The View from Number 80

Cartoon Creation - Even the very best efforts of Creationists tend to have a make-believe air about them - like a sort of biblical theme park. Some have seen this as a result of dumbing things down to make them more palatable. This is not true - their misinterpretation of Earth's ancient past is not dumbed down - it is just dumb. The pages discussed below are from a typical example of this cartoon-like view of the past, by Steve Grohman of Creation Seminar Ministries, who, depressingly, "speaks over 450 times each year on the subject of Creation vs. Evolution in churches, public and private schools, camps, prisons and on television and radio." My, he is a busy soul. He, and his family, travel the United States "so that people can be aware of the misinformation which has permeated and is permeating our society in a demonic attempt to lead men to deny God's word." Or to put it another way, he is spreading a travesty of what is known from biblical scholarship, geology and palaeontology. While abominating these latter sciences Grohman still tries to give a scientific gloss to his claims.

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Earth, Jnr. -  On the page called It's A Young Earth he lists what he considers to be evidence from various categories, Earth, History, Space and Biology, to support his case. It would be very time-consuming answering every item in each category individually, as Grohman's schooling, or at least the part where he was paying attention, did not get as far as it should. He seems almost totally unaware of plate tectonics, the still as yet not fully understood process whereby the surface of the Earth is recycled. Although the exact detail of the mechanism involved is still a matter of debate there is no doubt that plate tectonics takes place. This alone sweeps away much of his "evidence" such as "The erosion rate of the continents is such that they would erode to sea level in less than 14,000,000 years" and "Only a small amount of sediment is now on the ocean floor, indicating only a few thousand years of accumulation." It is after this last claim that he feels he has to say "This embarrassing fact explains why the continental drift theory is vitally important to evolutionists." Continental Drift is the original name for the theory that later became plate tectonics but things have moved on considerably since Wegener first coined the term back in 1915. To call modern plate tectonics by the old name of continental drift is an indication of just when Grohman stopped taking in any information that did not fit - sometime in the late 1960s or early 70s would be perhaps about right. As for evidence being "embarrassing", this is an odd term to use. Embarrassing perhaps if you are talking about a matter of blind faith - interesting, challenging and intriguing if you are talking about the application of the scientific method. Plate tectonics also takes care of his point "The oceans are getting saltier. If they were billions of years old, they would be much saltier than they are now." Not after the water has been subducted and recycled through volcanoes as vapor. Grohman's claim that the Earth's magnetic field is shrinking is also based on outdated and superseded research of Thomas G. Barnes or the wacky ideas of D. Russell Humphreys - but as references are not supplied it is hard to tell. As for his suggestion "The Sahara desert is expanding. It could easily have been formed in a few thousand years. See any earth science textbook." what exactly is he trying to get at? It is now well-known that the Sahara is not a long-extant feature, certainly not on a geological time scale - recent radar imagery from the space shuttle has revealed the underlying riverbeds and topography of an older, now sand-submerged landscape - evidence from early rock art confirms this. So, just what is his point?

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History - The section called History, which has three pieces of evidence, is even less convincing. Grohman says "The oldest known historical records are less than 6000 years old." Historical records, a term, incidentally, he does not define, whether they are kinglists, prayers, curses, invoices, tallies, or even a diary, are surely proof solely of writing of some kind - archaeological evidence of humans and their ancestors goes back much, much further. He also states "Many ancient cultures have stories of an original creation in the recent past and a worldwide Flood. Over 250 of these Flood legends are now known." Creation myths do tend to be universal  - so why should we prefer Grohman's fundamentalist Christian version over any other? As for flood legends (he doesn't say where his 250 figure originates) - flooding is a fact of life for folk living near major rivers, deltas, and/or the coast, also, perhaps, some of the earliest tales carry a trace of memory, of events at the end of the last Ice Age - melting ice tends to cause floods, often devastating ones. Natural floods are certainly easier to swallow than the thought of the God of Noah murdering practically everyone by drowning them. His last point he produces like some trump card, "Biblical dates (his emphasis) add up to about 6000 years". This is obviously supposed to link up with his first point about historical records being less than 6000 years old. There are several wrong things here. The Biblical dates to which he refers are open to wide interpretation. When dealing with the adding up of lifespans in a long list,  X begat Z who begat W who begat Y etc. etc. which is the method, in the main, by which his 6000 years is calculated, how do you set the length of a generation? What was the life expectancy in early Mesopotamia or Canaan? This 6000 years figure was originally arrived at by one Archbishop Usher in 1654, who, after totalling up all the lifespans and "begat lists", reckoned the Earth was created October 26, 4004 BC, 9:00 am. Such precision is impressive - especially when you consider the amount of guesswork involved - not to mention that some folk like Methuselah lived to the grand old age of 969 - which no doubt Grohman considers an unassailable fact.

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Space - The Space section is as riddled with errors and ignorance as the others. Just to take a couple of examples "The Shrinking Sun limits the earth-sun relationship to less than "millions of years." The sun is losing both mass and diameter. Changing the mass would upset the fine gravitational balance that keeps the earth just the right distance for life to survive." Firstly it is a mistake to project into the past any shrinking of the Sun - you would need to observe millions or billions of years to form a conclusion. If shrinking is observed now (it doesn't seem to be) it would be idiotic to extrapolate that into the past - a more likely explanation is that the Sun's size oscillates over relatively short periods. This shrinking idea is reminiscent of the state of Grohman's knowledge of plate tectonics - mired in the past. He seems to be harking back to the idea of Helmholtz and others that the Sun's energy came from gravitational contraction - in fact in Helmholtz's day this seemed the only likely possibility. However since Helmholtz's 1854 theory we have discovered nuclear fusion which accounts for the Sun's prodigious energy output - in fact the Sun's size is maintained by a balance of gravitational contraction and the expansion of nuclear fusion. This "cutting-edge" 1930's science seems to have passed Grohman by - perhaps he should try looking up from his bible now and again.

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Cherry Picking - One of the basic problems with Grohman's approach to his "evidence" is that he seems unconcerned about providing any references for his claims. It is funny, when these characters quote the Bible, they are sure to back it up with chapter and verse, thereby adding an air of verisimilitude, but when they make pseudoscientific claims, references to original research are oddly missing. Grohman's Young Earth page contains not one reference, apart from a passing mention of Astronomy magazine when he states "In fact the Hubble Space Telescope is aiding creationists as opposed to the evolutionists as it continues to discredit their theories. You can see just about any edition of Astronomy magazine published over the last few years for verification of this." It is likely the folks at Astronomy would be surprised by Grohman's citation to say the least. Considering that Hubble peers billions of years into the past of our Cosmos how it can support a Creation only 6000 years years old is puzzling. But like all people who are putting forward a position based only on belief and faith it is OK for Grohman to cherry pick the data that can be made to fit - and ignore the rest.

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Biology -The Biology section is almost jaw-dropping in it's inanity. No calculations are given but Grohman reckons "The current population of earth (6 billion souls) could easily be generated from eight people (survivors of the Flood) in less than 4000 years." Whether the math is correct or not doesn't matter - the statement itself proves absolutely nothing. The claims that the oldest living tree is 4300 years old or the age of the oldest coral reef is less than 4000 years, again are not backed up by any evidence. In fact the oldest tree is likely to be a bristlecone pine called, fittingly enough, Methuselah. It is over 4700 years old. What the ages of trees and coral reefs have to do with the Young Earth is not clear - and no enlightenment is forthcoming from Grohman. His fourth point in this section is equally baffling, on two counts "DNA is 99.9% alike in all people". One is what relevance does this have for the Young Earth argument? None. More uncomfortably for the Creationist is that roundabout 98% per cent of our DNA is identical to that of chimpanzees. This subject is definitely not explored by Grohman. His idea of a clincher is point 5. " All things reproduce "after his kind." As simple as this is, remember all biology textbooks teach that everything that is alive today arose from something else through evolutionary processes. There is no evidence for this. But plenty of evidence that everything reproduces as the Bible states "after his kind." Grohman seems incapable of understanding that quoting the Bible is not evidence. Those of us who find the collection of folk tales, myths and highly partisan history that is the bible fascinating as a light on the beliefs of the people of that era do not feel obliged to believe it is irrefutable fact - you need blind faith for that. Time and again the Creationists spout verses from the Bible as though they have the same status as evidence for a theory as properly peer-reviewed research. They do not - and merely parroting the Bible's contents impresses only those who believe already. To this observer they might as well quote the Bhagavad- Gita or Homer's Iliad. It seems that there is a game of numerology going on here on the "It's A Young Earth" page. First you state the age of the Earth according to Usher, then you try and assemble as many pieces of "evidence" as you can find, never mind if they are out of date, misinterpreted or just plain wrong, you then use the firm grasp of faith to squeeze them for dates in the right range, ignore any contradictions, compare them to the Usher age, add in some biblical quotes and hey presto - a Young Earth argument!

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Lizard Lies - Creationists believe they are on a mission from God to convince us all that evolution is a completely inaccurate description of how life on Earth came to be as we see it today. Because they are on a divine mission their standards of evidence are not those that are espoused by scientists or practically anyone else. Lying and deliberate misrepresentation are perfectly permissible if used in the service of their cause - even, or especially, when aimed at children. A typical example is this page from Grohman, Meet Our Dinosaurs, which is at once ridiculous and perturbing. It shows items featured in a "Mobile Creation Science Museum" - the items being a collection of lizards used to explain away the uncomfortable fact that some creatures that once existed are no more. Thanks to Jurassic Park dinosaurs are very much part of an average kid's world - the problem is how to explain them in the context of an Earth that is a mere 6,000 years old? Show them a bunch of lizards and tell some lies seems to the cunning answer. It is stated here that reptiles never stop growing - in fact they do seem to grow most of their lives but the rate slows so as to be almost imperceptible. (American alligators can live to be 50 or more years old but their rate of growth is not constant and tails off...) Using biblical authority (what else) the line is that everything lived longer in the pre-Flood world. So imagine - what if ordinary lizards lived to Methusaleh-type ages and never stop growing? Yes, you guessed it - dinosaurs. This simplistic kindergarten reasoning is typical of the "science" in Creation Science - as is getting even the simplest information wrong. One exhibit is an iguana called Owen. "We named him Owen because Richard Owen first coined the term "dinosaur" or terrible lizard back in 1841. The first dinosaur fossil ever assembled looked just like an iguana; therefore, they named it an Iguanadon. Owen is the modern day descendant to the dinosaur we commonly call the iguanadon." Grohman is correct in that Richard Owen invented the word dinosaur (not one of his greatest achievements as most dinosaurs were not particularly terrible and were certainly not lizards.) But having gotten one thing right he goes and spoils it. The name iguanodon is actually formed from IGUANA - from the Spanish name for the lizard and DON from the Greek odon/odont meaning tooth. Far from deriving from the appearance of the "first dinosaur fossil ever assembled" it was first assigned to a single tooth, which superficially looked like that of an iguana. There is no connection between the dinosaur and the lizard - except in the minds of creationists struggling, and failing, to appear scientific. Saying " Owen is the modern day descendant to the dinosaur we commonly call the iguanadon." is an error and an error based on ignorance of, shall we say, biblical proportions. It would have taken Grohman a few minutes to ascertain the truth - but then it is not the truth that he is after. Even this pales besides the proof offered that the Bearded Dragon (Pogona vitticeps) is the "modern day descendent to the anklyosaurus dinosaur." In order to support this statement the only evidence offered is a picture of a bearded dragon next to a plastic toy ankylosaurus! Apart from the stunning stupidity of this concept of proof, in the picture the toy and the lizard have only a passing resemblance, to the extent that both are scaly, tailed quadrupeds. Now the invention of the new discipline of "toyshop palaeontology" can be added to the other infantile achievements of Creation Science.

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No Laughing Matter - All the above would be funny if it were not so dangerous and sad. These clowns are trying, and not just in the US, to have their fantasies either replace proper science or be taught on an equal basis. In a world that is totally reliant on science and technology - how else does Grohman think his "6 billion souls" manage to survive? - large numbers of people are turning to make-believe and are refusing to learn how the real world works. For example, where do these people think the new antibiotic-resistant diseases come from? They have evolved in an arms race with nature that we must win. Scientific research is the way to wage this battle - an approach based on evidence not faith. Saying that harmful things such as methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus are made by Satan is not helpful. Learning biology is. This is not a matter of denying a person the right to worship and believe as they wish - it is a matter of stopping them telling YOU what to believe via their subversion of the education system. Fairy tales may be comforting and make you feel good - but they are no way to try and organize, care for, and live peaceably on a crowded planet in the 21st century.

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No Answers - the page called Your Answers manages to get a whole lot of things wrong. A trivial error is that these are not "your answers", they are Grohman's - ostensibly to some nice leading questions emailed to him. The questions are likely Grohman's too - it is obvious how some of them set up little straw men for him to knock down. Some are just so bizarre they illustrate the special pleading and mental gymnastics needed to believe Genesis as literal fact. Question "Was there rain before Noah's flood?" Answer "There is no mention of rain prior to the flood. In the original creation the water came from streams, rivers and a mist from the ground as told in Genesis 2:5, 6 & 10." So did the whole Earth have some kind of divine sprinkler system - or was it just in that archetypal gated community, the Garden of Eden? Question "Why do so many believe so strongly in evolution?" Answer "There are a variety of reasons why many people believe strongly in evolution including social and cultural pressures. But God's word has the real answer to this question... The reason is that man is rebellious and opposes the rules of his Creator over his life." Kind of makes you wonder why God made such a rebellious creature in the first place. Perhaps he enjoys the intellectual challenge - as opposed to non-stop worship from a bunch of subservient sheep. (80 is reminded of Woody Allen's remark "To YOU I'm an atheist; to God, I'm the Loyal Opposition.") The final answers to the question asking "What is Social Darwinism?" reveal Grohman's real fears. Social Darwinism is a good example of one of the straw men mentioned above. It is a discredited idea from the 19th century philosopher Herbert Spencer and is no longer taken seriously - except by Creationists who like to frighten themselves with it. It was an attempt to apply Darwin's theories to society that was often a thinly disguised racism. No evolutionist today would subscribe to the idea at all. This does not stop Grohman, for having fashioned his own bogey man he can then attribute wicked ideas to him. This where the Creationist's fears are given shape - according to them Social Darwinism is " The idea that man is nothing more than a higher sort of animal." and "The idea that soul, spirit, and eternal life are but chemical actions of the brain." This what they are so scared of, that they are not God's masterpiece but just one more primate, albeit an imaginative, clever and destructive one. In order to hide from their fear they wish to tear down the advances of the last three hundred years or so and hunker down, clutching the Bible and trying to follow the rules and precepts of an Iron Age tribal society surrounded by an increasingly crowded and complicated world.

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Priceless Talk - An excellent resource packed with information is the Talk.Origins Archive. It is "a collection of articles and essays, most of which have appeared in talk.origins (a Usenet newsgroup) at one time or another. The primary reason for this archive's existence is to provide mainstream scientific responses to the many frequently asked questions (FAQs) that appear in the talk.origins newsgroup and the frequently rebutted assertions of those advocating intelligent design or other creationist pseudosciences."  (These archives serve as a good reference for 80's statements in this newsletter and themselves contain links to original research.) There are reams of data here addressing the claims of the Grohmans of this world and others. The FAQ page alone is priceless. At one time 80 would have considered many of the questions here to be either fatuous, ignorant or stupid - which is an unfair assessment. When people have not been exposed to the scientific method, have never been allowed to question even the more unlikely bible stories, and are bombarded by pseudoscience of all kinds, how can they tell what is true and what is little more than wishful thinking. To illustrate, not long ago 80 helped a friend with a small part of her studies. The main course of study was completely unrelated to religion but the particular college had, as a compulsory component, a section on Christian Philosophy. A lot of the work was online with discussion groups. One of the most eye-opening of these was after the class had been asked to watch a videotaped science feature. Called Cosmic Voyage it was produced by the Smithsonian Institution and made a good attempt to show humanity's place in the vast and awe-inspiring Universe that science has revealed. It was a fine documentary with excellent images and computer animations, plus a script that was accessible without being condescending. How did the class take it? Almost to a person they found it baffling, frightening and unbelievable. Why? Because it contradicted much that they had learned through the school system, church and at home.

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Challenge It - To read their discussions online was worrying and saddening - these were young people, mostly in their late teens, who had little or no idea of how science or critical thinking worked. Instead of being excited, inspired or even challenged by our present concept of the Universe and our place therein they were puzzled - and frightened. You could expect such a reaction if you plucked someone out of the Middle Ages and confronted them with this view - but these were supposedly well-educated young people from the richest nation on the planet. It was as if Copernicus, the Enlightenment and all that followed had not happened. They were happy with the toys that science and technology had provided - the computer they used for coursework, their TVs, cellphones and DVD players, but they had little or no inkling of the knowledge and understanding that underpinned the invention of such things. They were content to use the technology of today but still operated mentally in a way that would have been familiar two hundred years and more ago. That people can be turned out as manifestly ill-prepared for the real world as these were is a very worrying thing. Consider how much, much worse it would be if the fundamentalists and Creationists succeed in interfering with school textbooks to promote their own narrow view. Some scientists, who should know better, choose not to be debate with Creationists (or the promoters of "Intelligent Design" which is neither but merely Creationism dressed-up, apeing science) because to do so would be to share a platform with them and thereby be seen to be dignifying their views. This is wrong - we should not only debate with them but, given the chance, jump upon every instance of this dangerous tendency. Phone TV and radio stations, write letters to newspapers and magazines - make yourself heard. If you think their evidence is wrong, then say so - but be prepared to back it up with your own evidence. This is where something like the information contained in Talk.Origins is worth so much - but it is only useful if it is actually used.

80 has looked at Creationists before in Dinosaur Hell Ark and also Unintelligent Design and Creation Cretinism and the case of Micah Spradling.

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Quotes

"The American creationist movement has entirely bypassed the scientific forum and has concentrated instead on political lobbying and on taking its case to a fair-minded electorate... The reason for this strategy is overwhelmingly apparent: no scientific case can be made for the theories they advance." Kenneth R Miller

"By any reasonable measure of achievement, the faith of the Enlightenment thinkers in science was justified. Today the greatest divide within humanity is not between races, or religions, or even, as is widely believed, between the literate and illiterate. It is the chasm that separates scientific from prescientific cultures." Edward O. Wilson

"[T]he true natural sciences lock together in theory and evidence to form the ineradicable technical base of modern civilization. The pseudosciences satisfy personal psychological needs... but lack the ideas or the means to contribute to the technical base." Edward O. Wilson

"If we want to postulate a deity capable of engineering all the organized complexity in the world, either instantaneously or by guiding evolution, that deity must already have been vastly complex in the first place. The creationist, whether a naive Bible-thumper or an educated bishop, simply postulates an already existing being of prodigious intelligence and complexity. If we are going to allow ourselves the luxury of postulating organized complexity without offering an explanation, we might as well make a job of it and simply postulate the existence of life as we know it!" Richard Dawkins

"Nearly all peoples have developed their own creation myth, and the Genesis story is just the one that happened to have been adopted by one particular tribe of Middle Eastern herders. It has no more special status than the belief of a particular West African tribe that the world was created from the excrement of ants. All these myths have in common that they depend upon the deliberate intentions of some kind of supernatural being." Richard Dawkins

"Do you think that, if you were granted omnipotence and omniscience and millions of years in which to perfect your world, you could produce nothing better than the Ku Klux Klan, the Fascisti. and Mr. Winston Churchill? Really I am not much impressed with the people who say: "Look at me: I am such a splendid product that there must have been design in the universe." Bertrand Russell

Concerning the argument from design, "You all know Voltaire's remark, that obviously the nose designed to be such as to fit spectacles. That sort of parody has turned out to be not nearly so wide of the mark as it might have adapted to their environment. It is not that their environment was made to be suitable to them, but that they grew to be suitable to it, and that is the basis of adaptation. There is no evidence of design about it." Bertrand Russell

"If you think your belief is based upon reason, you will support it by argument rather than by persecution, and will abandon it if the argument goes against you. But if your belief is based upon faith, you will realize that argument is useless, and will therefore resort to force either in the form of persecution or by stunting or distorting the minds of the young in what is called 'education.'" Bertrand Russell

"Faith, n. Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel." Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary (downloadable free edition from The Guthenberg Project)