My first post examining Don
Pearce’s response pointed out mistakes such as his conflation of evolution with
an ancient Earth, his use of the argument increasingly common among YECs that
viewpoints colour interpretation of evidence, his failure to justify the
literal hermeneutic he used to interpret Genesis, as well as the lack of any
attempt to examine the creation narratives in light of their ancient Near
Eastern background. This alone is enough to undermine his credibility on this
subject.
The second half of Pearce’s response included a frankly
pathetic attempt to rebut the evidence for an old earth which consisted simply
of long-rebutted special creationist talking points, an assertion made without
any supporting evidence that the “assumptions on which long ages are built are
being constantly challenged by more recent findings which throw strong doubts
on their validity” and ended by making the claim common to evangelical
Christians that God’s plan of redemption becomes meaningless if physical death
predated Adam. Pearce’s response serves to show just how deep-rooted YEC idiocy
has become in parts of our community.
Pearce began his attack on the
evidence for an old earth badly:
The formation of sedimentary rocks, yet the
rapid deposition of strata in the 1980 Mt. St. Helen’s
volcanic eruption clearly shows such rocks can be formed rapidly.[1]
His assertion, which is simply an
uncritical regurgitation of YEC arguments shows monumental ignorance of the
principles of sedimentology and stratigraphy. The overwhelming majority of
geological strata are not produced by volcanic eruption, but are formed when
sediments are deposited on land or within bodies of water. Sedimentary rocks fall into three general
groups:
- Siliclastic: composed of silicate materials formed by the weathering of rocks, and include sandstone, shale and conglomerates
- Biochemical/Chemical: formed from minerals precipitated from water by organic or inorganic processes and include limestone, chert and evaporites
- Carbonaceous: include a considerable amount of material of organic matter of animal or plant origin. Coal and oil shale are the best known examples of carbonaceous sedimentary rocks[2]
What Pearce fails to appreciate
is that what we saw at Mt St Helens was the rapid deposition of stratified volcanic ash. This is not the
same thing as shale, limestone, chert and oil shale. In confusing rapidly
deposited stratified ash with sedimentary rocks, Pearce has destroyed his
credibility just in one sentence.
His following
sentence contains not one but two major blunders. He begins with a frank
non-sequitur:
The fact that the majority of the surface rocks are sedimentary points
to the Flood…[3]
No, it doesn’t. Pearce provides no evidence for his assertion, one
which betrays his ignorance of the fact that diluvialism, the theory which
posited that Noah’s flood was responsible for shaping the Earth’s surface was
abandoned by geologists by the early 19th century – well before Darwin – because the
geological evidence did not support it. Evangelical geologist Davis Young
notes:
[A]dvances in understanding about the nature
and distribution of strata and fossils placed great strains on diluvialism as a
suitable theoretical framework. Almost as soon as it was published, Woodward’s
thesis of gravity stratification was discredited by the recognition of numerous
instances in which lower density strata occurred below higher density
strata. Careful mapping and description
of successions of European strata throughout the eighteenth century led
naturalists to recognize that sedimentary rock piles were thousands to tens of
thousands of meters thick. These vast thicknesses consisted of hundreds to
thousands of variably thick individual layers occurring in unvarying order and
traceable for tens to hundreds of kilometers over the countryside. Even very
thin layers only a few centimeters thick could be traced for long distances.
Could a single-year flood, even a catastrophic one, account for the enormous
thicknesses of strata, for the orderly successions of strata, and for very thin
yet extensive layers?
Certain rock types could not be reconciled
with diluvialism. Catcott’s field notebooks indicate his puzzlement over
conglomerate. The rounded pebbles in conglomerates came from previously
existing consolidated rocks such as limestone or sandstone that were supposedly
deposited as soft sediments by the flood. But how could the flood deposit soft
sands and lime muds which would be solidified, then torn off and reincorporated
as worn pebbles into a newer soft deposit of gravel while the entire globe was
under water?
By the early nineteenth century diluvialism
was even less credible. Detailed stratigraphic studies in the 1790s through
1810s disclosed systematic relationships between strata and their contained
fossils. William Smith in Great
Britain and Cuvier and Brongniart in France
independently discovered that successive superposed strata were characterized
by distinctive organic remains. Moreover, successively higher strata contained
increasingly complex fossils. Layers containing marine fossils were commonly
found interstratified with layers containing continental remains. Why would a
turbulent flood produce such striking regularities of fossil distribution as
well as alternations of thinly layered marine and continental sediments?[4]
Again, this took place before Darwin published the first
edition of “The Origin of Species”
which makes Pearce’s assertion:
thus
undermining the very basis of evolutionary assumptions.[5]
frankly ludicrous, as diluvialism
was rejected by geologists who were special creationists. The principles of
stratigraphy have nothing to do with evolution, and yet again we see Pearce
trying desperately to link evolution with an ancient earth.
Pearce’s completely off-topic
attack on evolution spills over into the next paragraph where instead of
advancing more “evidence often given for an old earth”, he makes a rather
confused argument against evolution:
The development
of genetic diversity is not evidence of the ability of a species to evolve,
because that would need added genetic information. Instead, this observable
fact is a wonderful testimony to God’s forethought, enabling His creation to
adapt to changing circumstances.
When geologists advance evidence for an ancient Earth,
they don’t refer to the development of genetic diversity. Pearce, like most
YECs appears incapable of differentiating between the concept of an old earth,
and the evidence for evolution. It is also difficult to know exactly what he is
talking about with his reference to genetic diversity and evolution, but in
implying that natural processes cannot create genetic information, Pearce
betrays a profound ignorance of biology as well as geology.
Mutation, natural selection and replication can readily
add genetic information to biological systems. Molecular information theorist
Thomas Schneider has employed computational techniques to demonstrate how
natural selection can result in information gain, and notes how his model:
shows explicitly how this information gain
comes about from mutation and selection, without any other external influence,
thereby completely answering the creationists.[6]
as well as demonstrates
demonstrates that biological information,
measured in the strict Shannon sense, can
rapidly appear in genetic control systems subjected to replication, mutation
and selection.[7]
In fact, the literature is replete with examples[8] of how
genetic mutations ranging from point mutation to whole genome duplication
results in evolution:
- A point mutation in the apolipoprotein A gene results in the creation of a mutant version of apolipoprotein A, apoA-IM. This beneficial mutation has been linked with reduced rates of atherosclerosis in those heterozygous for the apoA-IM mutation.[9] The clinical significance of this mutation has been explored in many studies.[10],[11]
- The CCR5 gene codes for a chemokine receptor that, along with the CD4 T cell co-receptor is used by the HIV-1 virus as an entry point. A mutation in the CCR5 gene conveys resistance to HIV infection in people homozygous for the mutation, while HIV-1 infected individuals heterozygous for the mutation have a two to three year delay before they develop AIDS. The particular mutation is a 32 base pair deletion that results in loss of the CCR5 receptor.[12]
- Bacteria have evolved the ability to metabolise nylon breakdown products. This was achieved by a frameshift mutation which created a unique enzyme that gave the bacteria the opportunity to access a never-before utilised food source.[13]
- In 2008, the evolutionary biologist Richard Lenski published a landmark paper on the evolution by a colony of E. coli bacteria of the ability to metabolise citrate under oxic conditions, something that E. coli is not normally able to do. Over the previous twenty years, Lenski had cultured 12 colonies of E. coli, taking samples every 500 generations to provide a “fossil record”. After 31,500 generations, one colony evolved the ability to metabolise citrate in an oxic environment. The two hypotheses to explain this were (1) an extremely rare mutation or (2) a mutation that was contingent on an earlier mutation to evolve the ability to metabolise citrate. Lenski’s analysis favoured the latter, “Our results instead support the hypothesis of historical contingency, in which a genetic background arose that had an increased potential to evolve the Cit_ phenotype.”[14]
- Evolution of vertebral steroid receptors and the endocrine systems associated with them involved duplication of an ancestral steroid receptor gene, and mutation of the duplicate.[15],[16]
- Evidence of chromosomal translocation and segmental duplication in Cryptococcus neoformans.[17]
- Genome duplication in yeast as a source of evolutionary novelty.[18]
- Whole genome duplication as a source of genetic variety is not restricted to yeasts. Examination of the genomes of chordates has shown the existence of multiple copies of genes in the same gene family
It is clear that Pearce knows nothing about how mutation,
duplication and selection can add information to the genome. He is as painfully
uninformed in biology as he is in geology.
Pearce manages to return back to the subject of evidence
for an old earth in his third point, but does nothing to show that he
understands the subject he criticises when he alleges:
The use of radioactive decay to indicate
long ages is utterly dependent on assumptions that go contrary to the
information that God has provided.
I am puzzled as to how the
constancy of radionuclide decay constants goes contrary to the information God
has provided in the Bible. There is nothingin the Bible about isotope geochemistry, radiometric dating or geophysics.
Patently ludicrous arguments such as this do little more than brand Pearce as
yet another hopelessly uninformed YEC
Radiometric dating, contrary to
what Pearce alleges, is a reliable, well-established method of proving absolute
ages to rocks. In short, when a rock crystallises, it can trap a certain amount
of a radioactive element, A. Over time, this element will undergo radioactive
decay at a known, stable rate, and change into another element, B. By measuring
the amount of radioactive material A remaining in the rock, the amount of decay
product B, and a knowledge of the decay rate, we can calculate the amount of
time which has elapsed since the rock formed.
Critical to the concept of radiometric
dating is that the rock being tested is a closed system:
The
fundamental assumption in radioactive dating is that the box
(the rock or mineral) has remained closed, that is, it has neither
lost nor gained parent or daughter nuclides through exchange with its environment
since it first closed.
Now,
while this assumption is accepted for parent elements nestled in suitable
crystallographic sites (Rb in place of K, U in place of Zr, etc.) it is less
obvious for daughter elements. The daughter isotopes produced by radioactivity
are intruders in the crystallographic lattice. They have been introduced “artificially”
by radioactive transmutation. Why should they stay there? This is particularly
true of rich systems, since these radiogenic isotopes are very abundant. They
have been produced in a mineral which is “unfamiliar” to them, and will
therefore tend to escape from it.[19]
A tool is only as good as the
person using it, and any competent geologist will know when it is appropriate
to test a rock sample using the proper dating technique, and whether the rock
is a closed or open system. Having said that, what many YECs overlook when
asserting that radiometric dating is unreliable is that, as Allegre notes
above, it is more likely that the daughter element will leave the rock,
producing an age which is too young.[20]
Geologists employ the concordance / discordance method to determine whether the
value measured is likely to reflect the true age.
Essentially, the concordance /
discordance method involves measuring the ages of different mineral samples of
the rock whose age we are interested in determining. If the measured ages are
close to each other, we can assume that the system is closed, and the measured
ages are concordant, and therefore are close to the actual age. If however the
ages do not agree, they are discordant, and geologists know that the ages are
unreliable. The criteria geologists employ to determine whether a reading is
concordant is actually quite strict, and involves testing several mineral
samples with the same radiometric method, testing the same mineral type with
different radiometric methods, and testing several mineral samples with
different dating methods.
Geologists have created a number
of testing methods that take into account real-world problems (abundant or
negligible initial radiogenic isotope, closed or open system), of which the
isochron method is arguably the most powerful, as it does not require the
assumption that the amount of daughter element is negligible, and automatically
tests whether the rock being tested is a closed system or not.
Isochron dating makes use of the
fact that over time, the ratio of the decay product of the parent element to a
stable isotope of the decay product will increase. The classic model used to
illustrate isochron dating is the rubidium-strontium method. Rubidium-87 decays
to strontium-87; its half life is nearly 50 thousand million years. Over time,
the amount of strontium-87 compared with its stable isotope strontium-86 will
increase. At time zero however, all parts of the rock will have the same ratio
of strontium-87 to strontium-86. A plot of Sr-87/Sr-86 against Rb-87/Sr-86 will
lie on a straight line, the slope of which will allow one to calculate the age
of the rock. The isochron method is self-checking as if the rock system is
disturbed, the sample points will no longer lie on a straight line.
A rubidium-strontium
three-isotope plot. When a rock cools, all its minerals have the same
ratio of strontium-87 to strontium-86, though they have varying amounts
of rubidium. As the rock ages, the rubidium decreases by changing to
strontium-87, as shown by the dotted arrows. Minerals with more rubidium
gain more strontium-87, while those with less rubidium do not change as
much. Notice that at any given time, the minerals all line up--a check
to ensure that the system has not been disturbed. (Souurce: Roger Wiens "Radometric Dating: A Christian Perspective http://www.asa3.org/ASA/resources/Wiens.html)
The original amount of the daughter
strontium-87 can be precisely determined from the present-day
composition by extending the line through the data points back to
rubidium-87 = 0. This works because if there were no rubidium-87 in the
sample, the strontium composition would not change. The slope of the
line is used to determine the age of the sample. (Souurce: Roger Wiens "Radometric Dating: A Christian Perspective http://www.asa3.org/ASA/resources/Wiens.html)
No method is perfect, but as
respected geologist G. Brent Dalrymple has stated of inaccurate ages:
Most…are
caught by appropriate safeguards, like standards and repetition, but some go
unrecognized until long after the data have been published. In short,
radiometric dating methods give reliable results most of the time, but not
always…With sufficient cross checks, care and experience, we don't really get
fooled very often and when we do it is usually not for long.[21]
YECs are needless to say well
aware of the powerful evidence for an ancient earth provided by radiometric
dating. One argument that they have advanced is that decay constants are not
constant, and that under certain circumstances they can increase, which, they
argue, would mean that the calculated dates would give an artificially high
value. Certain decay modes are sensitive to environmental change, which means
that half lives can vary, but usually only by a few percentage points at best,
which is nowhere near the rate required to lower ages from thousands of
millions of years to thousands of years.
Some YECs have tried to salvage
this argument by referring to a paper[22] that
showed that the decay of 187Rhenium
to 187Osmium, which has a half life of 41.6 × 109 years,
under certain circumstances can be reduced to an amazing 33 years. However,
what the YECs fail to appreciate is that the rhenium atoms are fully ionised. Had the creationists
bothered to read the paper, they would have found out that the paper was
referring to conditions within a star:
However, one
uncertainty in its calibration has been pointed out by Takahashi et al.: 187 Re may become highly ionized in
the hot plasma of a star, and bound-state β- decay may decrease the
half-life from 42.3 +/- Gyr by more than 9 orders of magnitude.[23]
This paper has zero relevance to radiometric
dating on the Earth, unless one’s idea of Earth is the hot plasma inside a
star. Decay constants, even when the source isotope is subjected to extremes of
pressure, temperature and electromagnetic fields remain constant to within a
fraction of a percent.[24]
Finally, even if decay rates
could be accelerated by several orders of magnitude, this would result in a
considerably increased rate of release of heat and radiation which would melt
the crust of the Earth, and subject any living creature to lethal doses of
radiation. Even YECs acknowledge this problem. Larry Vardiman, a YEC involved
in RATE (Radioisotopes and the Age of the Earth), a YEC project which attempted
to show that decay constants had accelerated during Earth history noted:
Of greater concern to both
supporters and skeptics of the RATE project is the issue of how to dispose of
the tremendous quantities of heat generated by accelerated decay during the
Genesis Flood. The amount of heat produced by a decay rate of a million times
faster than normal during the year of the Flood could potentially vaporize the
earth’s oceans, melt the crust, and obliterate the surface of the earth.[25]
Vardiman made two attempts to
wave away the problem. His first was to declare that God would take away the
heat and radiation, which needless to say is a copout, particularly since the
YECS call themselves scientific
creationists. If the YECs try to invoke accelerated rates of radioactive decay
to worm out of the problem they post to their YEC worldview, then the burden of
proof lies on them to show how this problem can be solved, rather than invoke a
miracle when cornered. His second was an appeal to fringe scientist Russell
Humphreys:
Dr. Russell Humphreys, a member of the RATE
group, has suggested one possible mechanism that may explain this dilemma. He
has found evidence, both scientific and scriptural, that cooling of the earth
by the expansion of the cosmos may have occurred simultaneously with the heat
produced by accelerated decay.
Humphreys’ assertions are not
shared outside of the YEC community. In fact, they have been rebutted in two[26],[27]papers
written by physicists who are also Christians. The YEC claims against
radiometric dating are not taken seriously both because they are scientifically
vacuous, and because they are based on theological, rather than scientific objections.
Pearce’s fourth point fails to
address any more evidence for an old earth, but merely piles on the rhetoric:
Radioactive decay cannot show beyond any
doubt that the planet is several billions of years old, because man wasn’t
there to verify it!
This response is pathetic. We
weren’t there, but the rocks we test most certainly were, and as the methods on
which radiometric dating are based are quite solid, as has been shown, we can
have every confidence in the answers. One wonders whether Pearce accepts the conclusions
of archaeology, history, textual criticism or forensic pathology, given that he
wasn’t there to verify any of these events.
Pearce’s comment further
degenerates into farce when he asserts:
The evidence can be interpreted to point to
billions of years if that is one’s viewpoint. Equally, with a Biblical
viewpoint, one can show the falseness of the assumptions that have produced a
long-age interpretation.
This is ludicrous nonsense. Take
the distribution of radionuclides in the Earth’s crust for example. Excluding
those which are generated naturally, we see no radionuclides with a half life
less than 80 million years. One does not need an a priori commitment to an old earth to recognise that this means
the Earth has existed for so long that all the short-lived radionuclides have
decayed away. However, the YEC, who is committed a priori to a young Earth cannot honestly explain this data within
his worldview. The only options are to assert that this distribution has
occurred solely by chance, and the odds of this occurring are so remote as to
be negligible, or that God has deliberately created a young earth to look old
by planting only long-lived radionuclides into the crust. This view, needless
to say, turns God into a liar and trickster.
Unfortunately, his final sentence
suggests very strongly that Pearce gives serious consideration to the belief that
the Earth was created with an appearance of age:
They take no account of a worldwide flood, nor of a God who created a mature earth with, for example, fruit trees already bearing fruit.
The reference to a worldwide
flood is irrelevant as Pearce provides no evidence for a worldwide flood, let alone a reason as to how a worldwide flood
would alter decay rates or somehow make a young Earth look old. The reference
to a ‘mature earth’ ignores the fact that there is no reason why God would need
to create an Earth with a faked history, complete with strata whose relative
ages correlated perfectly with absolute ages derived from radiometric dating,
along with fossils showing large-scale evolutionary change.
Pearce asserts that “this statement
also ignores the extensive evidence indicating a young earth” but he provides
no references to this ‘extensive evidence indicating a young earth”. Just the
radionuclide distribution alone makes a mockery of his claim, let alone the
fact that there is in fact overwhelming evidence for an ancient Earth.[28] One is
simply left shaking one’s head in disbelief at his claim that:
The assumptions on which long ages are built
are being constantly challenged by more recent findings which throw strong
doubts on their validity. There is so
much evidence to show that the present isn’t the key to the past as was
thought.
Pearce of course neglects to
provide any references to support his assertion, and as we’ve seen, the special
creationist arguments against an old Earth have been well refuted. Given his
demonstrated ignorance of the basics of biology and geology, Pearce simply has
lost the right to be taken seriously on this subject.
It is embarrassing to see someone so utterly ignorant of biology and geology not only make a fool of himself in public, but score an own goal for opponents of our faith.
It is embarrassing to see someone so utterly ignorant of biology and geology not only make a fool of himself in public, but score an own goal for opponents of our faith.
Pearce sententiously declares
that:
Let’s not be afraid to stand up for the clear
teaching of the Bible and show the strength of our case.
Pearce’s case is feeble, and an
embarrassment to our faith. Augustine’s comments in The Literal Meaning of Genesis are not a little appropriate:
Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing
for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy
Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to
prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in
a Christian and laugh it to scorn. The shame is not so much that an ignorant
individual is derided, but that people outside the household of the faith think
our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for
whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticised and
rejected as unlearned men.
If they find a Christian mistaken in a field
which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions
about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning
the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven,
when they think their pages are full of falsehoods on facts which they
themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason?
Reckless and incompetent expounders of holy Scripture
bring untold trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren when they are caught in
one of their mischievous false opinions and are taken to task by those who are
not bound by the authority of our sacred books. For then, to defend their
utterly foolish and obviously untrue statements, they will try to call upon
Holy Scripture for proof and even recite
from memory many passages which they think support their position, although “they understand neither
what they say nor the things about which they make assertion.”
Amen.
[1] Letters: Don Pierce The Christadelphian (2013) 150:533
[2] Boggs S Principles
of Sedimentology and Stratigraphy (2006: Pearson Education) p xvii
[3]
Letters: Don Pearce The
Christadelphian (2013) 150:534
[4] Young,
D.A. “Scripture in the Hands of Geologists (Part One)” Westminster Theological Journal (1987) 49:23–24.
[5] Letters: Don Pierce The Christadelphian (2013) 150:534
[6] Schneider TD Evolution of biological information (2000) Nucleic
Acids Research (2000) 28:2794-2799
[7] ibid, p 2799
[9] Franceschini G, Sirtori CR, Capurso A, et al.
A-I Milano apoprotein: decreased high density lipoprotein cholesterol levels
with significant lipoprotein modifications and without clinical atherosclerosis
in an Italian family. J Clin Invest. 1980;66:892–900.
[10] Sirtori C.R. et al “Cardiovascular Status of
Carriers of the Apolipoprotein A-IMilano Mutant” Circulation. 2001;103:1949-1954.
[11] Shah P.K. et al “High-Dose Recombinant
Apolipoprotein A-IMilano Mobilizes Tissue Cholesterol and Rapidly Reduces
Plaque Lipid and Macrophage Content in Apolipoprotein E–Deficient Mice” Circulation.
2001;103:3047-3050.
[12] Stevens J.C. et al “Dating the origin of the
CCR5-Delta32 AIDS-resistance allele by the coalescence of haplotypes.” Am J
Hum Genet. 1998 Jun;62(6):1507-15.
[13] Ohno S “Birth of a unique enzyme from an alternative
reading frame of the preexisting, internally repetitious coding sequence” Proc.
Natl. Acad. Sci. USA (1984) 81:2421-2425
[14] . Blount Z.D., Borland C.Z., Lenski R.E.
"Historical contingency and the evolution of a key innovation in an
experimental population of Escherichia coli" Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci.
USA 2008 105:7899-7906
[15] Thornton J.W. "Evolution of vertebrate steroid receptors
from an ancestral estrogen receptor by ligand exploitation and serial genome
expansions" Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA (2001) 98:5671-5676
[16] . Bridgham J.T., Carroll S.M., Thornton J.W. “Evolution of Hormone-Receptor
Complexity by Molecular Exploitation” Science (2006) 312:97-101
[17] Fraser J.A. et al "Chromosomal
Translocation and Segmental Duplication in Cryptococcus neoformans"
Eukaryotic Cell (2005) 4:401-406
[18] Kellis M, Birren B.W, Lander E.S. “Proof and
evolutionary analysis of ancient genome duplication in the yeast Saccharomyces
cerevisiae” Nature (2004) 428:617-624
[19] Allegre CJ Isotope
Geology (2008: Cambridge
University Press) p 59
[20] ibid, p 61.
I remain sceptical that YECs will therefore argue that the true age of rocks is
older than the date given by
radiometric dating.
[21] Dalrymple, G. Brent, 1991. The Age of the Earth.
(1991: California: Stanford University
Press) p 1
[22] Bosch, F.; Faestermann,
T.; Friese, J.; Heine, F.; Kienle, P.; Wefers, E.; Zeitelhack, K.; Beckert, K. et al. "Observation of bound-stateβ– decay of fully ionized 187Re:187Re-187OsCosmochronometry". Physical Review Letters (1996) 77:5190–5193.
[23] ibid, p
5190
[24] Emery, G.T. "Perturbation of Nuclear DecayRates". Annual Review of Nuclear Science (ACS Publications) (1972) 22:165–202.
[25] Vardiman L “Rate in Review: Unsolved Problems” http://www.icr.org/article/rate-review-unresolved-problems/
[26] Morton G, Murphy GL "Flaws in a Young-Earth CoolingMechanism" Reports of the National
Center for Science Education (2004)
24.1, 31
[27] Pitts JB "Nonexistence of Humphreys’ “Volume Cooling”for Terrestrial Heat Disposal by Cosmic Expansion" Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith (2009) 61:23-28
[28] Dalrymple, op cit.
