Defending Creation

Blog

The Story of Everything

The movie “The Story of Everything” is out. It’s an excellent documentary that covers the arguments in the book “The Return of the God Hypothesis”.

The documentary challenges viewers with this question: What is the best explanation for the universe we observe?

Does what we observe indicate purposeful action or blind, impersonal forces?

The key observed evidences that are part of the argument:

  1. There is scientific evidence that the universe had a beginning. The implications of this are enormous. Things that begin to exist have a cause….and that cause has to be separate from and outside of the universe.
  2. The universe is fine tuned for life. Hundreds of physical factors must be precisely tuned or life doesn’t exist. Fine tuning implies a fine-tuner.
  3. Life, at the cellular level, is comprised of systems of molecular machines that work together in an integrated system. Integration implies an integrator.
  4. DNA is digitally encoded information. The only known source of digitally encoded information is an intelligent mind.
  5. The staggering difficulty of a Darwinian origin of life.

There are other arguments as well, such as gratuitous beauty.

I’m happy to report that the film didn’t break any new ground for users of this website. None of the content presented conflicts with the content of this website, although I don’t emphasize the fine-tuning much (because I’m a critic of the Big Bang theory).

Great Documentary. Highly recommended.

  • The Story of Everything

    The movie “The Story of Everything” is out. It’s an excellent documentary that covers the arguments in the book “The Return of the God Hypothesis”.

    The documentary challenges viewers with this question: What is the best explanation for the universe we observe?

    Does what we observe indicate purposeful action or blind, impersonal forces?

    The key observed evidences that are part of the argument:

    1. There is scientific evidence that the universe had a beginning. The implications of this are enormous. Things that begin to exist have a cause….and that cause has to be separate from and outside of the universe.
    2. The universe is fine tuned for life. Hundreds of physical factors must be precisely tuned or life doesn’t exist. Fine tuning implies a fine-tuner.
    3. Life, at the cellular level, is comprised of systems of molecular machines that work together in an integrated system. Integration implies an integrator.
    4. DNA is digitally encoded information. The only known source of digitally encoded information is an intelligent mind.
    5. The staggering difficulty of a Darwinian origin of life.

    There are other arguments as well, such as gratuitous beauty.

    I’m happy to report that the film didn’t break any new ground for users of this website. None of the content presented conflicts with the content of this website, although I don’t emphasize the fine-tuning much (because I’m a critic of the Big Bang theory).

    Great Documentary. Highly recommended.

  • Answering a Smear

    Vaughn Mancha is an Old Earth Creationist who frequently posts on Facebook.

    Here are snaps of three of his posts, in which he smears Young Earth Creationists. In them he locates the foundation of Young Earth Creationism in the visions of a New England woman some 160 years ago. In another post, he finds that the work of young earth creationist Henry Morris is also rooted in these same visions.

    Mr. Mancha implies that people who think the earth is less than multiple billions of years old are kooks and heretics, or lack the discernment to know this.

    In Mr. Mancha’s world, Young Earth Creationists are not trying to interpret the Bible as best they can; instead, they are merely automatons following delusional people.

    Young earth creationists take the Bible seriously. If you take the Word of God seriously, you would look to it for clues on how old the earth is. An honest evaluation of the text of scripture might generate a range of possible ages of the earth.

    But Old Earth Creationists obediently limit their estimates to a range acceptable to the secular, pagan culture.

    They let pagans determine how the Word of God is to be interpreted.

    It isn’t surprising that the secular, pagan culture wants to set the delimiters.

    But it is mystifying to me that there are professing Christians who are eager to comply with the opinions of people who are devoted to a narrative that excludes the God of the Bible.

  • Science: Dispassionate, rational and logical — right?

    “Scientists often insist that they follow the data wherever it leads. A study has suggested, however, that their politics may often also guide them.”

    In a study of the effect of political outlook on science, 71 teams of academics were independently given the same data set and asked to develop findings based on that data.

    https://www.thetimes.com/uk/science/article/do-scientists-follow-data-or-politics-0pc30zqmr

    What the academics did not know is that they were grouped by political philosophies.

    The academics ended up developing “wildly different results” based on the same data set.

    The point is that even when a scientist claims to be operating purely in the realm of ideologically neutral science, the scientist’s world view always pokes through.

    Even when dealing with hard data sets, there are always judgement calls to be made. The world view strongly influences these judgements.

    This study was on the politics of immigration in Britain, but the point is equally valid for historical science efforts such as estimating the age of the earth.

    The critics of young earth creationists essentially claim that their science is trustworthy and those who oppose them are ideologically biased.

    Truthfully: everyone’s science is biased. Some of us are willing to admit it.

  • Uniformitarian Assumptions, Part 5: Radioactive Decay Rates

    A foundational assumption of the radiometric dating process is that rates of nuclear decay have always been constant.
    If rates were ever different in the past, then estimates based on current decay rates are invalid.

    We now know that decay rates do in fact vary. Here is a report on recent discoveries that solar activity significantly alters decay rates (“It’s a gigantic effect…”):

    https://physicsworld.com/a/the-mystery-of-the-varying-nuclear-decay/

    ICR comments on the experiments here:

    https://www.icr.org/content/fluctuations-show-radioisotope-decay-unreliable

    Secular scientists used radiometrics to estimate the age of the earth at 4.5 billion years old. This is now completely invalid.

    I personally don’t expect anyone to change their mind when confronted with this new evidence. World view assumptions are stubborn things that strongly resist evidence.

    Another, related finding that I did not learn until recently:
    Lab experiments show that nuclear decay can be greatly accelerated given the right conditions.
    See “Billion-Fold Acceleration of Radioactivity Demonstrated in Laboratory”

    https://answersingenesis.org/geology/radiometric-dating/acceleration-of-radioactivity-shown-in-laboratory/

    The significance of this experiment is that 1) accelerated decay is possible and 2) we can’t rule out that the earth has never been through periods of accelerated decay.

  • The Old Earth Creationist, part 2: Harmonization.

    Vaughn Mancha, mentioned in a previous post, states that Old Earth Creationism seeks to harmonize the biblical creation narrative with “the established scientific consensus” of the age of the earth.

    Why would you want to?

    Is it really your belief that the secular scientist has no world view bias? Spare me. The secular scientist is devoted to a narrative that excludes the God of the Bible. (See the World View presentation)

    Do you really think dating methods are reliable? They aren’t. (See the Radiometrics presentation)

    Do you think that denying the plain meaning of scripture is a trivial thing? It isn’t.

    If you harmonize with these people, you’re letting them define the range of possible meanings of the Biblical text.

    And if this is all about preserving your reputation with secular scientists, then you’re delusional.

    Maybe they won’t mock you for young earth views, but they will certainly mock you for the doctrines of the virgin birth and bodily resurrection of Christ.

  • The Old Earth Creationist, part 1: Yom.

    Vaughn Mancha is an Old Earth Creationist who frequently posts on Facebook.
    Here is a snap of one of his posts, in which he defines the key characteristics of Old Earth Creationism.

    Note two major points: the purpose is to harmonize biblical narratives with scientific consensus, and that the “days” in Genesis are actually vast periods of time.

    We’ll start with the second point. The Hebrew word “yom” can mean a regular day, and depending on the context, can also mean something more abstract, like an era. The Answers in Genesis organization points out that since Genesis uses a number with “yom”, the meaning has to be a regular day.

    The clincher for me is Exodus 20:8-11. In that passage, “yom” has to mean that the days of creation week were regular days.

    Your beliefs about the age of the earth should be based on the text of scripture.

  • Uniformitarian Assumptions, Part 4: Dinosaur soft tissue

    Paleontologists went digging for T-Rex dinosaur bones in Montana. In order to transport the bone, they had to break the bone in half. Out spilled bloody soft tissue.

    At the time this happened, absolutely no one thought soft tissue could survive millions of years. The uniformitarian assumption had always been, based on human experience with dead tissue, that the soft tissue would decompose in a matter of a few decades at most.

    After the discovery of soft, bloody dinosaur tissue, did scientists begin to acknowledge that the earth might be young? Of course not. The world view assumption that the earth is millions of years old was never going to be reconsidered. Instead, everyone changed their assumption that bloody soft tissue couldn’t survive deep time. Of course soft tissue lasts millions of years! Happens all the time!

    It was a matter of time before a rescuing device was proposed and adopted: The presence of iron. The problem is the amount of iron available was far too little to create the effects they needed.

    https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/dinosaur-shocker-115306469

    https://answersingenesis.org/dinosaurs/bones/dinosaur-soft-tissue-evolutionists-problem/?srsltid=AfmBOopsjbGQBH_nybuwIPkAQK_G0Oup_5-zNtGbnojzSgyVmnsPdcSe

  • Uniformitarian assumptions, Part 3: Magnetosphere

    The earth’s magnetosphere protects the earth from harmful radiation. The magnetosphere is known to be decreasing in strength at a rate of about 5% per century. If the earth were more that about 10K to 20K years old, the magnetosphere would be too strong to allow life on earth.

    The uniformitarian assumption of the decay of the magnetosphere directly leads to a younger-earth result. I am unaware of any old-earth refutation of these facts.

    https://www.science.org/content/article/earths-waning-magnet

    https://answersingenesis.org/age-of-the-earth/earths-magnetic-decay-proof-young-earth/?srsltid=AfmBOoqf7tzEHr02zXY64iloIWRW04mS2OUj8QNGNs9Cr8I6cjO9FfLY

  • Uniformitarian Assumptions, Part 2: Comets

    Comets lose a measurable amount of mass each time they make a circuit around the sun. The loss of mass is so significant that no comet should last more than 10 trips around the sun – a few thousand years. This is a far shorter life span than allowed by secular estimates.

    The uniformitarian assumption directly translates to a younger-earth result.

    Consequently, advocates of the old-earth hypothesis invented a rescuing device: an imaginary object, the Oort cloud, which serves as a comet reservoir, occasionally sending fresh comets our way.

    There is no observable evidence for the Oort cloud; yet it is fervently believed to exist by people committed to the old-earth hypothesis.

    https://grokipedia.com/page/Oort_cloud

    https://answersingenesis.org/astronomy/comets/oort-cloud-no-evidence-required/?srsltid=AfmBOoo-kj7dXBDhu1JnLm9odRIp-PfBGABlo-Fq9KEzgHiLTqANPdXp

  • Uniformitarian Assumptions, Part 1: Moon recession

    Uniformitarian assumptions are frequently used in creating estimates of the age of the earth and the universe.

    A scientist measures current processes, and extrapolates those processes into the past to make an estimate of the age of the earth.

    A Uniformitarian assumption is an assumption that the way things are right now, are the way things have always been.

    It is a reasonable assumption, to a point, but there are cases where uniformitarian assumptions fail.

    Moon recession is a case where the uniformitarian assumption has a limited range of applicability.

    The moon is known to be receding away from the earth at a rate of 1.5 inches per year. That is the current rate. Physics tells us that the recession rate would have been faster in the past. If we extrapolate backwards, the moon would have been in contact with the earth 1.5 billion years ago.

    No one thinks this happened, because it would have been catastrophic for life on the planet. But if 1.5B years is absurd, then even more so is the standard old-earth assumption of 4.5B years.

    Clearly the uniformitarian assumption is valid only within a limited range, and we don’t really know where that range begins.

    https://www.space.com/moon-drifting-away-from-earth-2-5-billion-years

    https://answersingenesis.org/astronomy/moon/lunar-recession/?srsltid=AfmBOoqWrD1iota4wJGENIz4coVM3GjrYfk36yEwfVSQ2gP8olZRfuMr