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Feedback archive → Feedback 2001, 2007 Is Young-Earth Creationism a heresy?Is the absence of short-lived radionuclides a problem for the Biblical timescale?From JM, Nashville, TN, USA. He comes across with the all-too-common ‘theowaffle’ against creationist theories, although we know he’s actually a vociferous antibiblicist. It might be surprising to some that someone with a known antipathy to the Bible would even bother to appeal to theology, but enemies of the gospel have a long history of pious-sounding nonsense in an attempt to get compromising churchians to undermine their own book. There are also two disconnected points: one is a problem in the distribution of radioisotopes. The second concerns old court cases well before CMI’s time and proposed definitions of the Creator. His letter is posted indented below with point-by-point responses by Dr Jonathan Sarfati, interspersed as per normal email fashion. Ellipses (…) at the end of one of the paragraphs signal that a mid-sentence comment follows, not an omission. As a first reaction, young-earth creationists will recoil at the suggestion that their tightly-held literal interpretation of the first book of Genesis is a heresy.We won’t recoil at all, but will be bemused that a known antibiblicist would profess to care. In any case, if anyone wants to dispute the accuracy of a literal, or rather plain, interpretation, then they need to produce grammatical reasons. See Q&A: Genesis. After all, who more strongly supports the Bible and all that is therein? No argument there! But let us examine several lines of logic and see where they lead. First, we need to set a ground rule as to whether or not God is responsible for the earth as we know it. The question is, ‘Did God make this world or didn’t He?’ If He didn’t then He didn’t and there’s nothing to be done about it. But since that statement is false, there’s even less to be done about it. Christians will undoubtedly answer that, yes, God did create the world. Well and good, but that leads us to a new understanding. As we learn more and more about the earth, are we not learning about how God created the earth? Not that JM believes this, but it’s right to some extent. However, it’s deficient, because the data must always be interpreted. The processes we find to have operated to cause the world around us are in actuality a reflection of God’s hand. Yes, but the mistake of churchians who subscribe to methodological naturalism is assuming that God’s present sustaining processes are the same by which He created the world. But the laws that govern a computer’s operation did not form the computer in the first place. See Naturalism, Origin and Operation Science. Young earth creationists believe that the earth is no more than about 10,000 years old. There is, however, a very valid reason for not believing that. Actually, there is no excuse not to believe it, since that’s the testimony of the only eye-witness to its formation. A reliable eye-witness beats circumstantial evidence every time. See Jesus and the age of the world. As we know, radioactive isotopes of elements decay at a constant rate. 
Radioisotopes & Age of the Earth Vol 2 The results of a five year study by RATE scientists answering the questions raised in Radioisotopes and the Age of the Earth. We know no such thing. We’ve known about radioactivity for only about 100 years, so how can we be sure that the decay has been constant for the alleged billions of years? Even in the laboratory, beta decay rates have been speeded up by many orders of magnitude when atoms are stripped of electrons—see Billion-fold Acceleration of Radioactivity Demonstrated in Laboratory. Also, the Ph.D. physicists and geologists who contributed to the RATE book have adduced several lines of evidence that decay has been faster in the past. They propose a pulse of accelerated decay rate during Creation Week, and possibly a smaller pulse during the Flood year, and among the support is:
Thousands … Not Billions Radiometric dating is one of the linchpins of evolutionary education today. Dr Don DeYoung shatters this and other dating methods employed by evolutionists to cast doubt on the reliability of the Bible and its chronology of Earth history. There are theoretical means of producing accelerated decay, e.g. a small change in fundamental constants or the shape of the nuclear potential well can have a large effect on the decay rate (but little effect on radiohalo diameter). This would be expected to affect slower decaying isotopes more than fast decayers, and alpha decay more than beta, and the evidence supports this. So JM’s first premise is debatable, and this is enough to demonstrate the unsoundness of his argument. Every time a half-life passes, one-half of it decays into a new isotope. After the passage of a certain number of half-lives, the isotope in question will have decayed to a point where it is no longer detectable. Let us set 20 half-lives as a limit beyond which the isotope in question is not detectable. The amount remaining then would be ½20 or 1 part in 1,048,576, or only 0.000095% of the original. Would God create lots of isotopes with higher energy radiation and more of it, when this would be hazardous to life? OK, then detectable 14C (half life = 5700 years) activity in the sample is irrefutable proof that the strata in which they are found can’t be millions of years old as claimed. Contamination was ruled out by the δ13CPDB results (see Could the radiocarbon be due to contamination?). No wonder that critics have been desperate enough to attack the messenger—see Dating Dilemma Deepens: Moore on ancient radiocarbon, referring to an earlier article but where the same comment applies. More recent research has shown that coal samples ‘dated’ to millions of years old and even a diamond had radiocarbon levels well above the detector threshold. See Measurable 14C in fossilized organic materials: confirming the young earth creation-flood model and Diamonds, a creationists best friend. This rate of decay may be very fast, as in the case of Magnesium 23. Half of it decays every 11.9 seconds, so in only 238 seconds or 3 minutes and 58 seconds, 20 half-lives have passed. Let us examine Thorium 229, which has a half-life of 7,340 years. Creationists who believe that the earth was created just 10,000 years ago would expect that there would be plenty of Thorium 229 on earth since only a little over one half-life has passed. Just a moment! This presupposes that God had created it in the first place! As shown below, there are good reasons for denying this. This should demonstrate the fallacy of arguing from silence, which is the whole basis of JM’s argument. Conversely, our argument was based on the presence of 14C, although if JM’s old-Earth dogma were right, it should be absent. But even if God did create 229Th, a creationist would expect it to have decayed completely if the decay rates had all been accelerated as the evidence shows.
This is itself sometimes an assumption to preserve old-Earth dogma, e.g. in the Anarkardo basin formation, the presence of 129I (iodine-129, t½ = 15.7 million years) is assumed to be produced by fission because the rock is said to be over 300 million years old (‘Paleozoic age’—see The Mythology of Modern Dating Methods, p. 26.
There is another very good reason: short lived isotopes by definition emit radiation more often. Also, the shorter the half life, the higher the energy of decay in general, and definitely so with alpha decay. So would God create lots of isotopes with higher energy radiation and more of it, when this would be hazardous to life? This is an even greater problem when most of these isotopes form very soluble compounds, so they could be leached into dangerous hot spots. … but therein lies a problem—a very big problem. If the earth was, indeed, made in a single, supernatural act 10,000 years ago, then God, for some reason, left behind these isotopic abundances as part of His record. He didn’t leave any ‘abundance’, but a lack of something—that’s the whole fallacy! Ask yourself, ‘Why would God leave evidence that speaks against the actual record?’ Rather, ask yourself, why would such an opponent of the Bible like JM ask such a leading question?
All this is very true—that’s the whole point. God has told us that he created in six ordinary days about 6000 years ago, and he is incapable of lying. The record of nature is not propositional, and I’ve demonstrated how a different set of axioms can result in different propositions drawn from the same data. But God’s revelation in Scripture is propositional, we should interpret God’s actions in history in accordance with what He has revealed He has done. Photo stock.xchng 
Even readers not interested in the minutiae of radiometric dating can understand the errors of JM’s ways by studying the Parable of the Candle. Notice that Lucy refused even to consider a clear propositional note from Manuel about the time he left, and instead insisted on making dubious deductions from the rate that a candle melted. But like all dating methods, this requires assumptions about the past, and Lucy’s were false, and refuted when an eye witness demonstrated that the past was very different.
As shown, it would be more devious for God to have done as long agers and evolutionists claim, but to tell in plain Hebrew that he did something diametrically opposed—see Evolution vs the Bible. God, like Manuel in the Candle parable, is not at all guilty of deception, since He has explained exactly what He has done. Rather, JM and Lucy deceive themselves when they ignore the clear propositional revelation about the past. Not only are those using the ‘appearance of age’ apologetic relying on the heretical, the creationists themselves, in a pre-trial deposition before the McLean vs Arkansas trial questioning the legality of Arkansas Act 590, exposed their own heretical views of the Creator with the following statement from pages 186–87 of the trial transcript: It is wrong for JM to generalise about ‘creationists’ from a trial transcript 20 years ago. CMI is not a lobby group, and we oppose legislation for compulsion of creation teaching. For one thing, why would we want an atheist forced to teach creation and give a distorted view? But we would like legal protection for teachers who present scientific arguments against the sacred cow of evolution.
Evidently JM needs remedial reading comprehension courses, since the above said nothing of the sort. It was pointing out that one can believe in a Designer without any religious connotations. The above statement is actually more in line with the Intelligent Design Movement than with CMI, since we make no apologies for our Biblical basis. We make it clear that design is not enough—see Q&A: Design. It’s important to note that JM was involved with an email debate/discussion group where my colleague Dr Tas Walker participated for a little while. Dr Walker has always made it clear that his geological investigations are always within a framework that presupposes that the Bible is an accurate account of world history, which is a very fruitful procedure (see his Biblical Geology Page). But JM decreed that Tas wasn’t allowed to bring the Bible into it (in this he was much like Hutton, who also decreed before considering the evidence that only processes happening today were admissible as explanations —see quote). So it’s hypocritical of JM to chide those creationists above for doing just what he demanded of Dr Walker. There’s no pleasing some ‘bibliosceptics’! It may be that this revealed heresy had some effect on those willing to testify for the creationist defendants in the McLean trial. Although Langdon Gilkey, a noted theologian, testified for the plaintiffs, not one degreed theologian was called to testify for the position of the creationists. Gilkey is a well-known liberal (i.e. who doesn’t believe in the fundamental doctrines of Christianity). In any case, what JM says is ironic in view of the usual caricature that creation vs evolution is just religion vs science—as in Darwin’s day, many scientists defended creation and many churchians defended evolution (see Holy War? Who really opposed Darwin? Popular belief has it back to front). But CMI points out that it’s really the interpretations of scientific data by the framework of one religion vs the interpretations of scientific data by the framework of another religion (secular humanism). To conclude, we have examined the creationist views of ‘appearance of age’ and read their own view of the Creator. In both cases they have been found to be based on a most outrageous heretical theology which must be rejected. To conclude, we have examined:
In all cases, JM’s views are based on a most outrageous lack of logic which must be rejected. JM [Ed. note: in a subsequent email, JM responded, but we can’t print it directly because he made demands unacceptable to CMI as a condition for publication, and he violated some feedback rules. But here are the main points to note:
Further reading
Published: 17 December 2001; reposted and updated 21 July 2007 (GMT+10) |
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