiny hairs that make use of atomic forces, adhering to rough surfaces better than suction cups. An undergraduate student found that the clingfish can support 180 times their own weight.
Do the fish walk: The headline at Life’s Little Mysteries promises to show how “Discovery Reveals How Fish Learned to Walk,” but the article is actually about real living fish called Pacific leaping blennies that do the twist as they flip around the intertidal zones of Guam. These are not Darwin fish; they have no feet, and their muscles are really not different from those of other fish. Their flip-flop “walk” is more an adaptive behavior than evolution. Researcher Tonia Hsieh was astonished to find half her lab blennies walked out of the tank overnight. Then she found some of them on the wall.
Leaping lizards: Speaking of Tonia Hsieh, a biologist at Temple University who developed a childhood fascination with lizards and other animals, she has a cool lab to study lizard leaps in slow motion. She especially likes the basilisk, a lizard that stands up and runs fast, reported the Philadelphia Inquirer – so fast it can run over water, giving the nickname the “Jesus lizard.” You can watch these amazing lizards in action on Hsieh’s track at the Temple University website. “It’s important to realize that animals do not have a specific program to tell them how to react to each and every possible perturbation scenario in the real world,” she said, yet they manage to keep going even when encountering a slippery spot. Understanding their locomotion strategies, she believes, can help robot designers walk out of the wheel rut. Her research might also help the elderly prevent falls.
Miracle tree: Readers may remember Moringa oleifera, the “miracle tree” that not only provides food and fuel, but can actually disinfect water for poor countries (3/09/2010). Previously we learned that crushed Moringa seeds, sprinkled in turbid water, took out the turbidity and killed bacteria. One problem was making the process sustainable and affordable. Without proper techniques, the dissolved organic compounds could return to cloud the water again. Now, according to PhysOrg, clean drinking water for the poor is a step closer to reality. The American Chemical Society published a paper by scientists who identified the protein in the seeds that has the antibacterial effect. By attaching it to sand, they can attract both the bacteria and the dissolved organic compounds to the sand particles, which carry the impurities to the bottom, leaving clean water suitable for drinking. The paper is published in the ACS journal Langmuir. The new process is inexpensive and sustainable, said Science Daily, and a billion people stand ready to benefit from this one remarkable plant, “one of the world’s most useful trees.”
We love good science here. Most of this is good old, Darwin-free scientific discovery. What has evolution done for any of it? Sure, the sunflower wizard believes in evolution, but he was watching built-in adaptation tricks of the genome in action, not some external “natural selector” corralling chance mutations. Sure, Tonia believes in evolution, but her lizard track meets are designed to improve senior health and robotics. In every case, evolution had nothing of substance to add to the science. What wonderful benefits await poor people from research on how to employ a tree’s built-in codes to purify water! Evolution is like a ball and chain on this kind of science. Take it off, and let science take off.
Exactly! Evolution is the embarrassing relative who gets drunk at wedding receptions. We are stuck with him for a short time yet. Within a generation of today the absolute proof of Biogenesis will have to be accepted by science, the certainty of design within organisms will be too obvious to be ignored and the overwhelming evidence against long ages that will be built up by the coming generation of scientists will allow the younger generation to usher the old eccentric uncles like Dawkins and Myers out the door of relevance and then with a deep breath, toss away all the nonsense of Darwinism and get on with real science again. The worst part of the scientific aspect of the 20th Century was the unnecessary anchor of Darwinism that held back scientific discovery and dumbed down education. With the last book authored by Hawking the ruling paradigm played their last card and that card was the King of Incoherence. The Universe had to make itself? (see below) A toddler could think things out equally as well as the poor deluded Hawking. Ironic that he included the word "design" in his last book, is it not? Design in the Universe and in organisms is inescapable.
Stephen Hawking, leading cosmologist and recently retired Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge University, has co-authored a new book, The Grand Design. In it, he claims that the universe did not need God to create it. This conclusion goes against the writings of another famed Lucasian Professor who is credited with discovering the very law Hawking uses as his "proof"--Sir Isaac Newton.
The Telegraph quoted from The Grand Design:
Because there is a law such as gravity, the Universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the Universe exists, why we exist.1
What would compel a person to ascribe the power of creation to just gravity? Perhaps it stems from the idea that gravity has an equal amount of "negative" energy to perfectly balance all other "positive" energies.2
Recent investigations into gravity--one of which questioned its very existence--left plenty of room for doubt about claims that depend on an accurate conception of this particular natural force.3
But even if "gravity" did provide such balance, it could hardly suffice as an adequate cause for the whole universe. Pointing out qualities of already-existing energies is no more an explanation for their origin than pointing out how the energy-of-motion in a rolling ball will be exactly matched by the energy-of-resistance from friction. Neither quantity answers where the ball came from and who or what pushed it.
On the other hand, for his hypothesis Hawking may have relied on the common cosmological concept that gravity supposedly can pull matter together from fine dust into nuggets, clumps, large conglomerates, nebulae, planetesimals, planets, stars, galaxies, galactic clusters, and superclusters. The physics, however, shows that gravity alone cannot do this.4 This is why the shockwaves of "nearby supernovae" or giant collisions are routinely invoked to jump-start star formation from dust clouds, where the gravity is too weak to overcome repulsive forces of hot gas particles.5
Extraordinary information also characterizes this vast universe. The three-dimensional placement of heavenly bodies in space and the particular--and peculiarly life-enabling--universal parameters, such as the speed of light and electromagnetic strength, are some examples of fine-tuned information.6 Also, there is the mountain of information in living systems to explain.
Since concerns over gravity and energy do not address the more obvious question of information--a massless yet ubiquitous fundamental entity--then statements about gravity or energy alone form insufficient grounds to reject a supernatural origin for the universe.
In addition, any assertion that a thing can make itself is self-contradictory. This is because in every case where something has actually been made, that which caused it existed prior to it. For example, an oak tree may have found its immediate cause in the planting action of a pre-existing squirrel and by the acorn production of a pre-existing oak tree. So, for the universe to have made itself, it would have had to exist prior to its existence--a contradiction of the undeniable first principle of causality.7
A classic argument for the existence of God holds that since something exists (say, the universe), and since something cannot make itself (without violating the first principle of causality), then a cause outside that thing must exist (God).8 In essence, Hawking has attempted to refute this reasoning by simply denying the second premise!
Did the oak tree come from an acorn? No, Hawking would say--it was just the result of "spontaneous creation" and there it is. Such reasoning makes no sense. Hawking's illustrious predecessor, Sir Isaac Newton, formed a more reasonable and accurate assessment of the universe's origins:
"This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being."9
The first principle of causality can be stated several ways, including "every effect has a cause," and "nonbeing cannot cause being." Geisler, N. L. 1999. Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 120.
Importantly, this argument requires that the "something" that exists is the kind of something that is contingent and finite, like an oak tree, person, or the universe. This is unlike the Creator Himself, who is self-existent, uncaused, eternal, and infinite. Infinite beings require no cause.
P is too incredible (or I can't imagine how P could possibly be true) therefore P must be false.
It's obvious that P (or I can't imagine how P could possibly be false) therefore P must be true.
These arguments are similar to arguments from ignorance in that they too ignore and do not properly eliminate the possibility that something can be both incredible and still be true, or obvious and yet still be false.
The Atheistic Argument:
The existence of some invisible sky-daddy is so ludicrous, let's face it none exists. The Theistic Argument:
Humans evolved from monkeys? That's ridiculous. Evolution is false.
__________________
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." Phillip K. Dick
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I do not know the guy who posted this comment, but the comment by the excellent Phillip K. Dick, who was a terrific writer, is spot on! Truth is truth, no matter what those in error may think.Over the years I have heard of stories that boggle the mind. Can you imagine a paleontologist hiding evidence of flesh remains on a fossil find because it would tend to destroy his worldview? Can you imagine a couple of men from a Darwinist propaganda site walking out to a remote location on a riverbed and smashing some fossil footprints to smithereens because it would have, if verified, proved man and dinosaur lived at the same time? Such thinking is at the toddler level. If you hide your eyes, I can still see you! Destroying evidence does not change the truth of that evidence. It just makes you a foolish individual.
The more intelligent the Darwinist, the more likely he is to be a massive logic fail zone. Of all the so-called standard rules of logic that Darwinist commenters use as a resort, probably the one most ill-used of them all is the "argument from incredulity."
As a father who raised several children, was at one time the owner of the "hang-out house" where the teens and pre-teens came to eat my food, hang out with my kids and listen to my music and watch television and play video games and a father who played basketball and football and tennis and volleyball and went to concerts and camping and all that stuff with all sorts of kids and teens, I have lots of experience with the misuse of that argument. I would hear a crash, run into a room and find a kid in the room and a broken something on the floor. When they were very young, they would try to resort to the argument from incredulity. Just because they were the only person in the room and there had been a glass of milk dropped or a hanging plant and it's shattered pot littering the floor, that didn't mean they had to have been responsible. Without understanding the argument itself, they would use it. Just because I could not conceive of how a glass of milk could pour itself and then break itself on the floor did not mean that child was responsible! Well, in my house there were varied degrees of punitive/corrective actions depending upon the transgression. A kid drops a glass on the floor? He cleans it all up. He lies about it? Now he is in trouble! You see, the two things that my kids learned got them sent to their room waiting for me to come in were lying and directly disobeying. Mistakes? I did not punish mistakes. Bad judgments? Minor consequences. Lying or directly disobeying? Then I brought the hammer down. Yes, I spanked my small children and then they apologized for what they had done and then I hugged them and forgave them and it was over. When they got bigger I felt a time came when they were too old for spanking and I used grounding and loss of privileges was then applicable.
All of my kids are grown now and I have three grandchildren. All of them love me and I love them. Do you think they resent that I spanked them when young? Are you kidding? They hated the time in the room waiting for me to come in and that was the biggest punishment...the waiting. They all agree with the way they were raised and those who are now raising their own children are doing it the way I did it because I did it the way the Bible teaches parents to raise children. Have rules and enforce them. Enforce them with love and never, ever spank or punish in anger. I could yell in my dark voice and scare them silly to get their attention but I never let anger actually move me. If I was really angry at a kid, off to their room and I would not come in until I was completely calm no matter what they did. I did far more teaching and very little punishing. My belief is that you do not put your kids in a box of rules, you put the box of rules into your kids and expect them to live those rules out in their lives. This is what used to be normal in the United State of America until idiots with degrees and bereft of common sense and a basic Judeo-Christian morality began to urge parents not to spank their kids and not teach them a worldview to live by but rather let them find their own way. Dumb. Educated but not wise, these people who have convinced children and parents alike that the Bible way to raise children is wrong are part of the reason more people are miserably unhappy than ever.
But enough about children. On to the logical fallacy. From Conservapedia:
A logical fallacy is an error in logical reasoning. While the common usage of the word fallacy would include any error in reasoning, in logic a fallacy is defined as a particularly deceptive argument which seems correct, but upon further examination is found to be incorrect.[1] The maker of such an argument, however, need not be aware of its fallacious nature.
Logical fallacies fall into two general categories: formal fallacies and informal fallacies. Formal fallacies apply to deductive arguments, and are those which relate to an improper application of a rule, whereas informal fallacies apply to inductive arguments, and are those which involve the improper use of the content of an argument. That is, an informally fallacious argument gives a conclusion which may be true or false, but which the fallacious argument does not prove; a formally fallacious argument gives a conclusion which is always false.
There are four categories of informal fallacies: fallacies of relevance, fallacies of defective or weak induction, fallacies of presumption, and fallacies of ambiguity.
A logical fallacy is not the same as lying, although it is still an error if you commit one (and dishonest if you know you are committing one). A lie in logic is a premise that one offers while knowing that it is false.
Logical fallacies are the beloved debating tactic of liberals; for this reason, it is not advised to debate them unless you have to, as you will only up frustrated when one of them inevitably claims global warming is true because Al Gore said so.
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You can go to that site and see all kinds of arguments but let us focus on one. Conservapedia touches on this but does not do a direct hit:
Fallacies of Defective or Weak Induction
Fallacies of defective or weak induction are fallacies which are due to a lack of understanding for how well premises lead to a conclusion.
Argument from silence
Argument from silence (in Latin, argumentum ab silencio) or argument from ignorance (Lat: ad ignorantium) is an assertion which states that, because there is no evidence to support a given argument, the opposite must be true. The fallacy follows the form:
If P then Q
P cannot be shown true
Therefore Q is false
For example: "Nobody has ever seen God, so clearly he doesn't exist".
This fallacy is often associated with and best remembered by the phrase: "the absence of evidence does not constitute evidence of absence."
A particular form of the argument from silence is theargument from personal incredulity, which takes the form "I cannot believe/understand/explain P; therefore, not-P." For example, someone who does not understand why God would condemn homosexuality or condemn sinners to eternal hell may commit this fallacy and conclude that the relevant Bible passages should be rejected.
The argument from silence often results from a misplaced burden of proof.[8]
We often hear that ID is an argument from incredulity. At this point I would tend to agree. That said, arguments from incredulity aren’t necessarily wrong but in fact are rather reliable and employed constantly and consistently by everyone every day.
Let’s take the example that Granville Sewell offered in his most recent post here. He described Schrodinger’s equation and showed us that it’s theoretically possible for a pitched baseball to stop and hover in mid-air. A commenter who appeared to have a reasonable understanding of Schrodinger’s equation at first protested then ended up agreeing that it’s possible but the odds against it are long and for all practical purposes incalculable. They went on to agree that the quantum uncertainty is tractible in the analysis of a single electron orbiting a single proton (a hydrogen atom) but that the math is intractible for a pitched baseball because such a large number of particles are involved.
So how do we “know” that a pitched baseball won’t stop and hover in mid-air? Incredulity is how. We can’t precisely calculate the odds against it due to the system being so complex but we know it is (literally) incredibly improbable. It’s the same thing with ID. Although we can’t calculate the odds precisely we do know enough to see that self-organization of atoms into structures as complex as the machinery found in living cells is incredibly improbable. We couple this with the sure knowledge that intelligent agency routinely produces organizations of matter that, absent the intelligent agent’s intervention, are incredibly unlikely.
Here’s a good example. In principle it is possible for two cows to mate and give birth to a chimpanzee. The reason we don’t ever expect to see such a thing is we know (now) that the genetic differences between a cow and a chimp are so complex and specified that the odds against it actually happening in a single generation are nearly impossible. We can’t calculate the odds precisely but we know it is incredibly improbable. The argument that two cows won’t mate and produce a chimpanzee is an argument from incredulity.
Likewise, is it possible that a bacteria can, through RM+NS, change into a baboon over a billion years and trillions of generations? Sure it’s possible but when you actually get down to assessing the sequence of changes that must have occurred, analyzing the probability in a finite number of years and a finite number of generations, using everything we know about the mutation and selection mechanism, it quickly becomes an incredible proposition. It grows more incredible every day as new knowledge of the underlying physical mechanics is discovered.
So the next time someone tells you that ID is an argument from incredulity you can simply respond by saying
“Yeah, so what? Arguments from incredulity are common and quite reliable in all aspects of life from the physics of baseball to the physics of biology.”
We use this reasoning every day. Is it possible for a human being to be born with the ability to fly through the air like Superman? If you allow for every single thing that a human being can imagine to be possible, then yes, that is possible. But it is so statistically improbable to be declared statistically impossible. So is the natural materialistic hope that a way can be found that life could arise from non-life. Once science declared this to be impossible for even the most simple of microorganisms and named a law, the Law of Biogenesis, that says just that. For many hundreds of years there have been scientists laboring to disprove Biogenesis and every attempt fails miserably. How long will they believe in fairy tales? Oh, and Darwinists spin this topic like a top!
The Skeptics Guide online explains it like this:
"Argument from Personal Incredulity
I cannot explain or understand this, therefore it cannot be true. Creationists are fond of arguing that they cannot imagine the complexity of life resulting from blind evolution, but that does not mean life did not evolve."
Wow, the sheer weight of the evidence presented here!! Just because we have never found the right cabbage patch does not mean that babies do not come from them. Just because no one has seen the Tooth Fairy does not mean she is not real. All of the evidence we have about organisms that we can observe in real time and test tells us that all organisms produce more of the same kind when they mate and that they all have the information-packed DNA that in combination with the cell helps not only reproduce life but also regulate it and is, by the way, also equipped with a system to try to keep mutations from happening and at the same time allow for quick speciation using preloaded genetic information so that the kind can survive in a wide variety of ecosystems. We have bears in the Arctic Circle and bears at the equator. There are varieties of fish and eels and rays that live in freshwater and in saltwater. Salmon breed in fresh water but then live in salt water. Some sharks can adjust from salt water to fresh water, as some people in Australia have been surprised to discover. Bull Sharks can live in both fresh and saltwater. There are shrimp that live in both salt and fresh water.
So the argument from incredulity is a valid argument if you are discussing a situation that is not credible. The odds against one simple organism happening by random chance if every electron in the Universe, which is estimated at 10 ^80 power electrons could make an attempt to become part of an organism every second for 15 billion years the odds against this are a statistical impossibility. Now that is true without considering the hard barriers at the molecular level, basics of chemistry, which prove that the "building blocks of life" are not able to be produced and survive in the wild at all, let alone assemble themselves into an organism, let alone have some kind of information source for the coding mechanism we call DNA. You see, the more we study DNA and the cell, the more sophisticated and complex we find them to be, the more obvious design features are disclosed, the more ludicrous the idea that a material world could produce even one microorganism. There are trillions of varieties of life living all over the planet and extending up so high above sea level and so deep below the surface of the ocean, some of them not even part of the carbon-sunlight life cycle but instead depending upon minerals from within the Earth like sulphur and methane. We have found both hot and cold seeps with living creatures that depend upon substances coming from within the Earth rather than taking energy from the Sun either directly or indirectly. This is not good news for evolution,
School children are still being taught about a "tree of life" where one simple organism kept being changed by mutations and splitting off into other creatures that evolved up to the level of life we see on Earth today. But in fact we find that all basic forms of life suddenly appear in the Cambrian layers of sedimentary rock and science has also found that all sorts of systems that seem to be similar are in fact unrelated. There are at least ten different basic eye designs, for instance, and that is being very conservative.
So we see that resorting to this so-called logical fallacy is just a fancy way of retreating without putting up a fight. Every time you see a commenter resort to this, you know that he has no argument that includes actual evidence. But, good news, creationists DO have actual evidence! I will share with you today and later on as well the wonder that is the Ian Juby YouTube channel. Ian has a science brain with a quick wit and probably would be a fantastic dinner companion. Here is a tasty selection, which includes just some of the evidence that dinosaurs and man had to have existed at the same time. Oh, yes, there may not be a Tooth Fairy but there is a Delk Track:
Posted on January 27, 2012 in Astronomy, Dating Methods, Geology, Issues, Philosophy of Science, Physical Science, Physics, Solar System, Space
Forty years after the last moonwalkers came home, new discoveries about the moon are calling into question what scientists know about our celestial partner. But is it legitimate for scientists to invoke mystery forces when a favored theory faces falsifying evidence?
Shocking physics: Looking into the crystal balls Apollo astronauts brought back from the moon, namely zircon minerals, geologists at Curtin University decided their data “challenges” the “current paradigm” known as the Late Heavy Bombardment (see 1/09/2012). PhysOrg reported about “impact-related shock features in lunar zircon, giving scientists a new conceptual framework to explain the history and timing of meteorite impact events in our solar system.” When a “new conceptual framework” challenges a “current paradigm,” the ripple effects can undermine textbooks and other related theories. Since theories about the “timing of meteorite impact events” are built on lunar data, this puts theories of the entire history of the solar system at risk.
Alternative energy source: The moon had a long-lasting dynamo. That statement should floor you if you are a typical planetary scientist. To see why, read on Space.com why physicists are scrambling to find alternative power, like homeowners frantically searching for a backup generator when the lights just went out. The data come from crystals in basalt sample #10020 from the moon that, according to the evolutionary view of radiometric dating, is 3.7 billion years old – yet has remnant magnetism. In their dating scheme, that’s almost a billion years after the formation of the moon. Any primeval dynamo that could have magnetized the rock should have been long gone by then. PhysOrg put the surprise in the first sentence: “The moon has this protracted history that’s surprising. This provides evidence of a fundamentally new way of making a magnetic field in a planet a new power source [sic].”
That quote was from Benjamin Weiss, an associate professor of planetary science at MIT, one of the authors of a paper in Science(27 January 2012: Vol. 335 no. 6067 pp. 453–456, doi: 10.1126/science.1215359). “Such a long-lived lunar dynamo probably required a power source other than thermochemical convection from secular cooling of the lunar interior,” they wrote, referring to the consensus dynamo theory. “The inferred strong intensity of the lunar paleofield presents a challenge to current dynamo theory.” What powered it? “an alternative energy source,” they suggested. Have they found one? No. They tossed out a couple of possibilities at the end of the paper: maybe stirring from precession did it. Maybe a big meteor walloped the interior into a temporary molten stir. It hardly seems they considered those options seriously when they ended, “the late, intense paleomagnetic record from 10020 presents a challenge to current dynamo theory.”
Ray tracing algorithm: This story’s not from our moon, but from the asteroid Vesta, where the DAWN spacecraft is undertaking an orbital reconnaissance. A new photograph displayed on PhysOrg shows a crater with both dark and light rays. “There is dark and bright material located across Vesta,” the article said, “but it is unusual to have a crater with both bright and dark ejecta rays.” Although the press release didn’t say so, the darkness of crater rays is usually taken as an indicator of age. Looking at our moon, planetary scientists assume that crater rays begin bright and darken over time due to “space weathering,” the effect of solar wind particles on lunar dust. (See, for instance, in the “Geology of the Moon” article on Ask.com, which states: “The impact process excavates high albedo materials that initially gives the crater, ejecta, and ray system a bright appearance. The process of space weathering gradually decreases the albedo of this material such that the rays fade with time.”) The new Vesta combo crater shows that dark and light rays can originate from the same impact, potentially undermining the ray-dating algorithm.
Which moon? We may not be able to talk about “the moon” in our nighttime sky. New Scientist just announced that “Hundreds of tiny moons may be orbiting Earth.” The idea is that wandering asteroids may get captured in Earth orbit from time to time. The Earth sits in a gravity well, after all, so it’s not surprising that it would pull objects into its tractor beam. “They orbit at distances between five and 10 times as far from Earth as the moon,” the article said. “Most stay in orbit less than a year, although some stay much longer. One object in the team’s simulations stayed in orbit for almost 900 years.” This could provide some water cooler conversation. When someone talks about “the moon,” you might respond, “To which moon are you referring?” They’ll think you are Looney Tunes till you explain. You can even quote Shakespeare; “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
Blue marble: We end with a breathtaking finale. The historic Apollo 8 mission in 1968 provided the first human-photographed image of the Earth from a distance. Subsequent spacecraft have improved on “Earth from space” views over the years. Now, an Earth-observing spacecraft launched in October, dubbed Suomi NPP, has just released a stunner – a realistic photograph of our “Blue Marble” from 512 miles that is so clear, so beautiful, it deserves to be set to music. At Space.com you can download it for a screen save in several sizes. At the Suomi NPP website, you can download the complete highest-resolution image (16.4 mb, 8000 x 8000 pixels) and soar over North and Central America with incredible detail (for starters, check out Lake Mead, Grand Canyon and Lake Powell). Because the spacecraft flies in a sun-synchronous orbit (see Suomi NPP feature), we can expect more fully-lit images of other faces of our planet as Earth rotates underneath.
Look at the Blue Marble photograph and ponder it awhile. Think about the proud little creatures running around down there who pretend they can understand the cosmos.
Unlike unqualified sources who make comments about unqualified sources, we have some top scientists who have spoken to the moon recession and the implications:
~~~~~~~
Let's set the stage with an overview, quickly, from CreationWiki. Normally I hate to even mention talk origins for so many reasons. They are the antithesis of what I do and what ICR and AIG and CMI and similar organizations stand for, a propaganda arm for disseminating misinformation. Such as the Moon brouhaha!
This article (Moon is receding at a rate too fast for an old universe (Talk.Origins)) is a response to a rebuttal of a creationist claim published by Talk.Origins Archive under the title Index to Creationist Claims.
Because of tidal friction, the moon is receding, and the earth's rotation is slowing down, at rates too fast for the earth to be billions of years old.
CreationWiki response:
(Talk.Origins quotes in blue)
1. The moon is receding at about 3.8 cm per year. Since the moon is 3.85 × 1010 cm from the earth, this is already consistent, within an order of magnitude, with an earth-moon system billions of years old.
This is an over simplification of the problem., Two factors cause the moon's recession rate to be faster in the past.
A faster rotation rate for the Earth causes the tidal bulges' lead on the Moon to be larger, and this increases the net tidal force, which causes the moon to recede faster.
The inverse square law. Simply put, the force of gravity changes with the square of the distance, such that if the distance is reduced by 1/2 the force of gravity increased by a factor of four.
We start with a measured lunar recession rate of 3.82 cm/yr, and the measured slowing of the Earth's rotation rate of 8.812 milliseconds/year. If you plug these values into the laws of physics you get the following charts of the number of days in a year and Earth/Moon distance.
Note that it climbs sharply as it nears the 1.2 billion year mark. This is because if the moon is closer the tidal forces are greater and the slow down rate is greater.
When this projection is carried out for the moon's distance from the Earth it turns out that the moon's recession rate would have been much faster than its current 3.82 cm/yr, such that it would have been at the Earth's surface just over 1.2 billion years ago. That's about 3.3 billion years too recent for uniformitariangeology.
2. The magnitude of tidal friction depends on the arrangement of the continents. In the past, the continents were arranged such that tidal friction, and thus the rates of earth's slowing and the moon's recession, would have been less. The earth's rotation has slowed at a rate of two seconds every 100,000 years (Eicher 1976).
Talk Origins is accurate in pointing out that factors such as continental location affect tidal drag, but since the closer the Moon, the stronger its pull on the Earth, the rate of change tends to get vary large. The result is that to save the old Earth model it becomes necessary to virtually eliminate the effect of the continents.
The alleged rate of change in the Earth’s rotation rate of only 0.02 milliseconds / years (2 seconds / 100,000 years) adds up to about one additional day per year over 4.6 billion years and paleontological evidence (see below) does not support such a low rate of change in the Earth rotation rate.
One problem with this continental movement idea is that the methods used by geologists to trace theoretical past continental movement do not yield results for the precambrian, so any attempt to use it to prove that the Earth – Moon system can be 4.5 billion years old is speculative at best.
Eugene Poliakow's paper “Numerical modelling of the paleotidal evolution of the Earth-Moon System” is an example of efforts to calculate the effect of continental movement based on actual estimates of past continental movement. Because of limitations of the methods used to estimate past continental movement, it only projects back 600 million years, but this is enough to evaluate the results.
The following chart shows the results.
Time before now in millions of years
Lunar recession in cm/year
Earth's rotation slowing in seconds/century
0
2.91
1.59
10
2.68
1.46
50
1.83
0.98
100
0.81
0.43
200
0.34
0.18
300
0.46
0.24
350
0.80
0.42
400
0.57
0.30
450
1.54
0.80
500
2.53
1.31
570
2.19
1.11
The way to judge the validity of a mathematical model is to see how well it reproduces known data. Poliakow’s calculations give (as seen in the above chart) a figure of 2.91 cm/yr as the Moon’s current recession rate and 1.59 seconds / century as the rate of slowing of Earth’s rotation. The problem with these figures is that they both differ significantly from the values actually observed. The Moon’s current recession rate has actually been measured at 3.82 cm/yr, which is nearly a 3rd larger than Poliakow’s model indicates. Furthermore the slowing of Earth’s rotation has been measured at 0.8812 seconds / century which is just 55% of what Poliakow’s model indicates.
At first glance the fact that Poliakow’s model overestimates the deceleration rate of Earth’s rotation would seem to be a plus for uniformitarianism. However, the limiting factor of the age of the Earth - Moon system is the position of the Moon, not the Earth rotation rate. Since the Moon’s recession rate is actually higher than in Poliakow’s model, the error would be a clear negative. The real problem is that discrepancies between the model and real world data show there to be fundamental flaw in the model. It means that Poliakow overlooked one or more major factors that could easily nullify his results.
The other flaw in this model is that it does not produce results consistent with paleontological evidence. Any old Earth model for evolution of the Earth – Moon system would have to agree with both present system data and paleontological evidence, but Poliakow’s model disagrees with both
3. The rate of earth's rotation in the distant past can be measured. Corals produce skeletons with both daily layers and yearly patterns, so we can count the number of days per year when the coral grew. Measurements of fossil corals from 180 to 400 million years ago show year lengths from 381 to 410 days, with older corals showing more days per year (Eicher 1976; Scrutton 1970; Wells 1963; 1970). Similarly, days per year can also be computed from growth patterns in mollusks (Pannella 1976; Scrutton 1978) and stromatolites (Mohr 1975; Pannella et al. 1968) and from sediment deposition patterns (Williams 1997). All such measurements are consistent with a gradual rate of earth's slowing for the last 650 million years.
There is no problem with the raw data, (number of growth rings) but the interpretation is flawed. Here is chart showing uniformitarian age verses number of days in a year based on growth rings.
This chart has stromatolites (green), fossil tidal rhythmites (blue), and fossil bivalves and coral (red) At first glance they seem to show a steady increase in the number of days in a year. However when one looks more closely at the data, this interpretation is shown to be invalid.
The first clue is the degree of scattering in the data. It is not what would be expected if it were really the result of lunar recession. There should be a clear curve but there is not. Now scattering often occurs in data, but in this case there is no reason for the scattering, if it were a result of the slowing of the Earth rotation rate. This is because the rate of change would be too slow to cause scattering, if the data was actually a result of a change in the number of days per year. Furthermore when other studies are considered, they show the degree of scattering is actually higher than is shown here.
Stromatolites
Stromatolites are produced by the activity of cyanobacteria and living colonies produce 365 layers in year. Fossil "colonies" have been found with 450-800 layers in apparent agreement with the slowing of the Earth rotation through the geologic ages.
The main problem is that fossil Stromatolites may not have formed from cyanobacteria. Some contain no evidence of the cyanobacteria and carbonate precipitation can result in some very stromatolite-like structures, rendering the number of layers meaningless, and making it consistent with a global flood.
The data shows four pairs of data points. The older three seem to be pre-Flood and may have been formed during the creation week. The fourth seems to be an early Flood deposit. The relationship in each pair shows no trend but there is a trend among the pairs, particularly among the three older pairs. This could simply represent a change in precipitation patterns.
Tidal rhythmites
Tidal rhythmites are produced by tidal action, and so called fossil tidal rhythmites are assumed to indicate the moon's position in the past. However, the same patterns occur in varves. So are they rhythmites or varves? Even experts have a hard time telling them apart in the geologic record. If they are varves then the patterns are meaningless for determining past lunar positions or the number of days in a year. Rhythmites and varves look similar and varves can form at the same time by hydrological sorting, just what one would expect during a global flood.
Bivalves and coral
Coral and bivalves normally produce one growth ring per day, therefore normally 365 per year. Due to the slowing of Earth's rotation, coral would have had more rings in the past on an old Earth . Fossil coral and bivalves have been found with 357-450 growth rings. The extra growth rings are assumed to indicated more days per year.
As with most such claims the effects of a global flood are not considered. Furthermore before the Flood there were probably smaller, if any, seasonal variations and his could have resulted in longer-lived specimens.Since longer lived specimens would be heavier, they would tend to be hydrologically sorted out early in the Flood. If this occurred one would expect to find a general trend with significant scattering as the data shows.
The above comparison between growth rings and alleged age shows significant variation outside the trend. One example even has only about 357 rings, so are we to assume that it is from the future?
When a statistical curve fit is graphed to this data; (the purple line) you see that some 6 bivalve/coral data points show more rings than those predicted by the curve, and 6 have fewer. Since a third of the bivalves/coral examples have more growth rings than alleged age indicates, they must have had more than one growth ring per day. Seeing that it is possible for coral and bivalves to have more one growth ring per day, all of the examples could have had more than one growth ring per day.
The purple line is just a statistical curve fitted to paleontological data and as such it is not based on actual tidal force data.
When this chart is compared to what a simple curve calculated says the number of days should be at a given time in the past (yellow curve) based on real tidal drag data, it shows that the paleontological data does not even come close to a fit. Most of the examples are above the curve.
The current rate of change in Earth rotation rate is often mistakenly projected back in a straight line, but the law of physics show that the rate would be higher when the moon was closer. Even if the current rate of change is projected back in time (light blue line), the statistical curve line (purple line) is still way off. The measured rate of slowing is about 8.836 milliseconds per year. (Based on data from the CRC Hand Book of Chemistry and Physics.)
The rate indicated by the statistical curve is 13.14 milliseconds / year. The result is that there is no correlation between paleontological data and projections based on direct observation of the changes in the Earth's rotation. This is further evidence against the accuracy of using paleontological data in estimating tidal effects on Earth's rotation rate. It indicates that the apparent trend in paleontological data has some other cause.
This data does not support the alleged rate of change in the Earth rotation rate of only 0.02 milliseconds per year (2 seconds in 100,000 years) from #2. This rate of change only adds up to about one additional day per year over 4.6 billion years.
When it is added to the chart it is essentially a flat line (orange line) and there is no indication of of such a flat line in the data. But according to the model needed to save uniformitarian time scales, it must be there. Yet it is not there.
4. The clocks based on the slowing of earth's rotation described above provide an independent method of dating geological layers over most of the fossil record. The data is inconsistent with a young earth.
Actually these "clocks" do not match actual data on the slowing of Earth's rotation rate. So in reality they are inconsistent with an old Earth model. This indicates that the apparent trend in paleontological data has some other cause. One such cause would be longer lived bivalves and coral; that would be consistent with a Young Earth and a Global Flood.
The Moon is Still Young response to Tim Thompson’s “The Recession of the Moon” at Talk.Origins. rebutting Tim Thompson’s “The Recession of the Moon” at Talk.Origins). by Malcolm Bowden.
he moon—an object of wonder since the dawn of mankind. It lights up the night sky like nothing else in the heavens, and appears as if it regularly changes shape. As we shall see, it is well designed for life on Earth, while its origin baffles evolutionists.
The Moon’s Origin
Although there are many different ideas on how and when the moon formed, no scientist was there at the time. So we should rely on the witness of One who was there (cf. Job 38:4), and who has revealed the truth in Genesis 1:14–19:
14 And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years:
15 And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so.
16 And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also …
19 And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.’ This passage clearly states that God made the moon on the same day as the sun and stars — the fourth day of Creation Week. It was also created one day after the plants. This order of events is impossible to reconcile with evolutionary/billions of years ideas.
The Moon’s Purpose
The answer’s in Genesis! A major purpose is to light up the night. The moon reflects the sun’s light on to us even when the sun is on the other side of the earth. The amount of reflected light depends on the moon’s surface area, so we are fortunate to have a moon that is so large. It is over a quarter of Earth’s diameter—far larger in comparison with its planet than any other in the solar system.[1] Also, if it were much smaller, it would not have enough gravity to maintain its spherical shape.[2]
Another reason for the moon is to show the seasons. The moon orbits the earth roughly once a month causing regular phases in a 29½ day cycle (see diagram below). So calendars could be made, so people could plant their crops at the best time of the year.
An important feature is that the moon always keeps the same face towards the earth.[3] If different parts were visible at different times, the moon’s brightness would depend on which part was pointing towards the earth. Then the 29½ day cycle would be far less obvious.
TIDES
The earth’s gravity keeps the moon in orbit, and is so strong that it would need a steel cable 850 km (531 miles) in diameter to provide an equivalent binding force without breaking. The moon exerts the same force on the earth. But the force is somewhat higher on the part of the earth nearest the moon, so any water there will bulge towards it—a high tide. The part furthest from the moon is attracted the least by the moon, so flows away from the moon (and Earth’s centre)—another high tide on the opposite side of the earth. In between, the water level must drop—the low tides—see diagram below. As the moon orbits the spinning earth, there is a cycle of two high tides and two low tides about every 25 hours.
Tides are vital to life on Earth. Tides cleanse the ocean’s shorelines, and help keep the ocean currents circulating, preventing the ocean from stagnating. They benefit man by scouring out shipping channels and diluting sewage discharges. In some places, people exploit the enormous energy of the tides to generate electricity.[4]
The moon’s size and closeness to Earth means it has the greatest tidal effect on Earth. Even the sun has less than half this effect, and the effect of the other planets is negligible.* When the sun and moon are aligned, their combined gravity results in strong spring tides. When they are at right angles, their gravity partly cancels, resulting in weak neap tides.
* Gravitational force between two objects is given by F = Gm1m2/R2, where G is the gravitational constant, m1 and m2 are the masses of the objects, and R is the distance between their centres of mass—an inverse square law. But the tidal effect drops off far more quickly, with R3—an inverse cube law. If more people had known this, they wouldn’t have been scared by knowing all the planets would be roughly aligned in 1982, when many predicted this would lead to disaster.
Nice to Visit—But to Live?
One of the most dramatic events of our time was the landing of men on the moon. However, they confirmed that it is a lifeless, airless world, with huge temperature extremes and no liquid water. From the moon, Earth appears as a bright blue-and-white object in the black sky. Earth is the planet God has designed for life. Man may be able to live on other worlds one day, but it will be hard to make them habitable.
Many people don’t realise that the man behind the Apollo moon mission was the creationist rocket scientist Wernher von Braun.[5] And another creationist, Jules Poirier, designed some vital navigational equipment used in the space program.[6]
The Apollo moon landing. Such achievements may be a logical extension of the dominion mandate given to mankind in Genesis 1:28. The moon’s utter barrenness should remind us of our planet’s unique design for life.
How Long Has the Moon Been Receding?
Friction by the tides is slowing the earth’s rotation, so the length of a day is increasing by 0.002 seconds per century. This means that the earth is losing angular momentum.[7] The Law of Conservation of Angular Momentum says that the angular momentum the earth loses must be gained by the moon. Thus the moon is slowly receding from Earth at about 4 cm (1½ inches) per year, and the rate would have been greater in the past. The moon could never have been closer than 18,400 km (11,500 miles), known as the Roche Limit, because Earth’s tidal forces (i.e., the result of different gravitational forces on different parts of the moon) would have shattered it. But even if the moon had started receding from being in contact with the earth, it would have taken only 1.37 billion years to reach its present distance.[8] NB: this is the maximum possible age—far too young for evolution (and much younger than the radiometric ‘dates’ assigned to moon rocks)—not the actual age.
Could the Moon Form by Itself?
Evolutionists (and progressive creationists) deny the moon’s direct creation by God. They have come up with several theories, but they all have serious holes, as many evolutionists themselves admit. One astronomer said, half-jokingly, that there were no good (naturalistic) explanations, so the best explanation is that the moon is an illusion![9]
Fission Theory, invented by the astronomer George Darwin (son of Charles). He proposed that the earth spun so fast that a chunk broke off. But this theory is universally discarded today. The earth could never have spun fast enough to throw a moon into orbit, and the escaping moon would have been shattered while within the Roche Limit.
Capture Theory—the moon was wandering through the solar system, and was captured by Earth’s gravity. But the chance of two bodies passing close enough is minute; the moon would be more likely to have been ‘slingshotted’ like artificial satellites than captured. Finally, even a successful capture would have resulted in an elongated comet-like orbit.
Condensation Theory—the moon grew out of a dust cloud attracted by Earth’s gravity. However, no such cloud could be dense enough, and it doesn’t account for the moon’s low iron content.
Impact Theory—the currently fashionable idea that material was blasted off from Earth by the impact of another object. Calculations show that to get enough material to form the moon, the impacting object would need to have been twice as massive as Mars. Then there is the unsolved problem of losing the excess angular momentum.[10]
When Day Becomes Night...
One of the most fascinating sights in the sky is a total eclipse of the sun. This is possible because the moon is almost exactly the same angular size (half a degree) in the sky as the sun—it is both 400 times smaller and 400 times closer than the sun. This looks like design. If the moon had really been receding for billions of years, and man had been around for a tiny fraction of that time, the chances of mankind living at a time so he could observe this precise size matchup would be remote.[11]
The moon is a good example of the heavens declaring God’s glory (Psalm 19:1). It does what it’s designed to do, and is vital for life on Earth. It is also a headache for evolutionists/uniformitarians.
References
[1] Apart from the remote Pluto/Charon system. [RETURN TO TEXT] [2] The most stable shape for a massive body is for all parts of the surface to be the same distance from the centre of mass, i.e. a sphere. The pressure inside the moon is ten times the crushing strength of granite, so any large unevenness would be crushed into shape. Such a sphere may bulge at the equator if the body is spinning fast enough. [RETURN TO TEXT] [3] That is, its rotational period is identical to its (synodic) orbital period. This is true of many moons in the solar system, because the planet’s gravity is always stronger on the nearest side (a tidal interaction), and this will eventually lock one side so it will always face the planet. The effect is enhanced if one side is denser than the other. [RETURN TO TEXT] [4] Fred Pearce, ‘Catching the tide’, New Scientist158(2139):38–41, June 20, 1998. [RETURN TO TEXT] [5] See Ann Lamont, 21 Great Scientists who Believed the Bible, Creation Science Foundation, Australia, 1995, pp. 242–251. [RETURN TO TEXT] [6] For more details, see his article ‘The magnificent migrating monarch’, Creation20(1):28–31, 1997. [RETURN TO TEXT] [7] Angular momentum = mvr, the product of mass, velocity and distance, and is always conserved (constant) in an isolated system. [RETURN TO TEXT] [8] For the technical reader: since tidal forces are inversely proportional to the cube of the distance, the recession rate (dR/dt) is inversely proportional to the sixth power of the distance. So dR/dt = k/R6, where k is a constant = (present speed: 0.04 m/year) x (present distance: 384,400,000 m)6 = 1.29x1050 m7/year. Integrating this differential equation gives the time to move from Ri to Rf as t = 1/7k(Rf7 — Ri7). For Rf = the present distance and Ri = the Roche Limit, t = 1.37 x 109 years. There is no significant difference if Ri = 0, i.e. the earth and moon touching, because of the high recession rate (caused by enormous tides) if the moon is close. See also Don DeYoung, ‘The Earth-Moon System’, Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Creationism, Vol. II, pp. 79–84, 1990. [RETURN TO TEXT] [9] Irwin Shapiro in a university astronomy class about 20 years ago, cited by J.J. Lissauer, Ref. 10, p. 327. Lissauer affirms that the first three theories have insoluble problems. [RETURN TO TEXT] [10] Shigeru Ida et al., ‘Lunar accretion from an impact generated disk’, Nature389 (6649):353–357, September 25, 1997; Comment in the same issue by J.J. Lissauer, ‘It’s not easy to make the moon’, pp. 327–328. [RETURN TO TEXT] [11] See also D.R. Faulkner, ‘The angular size of the moon and other planetary satellites: An argument for Design’, Creation Research Society Quarterly35(1):23–26, June 1998. [RETURN TO TEXT] [12] From John C. Whitcomb and Donald B. DeYoung, The Moon: Its Creation, Form and Significance, Baker Book House, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1978. This book provided many ideas for this article. [RETURN TO TEXT] [13] The sidereal period is the time for a complete orbit of the moon around the earth, relative to an observer outside the solar system. The phase cycle (synodic period) is the time taken for the moon to return to the same orientation towards the sun. It is longer because the earth moves about 1/13th of the way in its orbit around the sun, so the moon must travel further than one true lunar orbit for a given orientation to recur. (The assistance of astronomer Dr Danny Faulkner is gratefully acknowledged). [RETURN TO TEXT]
Want just a slightly more technical and recent article?
The history of modern lunar origins theories traces back to George Darwin in the 1800s. Such naturalistic theories have presumed that the moon is extremely old, but all have been plagued by irresolvable difficulties. In addition, the moon is slowly receding from the earth, a phenomenon which establishes an upper limit for the moon’s age of approximately one-third the conventional age of 4.6 Ga. This issue has been a long-standing challenge to conventional chronology. Use of adjustable tidal parameters presumes conventional age rather than proving it, so is no support for a long chronology.
Naturalistic theories put lunar origin close to Earth
Photo by NASA
The first moon landing—astronauts placed mirrors on the moon, making possible lunar laser ranging experiments leading to precise determination of the lunar recession rate.
According to Genesis 1:14–18, God spoke the moon into existence as a unique celestial body on Day 4 of the Creation Week. Opposing the Genesis account are naturalistic theories of lunar origin: (1) the capture theory (‘daughter’ theory); (2) the accretion theory (‘sister’ theory); (3) the fission theory (the ‘spouse’ theory), popularized first by George Darwin, son of Charles Darwin;1 and (4) the impact theory. The impact theory is currently in favour as the other theories have been found to ‘have serious flaws’.2
The capture theory has been discredited because of the improbability of Earth capturing an approaching moon-size object. Rather than explaining the origin of the moon itself, this theory merely displaces the problem of lunar origin to an indeterminate point far from Earth.
The accretion theory claims that the moon coalesced from debris remaining from the solar nebula in close orbit about the earth. The accretion theory, sometimes called the ‘double planet theory’, says that the earth and the moon formed in tandem from the solar nebula. If this theory were true, the earth and the moon should have similar structure and composition. As might be expected from the creation of the moon as a unique heavenly object, its composition (especially the difference in iron content) does not match the earth’s.3,4 Indeed, the accretion theory has been discredited because of difficulty in explaining how debris can coalesce, and also because of the problem of ‘explaining why the abundance of iron in the Earth and the Moon is so different’.5,6
The fission theory claims that the moon coalesced from debris spinning off the presumably molten earth eons ago; while the impact theory claims that a Mars-size asteroid once impacted the earth,7 with the debris eventually coalescing into the moon. The fission and impact theories both require that the debris forming the moon begin coalescing at or near earth’s Roche limit.
The Roche limit: site for naturalistic lunar formation
The Roche limit is the distance from a central body, such as a planet, inside of which orbiting debris cannot coalesce.8,9 The gravitational force of the central body on an orbiting particle is stronger on the particle’s near side than on its far side. Within the Roche limit, this differential gravitational force is greater than the particle’s own self-gravitation, and particles break apart rather than joining.
A satellite can exist within the Roche limit if non-gravitational cohesive forces hold the object together, but once torn apart into smaller pieces, the pieces cannot rejoin. Saturn’s rings are evidently fragments of moons once orbiting Saturn inside the Roche limit. Forces due to collisions, or disruptive forces within the moons, tore the moons apart. Before they fragmented, cohesive forces held the moons together, but once they disintegrated, they could not re-form. Similarly, the earth’s moon could never form inside the Roche limit out of debris due to fission.
The impact theory does not resolve lunar origins difficulties
Even the impact theory leaves moon’s origin ‘still unresolved’, and it was adopted ‘not so much because of the merits of theory as because of the … shortcomings of other theories’.10,11 Lunar origin theories have a history of being accepted with fanfare, then being quietly dropped as unworkable. Indeed, Hartmann quipped,
‘The moon seems a highly unlikely object. Theoreticians have been led by frustration on more than one occasion to suggest facetiously that it does not exist.’12,13
The impact theory was first proposed in 1975 and found widespread acceptance in 1984. Until details of the theory were examined, it was viewed as explaining virtually all observations.14 Before the impact, the earth’s rotation rate was small or non-existent, and ‘the projectile must have struck the earth off-center [to] have sped up the earth’s rotation to its current value’.15 However, as mentioned, the moon’s iron content is significantly lower than Earth’s, and to explain this, ‘you need to avoid a grazing collision … lest too much of the impactor’s iron spill into orbit’ and become part of the moon.16 Further, the impactor would need to have been quite large, two or three Mars masses, to propel sufficient debris into orbit to form the moon.17 But such a large impactor would pose other challenges:
The combined mass of the earth-moon would be too large unless the earth was only partly formed at the time of impact; the earth may have been as little as ‘half formed’.18 A current estimate is that the earth was 89 % accreted.19 However, a collision so intense as to add on the order of 10% to the earth’s mass would profoundly disturb the earth in other ways. It is believed that solar He and Ne from the primordial nebula have been detected within the earth, ‘but how did this solar gas survive the Giant Impact?’20 In addition, the elements which would later make up the present ‘secondary atmosphere’ would have been lost. Replacement of the atmosphere by later cometary impacts seems unlikely because the D/H ratio of Earth is different from that of comets. Thus ‘all the D/H data for comets acquired so far preclude this possibility.’20-22 Another result of a large impactor would have been the formation of a ‘terrestrial magma ocean,’ but ‘there is no direct evidence that a magma ocean ever existed on earth’.23 On the other hand, an impactor of too small a size requires a ‘near grazing [impact orientation] and so too much of the impactor core remains in orbit’, leading to a moon too rich in iron.24
A large impactor would import so much energy into the earth-moon system that the impact debris would vaporize before the moon could form. To counter this problem, a ‘hybrid’ model was developed in which debris within the Roche limit is allowed to vaporize, but debris outside the Roche limit is allowed to cool by radiation and eventually form the moon.25 There is no physical basis for such a dichotomy, however; the assumption of such a hybrid scheme is an artificial modelling device.
A large impactor ‘would produce an Earth-moon system with twice as much angular momentum as they actually have’.26 Responding to these concerns, Canup and Asphaug claimed to have developed a computer model with a Mars-size impactor ‘that [yields] an iron-poor Moon, as well as the current masses and angular momentum of the Earth-Moon system’.18 This optimism was premature, as we will now see. The degree of vaporization of debris was unknown because of uncertainty in their equation of state (EOS),24 making the initial mass of the moon’s accretion disk also unknown. Generally the mass ratio of earth to moon impactor is an adjustable parameter employed to generate acceptable model results.27 EOS uncertainties are endemic to all impact models.20
Another critical parameter in all impact models is the timing of the impact. In recent years, the hafnium-182/tungsten-182 (182Hf/182W) system has been used in attempts to date the moon, but this and other classical chronometers produce equivocal results. As Podosek notes,
‘It is not even clear whether the chronometers are consistent or in conflict with each other. … all methods rely on models of varying complexity involving assumptions difficult to verify and parameters difficult to measure.’28
The uncertainties in 182W lunar dating are ultimately constrained by acceptable dates for the age of the earth.4 Further, W lunar abundance data are extremely sparse; Kleine and colleagues based their conclusion that the moon was formed 30 Ma after the earth ‘on W isotope data from only one [lunar] sample’.29
Another unresolved problem is the moon’s orbital inclination. Currently the moon’s orbit is inclined at about 5 degrees to the earth’s orbit.30 Extrapolation back in time revealed that 4.5 Ga ago, the inclination would have been about 10 degrees.
‘The cause of this inclination has been a mystery for 30 years, as most dynamical processes (such as those that act to flatten Saturn’s rings) will tend to decrease orbital inclinations.’9
In other words, if the moon had originated naturalistically, the inclination should be zero and a lunar eclipse should occur at each full phase.
Biblically, God created the moon with very nearly its present inclination, and the orbital inclination problem is really a ‘pseudo-problem’. However, Ward and Canup claimed to have solved the problem by invoking inter-gravitational attractions or ‘resonances’, and possibly only one resonance, among the particles of debris forming the moon.9 Such resonances have been invoked to explain the structuring of the Saturnian and Uranian rings, for example. For this resonance model to work for lunar origins, the time of lunar formation and the mass of the accretion disk are ‘input parameters’ and the ‘resulting [present] inclination depends mainly on [these] two parameters’.31 As mentioned above, these two parameters are unknown. A model depending on them cannot be said to have yielded dependable results, and the orbital inclination problem remains unresolved for the investigator ruling out special creation.
The moon’s maximum age is less than 4.6 Ga
The moon was never at the Roche limit, but was positioned or ‘set’ in the firmament (Genesis 1:17) at approximately its present distance from the earth. Highly accurate lunar laser ranging measurements have shown that the moon is very slowly receding from the earth. Based on these measurements we can compute the time, which would hypothetically be required, for the moon to recede from the Roche limit to its present position.
The recession rate dr/dt of the moon is
where r is the semimajor axis of the moon’s orbit about the earth, t is time, and k is a proportionality constant.32-34 When t = 0, r = r0.
To compute the moon’s recession time to its present orbit, we first integrate equation (1). Over the time interval 0 to t, the moon’s distance from the earth increases from the Roche limit r0 to its present orbit at distance r:
in which t is the maximum age of the earth-moon system. The present value of r is 3.844 x 108 m. For an object orbiting a planet, the Roche limit r0 is
where R is the radius of the central body (the earth in this case); ρp is the density of the central body; and ρm is the density of the orbiting body, in this case the moon.35 With R = 6.3781 x 106 m for the earth; ρp = 5515 kg/m3; and ρm = 3340 kg/m3, we find that r0 = 1.84 x 107 m. This is less than 5% of the moon’s current orbital radius.
From equation (1), the proportionality constant k is the product of the sixth power of the distance r, and the current recession rate. The present value of the recession rate is 4.4 ± 0.6 cm/yr, or (4.4 ± 0.6) x 10–2 m/yr.36–38 Therefore, k = 1.42 x 1050 m7/yr. With this value for k, the right hand side of equation 1 equals the present recession rate dr/dt, when r = the moon’s current orbital radius.
From equation (2), the time for the moon to recede from r0 to r is 1.3 Ga. Without introducing tidal parameters, to be discussed below, this is the moon’s highest allowable evolutionary age, similar to DeYoung’s estimate.39 This is a serious challenge to the belief that the moon is 4.6 Ga old.40 As Baldwin noted:
‘Jeffreys’ early studies of the effects of tidal friction [the cause of lunar recession] yielded a rough age of the Moon of 4 billion years. … Recently, however, Munk and MacDonald have interpreted the observations to indicate that tidal friction is a more important force than had been realized and that it would have taken not more than 1.78 billion years for tidal friction to drive the Moon outward to its present distance from any possible minimum distance. This period of time is so short, compared with the age of the earth, that serious doubts have been cast upon most proposed origins and histories of the moon.’41
Efforts to save conventional lunar chronology have failed
Recession rates for the earth-moon system challenge conventional lunar chronology
One response to the chronological challenge of recession has been the impact theory, in which lunar material originates within the Roche limit but is quickly ejected beyond it. The impact theory in turn is grounded in an older concept, the ‘orbital resonance theory’, which claims that the moon was never actually at the Roche limit. According to this theory, the moon is currently receding, but was once approaching the earth as part of a series of alternating recession/approach events as old as the moon’s conventional age.42,43 The resonance theory, however, presumes conventional age rather than proving it, so is no support for evolutionary chronology.
Another response has been to minimize the lunar recession rate. NASA put the current recession rate at 3.8 cm/yr,44,45 which is at the lower end of the range of lunar recession rates discussed above. Fix goes further and cites a value of only 3 cm/yr.46
However, if the moon’s distance r had ever been much smaller than its current value, equation (1) shows that the recession rate dr/dt ‘must have been much larger in earlier times’.47 George Darwin stated, ‘Thus, although the action [rate of lunar recession] may be insensibly slow now, it must have gone on with much greater rapidity when the moon was nearer to us’,32 a view echoed much more recently by Verhoogen.47
Using equations 2 and 3 above, together with the conventional age of 4.6 Ga for the earth-moon system, we can compute how far the moon should have receded from the Roche limit over that time. Using r0 = 1.84 x 107 m, k = 1.42 x 1050 m7/yr, and t = 4.6 x 109 yr, we find that r = 4.7 x 108 m. This is 20% higher than the actual distance of the moon from the earth.
Using Fix’s estimate of recession rate gives a value 14% greater than the current distance, or a time frame of 1.8 Ga, still far short of the 4.6 Ga date.
A third response is to employ adjustable tidal parameters to stretch recession chronology into harmony with the conventional solar system lifetime.47,48
Tidal parameter adjustments fail to save a long lunar chronology
Photo by NASA
The full moon.
The primary cause of lunar recession is the tides of the earth’s oceans.49,50 Friction between ocean water and the earth causes the earth to lose rotation energy and therefore angular momentum. Momentum conservation requires that the moon gain angular momentum in an equal degree, so the moon accelerates in its orbit, with a resulting recession from the earth.51 Analysis of astronomical and historical evidence dating back 2,700 years to Babylonian civilization shows that the day has lengthened by an average of 1.7 milliseconds per century, consistent with the earth’s slowing rotation rate.50,52
As Mignard has observed, unless the moon had a slower recession rate in the past than it does now, the moon’s age is only 1.3 Ga, the maximum age computed above. He continues,
‘Such a time scale has now been proved to be unrealistic. … what is wrong in the computation of the time scale and how can it be corrected? The solution to this problem is thought to be a reduced rate of dissipation of [tidal] energy in the past … .’53
In this view, it is therefore ‘necessary to make an empirical adjustment for the tidal acceleration’.54 This is tantamount to saying that the proportionality constant k in equations (1) and (2) is actually variable,55 and must be adjusted to bring lunar chronology in line with that of the earth.56 The extremely speculative nature of such an adjustment was emphasized by Mignard who said, ‘even if we have sound reasons to accept a substantial reduction of the dissipation in the past, we are still lacking evidence of what the Moon’s orbit looked like 3 or 4 billion years ago’.57
Slichter, one of the earliest investigators to suggest a slower rate of terrestrial energy dissipation in the distant past, remarked that if ‘for unknown reasons’ this occurred, the dilemma of lunar chronology would be resolved,58 and Goldreich searched for possible causes.59 Lambeck concluded,
‘… unless the present estimates for the accelerations are vastly in error, only a variable energy sink can solve the time-scale problem and the only energy sink that can vary significantly with time is the ocean.’60
A globally open ocean would experience the least friction with land and would therefore dissipate energy at the lowest rate. Accordingly, investigators searched for continental configurations which would provide minimum resistance to the tides. Hansen proposed two models, one with a single polar continent and another with a single equatorial land mass.42 Piper61 and Webb62 proposed that the present continental arrangement on earth is abnormal and that one continent is normal. Bowden pointed out that ‘particularly the Americas which are strung from north to south across the path’ of the tides are responsible for a high energy dissipation rate.63
Reconstructing ancient continental configurations is ‘exceedingly difficult’,64,65 yet attempts have continued to link plate tectonics with past oceanic energy dissipation.66,67 From a creationist perspective, doubts exist about whether plate tectonics has occurred in the conventional sense.68
The layering in stromatolites and other banded geological deposits is supposed to confirm the enlarged chronologies obtained by manipulating continental configurations.69 The tidal layering of such deposits, called rhythmites, required billions of years according to conventional assumptions. Tidally laminated sediments are taken to imply a lunar recession rate of 1.27 cm/yr between 2.5 Ga and 650 Ma ago,70 and 2.16 cm/yr on average since then.71
Though claimed to be reliable, rhythmite data sets are often short, and periodicities must be interpreted from selected data sets.72 Varves themselves are dated with respect to the presumed age of the earth.73,74 Thus lunar recession rates derived from such varve chronologies constitute circular reasoning as ‘evidence’ that the moon is old. Indeed, the varves now taken to reflect lunar behavior were not too long ago claimed as evidence of solar behaviour patterns and constituting ‘potential solar observatories’ shedding light on the sun’s processes and history.75,76 However, there is no known mechanism linking varve characteristics and solar behavior.77 After reinterpretation, varves were viewed as luni-solar78 or as a lunar phenomenon.79,80 Confidence is now placed in the reinterpretation of varves as a window on lunar history. Nevertheless, a recent assessment concluded that analysis of tideal rhythmites has not eliminated ‘paleorotational parameters in the distant geologic past [that] are highly speculative’.81
Conclusions
Lunar scientist Irwin Shapiro used to joke that ‘the best explanation [of lunar formation conundrums] was observational error—the Moon does not exist.’
Over the approximately 6,000 years since the creation of the universe, the lunar recession rate has been essentially constant at the present value. However, assuming a multi-billion year age, lunar recession rates would have been much higher in the distant past than now. The currently accepted parameters indicate that the moon would have required 1.3 Ga to move from its origin at the Roche limit to its present position. This is the moon’s upper-limit age and shows that the conventional chronology is incorrect. If the solar system were actually 4.6 Ga old, the moon would have receded to a distance from earth approximately 20% beyond its present position. There is a widespread belief that the impact theory of lunar origin has neutralized these dilemmas for conventional chronology. However, this is not true. Lunar scientist Irwin Shapiro used to joke that ‘the best explanation [of lunar formation conundrums] was observational error—the moon does not exist’. The situation has not fundamentally changed, for lunar scientist Jack Lissauer recalled this anecdote as continuing to apply in a post-impact theory paper.11
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Mazumder, R. and Arima, M., Tidal rhythmites and their implications, Earth-Science Reviews64:79–95, 2005; p. 92. Return to text.
I make a living selling IT software and hardware and services but I would rather take a year off and finish writing my two novels. Not enough time! I do have the best wife in the world, several awesome kids, a few dogs, far too many bills and a few more pounds than I had back in my playing days.
The best thing to give to your enemy is forgiveness; to an opponent, tolerance; to a friend, your heart; to your child, a good example; to a father, deference; to your mother, conduct that will make her proud of you; to yourself, respect; to all men, charity. Francis Maitland Balfour
The ultimate determinate in the struggle now going on for the world will not be bombs and rockets but a test of wills and ideas – a trial of spiritual resolve; the values we hold, the beliefs we cherish and the ideas to which we are dedicated — Ronald Reagan
Please email radarbinder@comcast.net to contact me professionally. I consult and sell software, hardware and services to companies, organizations and government entities throughout North America.
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he moon—an object of wonder since the dawn of mankind. It lights up the night sky like nothing else in the heavens, and appears as if it regularly changes shape. As we shall see, it is well designed for life on Earth, while its origin baffles evolutionists.
