The leading young-Earth creationist geologists (the Creation Geology Society) met in Georgia this summer, and they have released abstracts of the following thirteen talks.
- Submarine Liquefied Sediment Gravity Currents: Understanding the Mechanics of the Major Sediment Transportation and Deposition Agent during the Global Flood (S.A. Austin, Institute for Creation Research)
- Persistence of Dolomite in the Coconino Sandstone, Northern and Central Arizona (S. Cheung, R. Strom, & J.H. Whitmore; Calgary Rock and Materials Services, Inc. and Cedarville University)
- Permian Cross-bedded Sandstones and Their Significance for Global Flood Models (P. Garner, Biblical Creation Ministries)
- Deep Ocean Interaction in a Post-Flood Warm Ocean Scenario (S. Gollmer, Cedarville University)
- Potential Mechanisms for the Deposition of Halite and Anhydrite in a Near-critical or Supercritical Submarine Environment (A. Hutchison, Cedarville University)
- Dinosaur Tracks, Eggs, and Bonebeds Explained Early in the Flood (M.J. Oard, Independent Researcher)
- YEC Geology in the Classroom: Educational Materials, Challenges and Needs (M.R. Ross, Liberty University)
- Radiohalos in Multiple, Sequentially-Intruded Phases of the Bathurst Batholith, NSW, Australia: Evidence for Rapid Granite Formation During the Flood (A.A. Snelling, Answers in Genesis)
- Radiocarbon in Permian Coal Beds of the Sydney Basin, Australia (A.A. Snelling, Answers in Genesis)
- How Does an Underwater Debris Flow End? Flow Transformation Evidences Observed within the Lower Redwall Limestone of Arizona and Nevada (D.D. Stansbury, Institute for Creation Research)
- Clay Content: A Simple Criterion for the Identification of Fossil Desiccation Cracks? (J.H. Whitmore & R. Strom; Cedarville University & Calgary Rock and Materials Inc.)
- Preliminary Report and Significance of Grain Size Sorting in Modern Eolian Sands (J.H. Whitmore, Cedarville University)
- Preliminary Report on Sorting and Rounding in the Coconino Sandstone (J.H. Whitmore & S. Maithel, Cedarville University)
I was actually invited to attend this conference by one of the speakers, and wouldn’t mind going some time. Despite my strong belief that young-Earth creationism isn’t necessary Biblically and that “flood geology” doesn’t work, I would hope that our common bond in Christ would prove greater than our differences.
Grace and Peace
HT: Paul Garner
GeoChristian 
The papers are superficial and filled with unsubstantiated presuppositions. For example, the last sentence in #9 is: “This confirms that pre-Flood vegetation buried during the Flood about 4,300 years ago yields dates of 30,000-50,000 radiocarbon years, which is a start towards devising a scheme for recalibrating all published radiocarbon dates.” Enough said.
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An aside: I’ve never met/heard of a YEC’ist who is an igneous petrologist, or a volcanologist (I’ve been in both fields). Just an observation.
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At least some of the papers appear to conflict with each other. Paper #1 [Submarine Liquefied Sediment Gravity Currents: Understanding the Mechanics of the Major Sediment Transportation and Deposition Agent during the Global Flood (S.A. Austin, Institute for Creation Research)] conflicts with paper #3 [Permian Cross-bedded Sandstones and Their Significance for Global Flood Models (P. Garner, Biblical Creation Ministries)].
Paper #1 states “What was the mechanics of the process that transported more than one hundred million cubic miles of sediment during the global flood? Tractive currents and turbidity currents are both inefficient transport agents because sediment must be entrained by fluid turbulence that moves ten times more water than sediment.”
Paper #3 states “Nevertheless, creationists have yet to develop a detailed alternative model of how these sandstones were deposited. It is proposed here that they were formed by rapidly migrating subaqueous sand waves in shallow water under the influence of strong unidirectional currents during a major transgression of the oceans onto the continents.”
BTW – why does paper #3 state “creationists have yet to develop a detailed alternative model of how these sandstones were deposited” when the author is essentially proposing the same thing Austin did back in 1994 in “Grand Canyon Monument to Catastrophe?” As a hydrologist, I look at some of this global sediment transport stuff put out by the Flood geologists and scratch my head.
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Tim (or Geo), for a non-geologist like myself, can you explain how Paper 1 and 3 are in conflict?
Are
“rapidly migrating subaqueous sand waves in shallow water under the influence of strong unidirectional currents during a major transgression of the oceans onto the continents”
the same thing as
“Tractive currents and turbidity currents”
?
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Webmonk, I’m no sedimentologist, but there is a massive difference between sand-wave movement in a shallow water, liquefied sediment. The former would be akin to winde-created dunes, whereas the latter would be more like mudflows.
In general, I have to agree with Tim – a lot of headscratching is recquired. Austin’s paper in #9 is one of the best examples of reasoning with preconceived idea I have ever seen – ironical, because they often accuse their opponents of that. It is a very dishonest paper.
Also, they show an inability to see the big picture – they try and focus on minutae, ignoring the complexity of global geology. Let me explain by using an example:
In Southern Africa, we have archean greenstone belts (sediments, pillow lava’s, island-arc type geologies, follwed by later archean sedimentation (The Witwatersrand and Ventersdorp Supergroups, the former being 8km thick, with abundant evidence of being deposited by fluvial methods into a sea, follwed by the Transvaal Supergroup, which is up to 15km thick in places, containing up to 3km thichk carbonate sequences, which have strong evidence of shallow water deposition, including microbial life such as stromatolites, over wide areas. Within the Transvaalthe carbonates are follwed by the so-called red beds, which are a global phenomenon, and show that the atmosphere had been changed in that oxidising of iron was now possible. This happened through the action of these cyonobacteria – rem,ember that up till this point, after many, many km’s of sediments, there is only evidince for microbial life forms, no complex fossils. After this there are still many, many other groups and formations – eventually, we reach the Karoo Supergroup, which in itself is up to 12km thick, and overlain by a basaltic plateau of 1.4km thickness. The succession goes from glacial (Dwyka), through fluvial (Ecca, this group contains extensive coal deposits, and was formed during the carboniferous, thus of a similar age etc as the coal here in North America), and eventually the upper Beaufort formations (dry terrestial), which also contains the first evidence of Dinosaurs. This is capped off by massive basaltic flows.
After this we have more sedimentation, eventually ending in the very recent Kalahari sands.
Throughout this we see a steady progression in complexity of fossils, recurring climatic cylces, with ice ages, marine incursion, wet, tropical to wet temperate climates, dry, desert climates, massive volcanic events (I did not even mention the intrusion of the massive Bushveld complex, covering an area the size of Ireland, and up to 6km thick – right after the Transvaal Supergroup.)
These creationist geologists have to concentrate on minute details and filter out the big picture, for the big picture cannot fit within their mechanisms, or their timeframe. It is like an attorney pecking away at a paragraph here and a word there in the evidence, while the total volume of evidence fills the Encyclopedia Britannica….
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I also noted a very subtle, yet very important shift in Austin’s paper at #9: Previously, they pooh-poohed radiometric geochronology heavily – now, the word “recalibration” suddenly pops up. Did anybody else pick up on that?
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I think I have the gist of what you’re saying Louis.
For paper 1, his position says that common soil being stirred up into rushing, turbulent, muddy water isn’t sufficient to transport large quantities of soil in the Flood’s timeframe (large as in continent-sized layers many km thick).
Then, in paper 3, he says the Coconino sand which formed the sandstone was laid down by sand carried along by turbulent, rushing, sandy/muddy waters.
Is that it? Or is that not what they’re saying directly? Are they in direct and obvious conflict with each other, or are they putting forward ideas which have background concepts in conflict?
I can understand (to some extent) not realizing background concepts of one paper are in conflict with background concepts of another.
For example, my wife was raised sort of simultaneously in an Assemblies of God church (generally Armenian) and a Reformed Presbyterian church (hard-core TULIP), and never realized until her late teen years that the two views were in conflict.
That sort of thing certainly doesn’t excuse the blindness evidenced by scientists who are supposed to be examining their work/papers and are supposed to be experts in their fields. It does let me understand things a bit, though.
I guess there could be a third option – they realize their papers disagree with each other, but don’t deal with it, just sliding it under the table to serve the larger goal of presenting a unified front on the topic.
My other question is about paper 1 – does it offer some alternative theory about how water managed to transport all that soil and rock if not by “Tractive currents and turbidity currents”?
I haven’t taken any studies in geology, but I can’t think of any other transportation mechanisms by which water could transport soil beyond tractive or turbid water. Maybe somehow carving underneath a huge mass of soil and the soil on top sort of getting pushed along the mud created under it? That seems a bit (ok, more than a bit) impossible, but I really don’t know much on the topic.
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As for “recalibration”, that has its roots in the risible RATE study AiG or ICR put out ten or fifteen years ago.
Basically it says that yes, there is lots of evidence for millions or billions of years worth of radioactive decay AT TODAY’S RATE. They propose that in the past it was much, much higher during the Flood. Ever since then they have toned back attempts to diss radioactive dating as inherently incorrect.
Occasionally there is something like this that comes up showing they haven’t dropped the concept of accelerated radioactive decay. On the other hand, I have seen exactly zero follow up on dealing with the issues caused by such an event.
For example, that much decay compressed into a year would be enough to boil off all the world’s oceans and then liquefy most of the Earth’s crust. In the RATE study they suggest “volumetric cooling” may have carried away the excess heat, but they don’t ever follow up on what that really is or how it would work. I’ve never seen anything since the RATE study to suggest they’ve made any progress on the problems. I suspect they’ve dropped trying to explain it as anything more than a miracle since they’ve run into insurmountable (even for them) physical difficulties with such a nonsensical claim.
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I am particularly struck by the following quotation from #7:
“High school textbooks on the topic (typically for 8th or 9th grade) are developed by non-geologists, and often contain numerous errors and/or are significantly out-of-date with respect to current creation geology. Old-Earth textbooks may be preferable, particularly if the instructor is capable of augmenting the course with YEC geology modules.”
I do not find that encouraging on many fronts, given my daughter is currently using one of these textbooks in her 7th grade earth science at a local Christian school. It is going to be an interesting year as the instructor is strongly YEC and we are definitely not.
Any suggestions on resources for us as parents in dealing with this scenario (I see lots of stuff for YEC parents in a public school setting.)? We don’t want to undermine the teacher’s authority, but want to have our daughter think critically about the arguments against an old earth that are being given to her. Some are obviously flawed (if the earth were old, river deltas/flood plains would have clogged up by now — but the old earth models don’t assume rivers have been in the same place for 4.5B yrs), but others require more geological knowledge than we possess (we don’t see evidence of thick chalk beds being formed today therefore the old ones we see must have been formed in the flood).
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Hi Carol,
There’s a couple good books – both are paperback and available at very reasonable cost – Geochristian has the first shown in the margin – The Bible, Rocks, and Time by Davis Young and Ralph Stearley. Both are geologists and solid Christians. Parts of the book might seem a little advanced for a 7th grader, but if your daughter is ahead scholastically, she might understand most of it. There is also “When Faith & Science Collide” by G. R. Davidson, which is very good and a little more accessible to a 7th grader.
There’s many good online articles your daughter could study along with you on the American Scientific Affiliation (ASA) website:
How Old Is It? How Do We Know? A Review of Dating Methods – Part One: Relative Dating, Absolute Dating, and Non-radiometric Dating Methods, by Davis A. Young
Click to access PSCF12-06Young.pdf
How Old Is It? How Do We Know? A Review of Dating Methods – Part Two: Radiometric Dating: Mineral, Isochron and Concordia Methods, by Davis A. Young
Click to access PSCF3-07Young.pdf
How Old Is It? How Do We Know? A Review of Dating Methods – Part Three: Thermochronometry, Cosmogenic Isotopes, and Theological Implications, by Davis A. Young
Click to access PSCF6-07Young.pdf
Flood Geology and the Grand Canyon: A Critique, by Carol A. Hill and Stephen O. Moshier
Click to access Carol%202.pdf
I’d be remiss if I don’t say that you can find all kinds of useful stuff by skimming through past postings on this blog.
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Hey Carol,
And don’t forget to use these guys as a resource to ask questions! I know I do. When I ran across an AiG article about isochron dating saying it was giving them funky dates that were obviously wrong, so all isochron dating must be fundamentally faulty, I was able to ask Geo a few questions.
(BTW, that article is old, and AiG has since moved to the stance that dating techniques like isochron dating are fine except for a bunch of super-fast radioactive decay during the Flood that is making the dates older than they should be.)
Geo has this thing called “real life” that seems to keep him away from his computer some times, but he has been able to point me to some online resources for different topics.
I’m fairly good at the non-math handling of astronomy and relativity (special and general) from college, though I didn’t go into the field for work or anything. I’m working on learning the geology side of things, and Geo and the others on here like Tim and Louis have been great.
(I hope you guys don’t mind me volunteering you!)
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I’m all for it. I’ve been working as a geologist for well over a decade, have been co-author on a couple of papers, and even ran a geochronology laboratory for some time. Questions can be sent directly to me as well – my address is thescylding at gmail.
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Gotta love Oard’s abstract on dinosaur tracks, nests, and bonebeds. Makes me wonder whether he has ever seen a fossil in his life. “Bonebeds… lack babies and juveniles”? Nope. “Practically all trackways are straight”? Nope. “Baby and young juvenile tracks are rare”? Nope. “Nest structures are rare”? Nope.
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Thanks for all the suggestions. I’m not sure how many resources my daughter would read — unfortunately she is picking up the standard negative attitudes towards any non-YEC position from school. That is my biggest concern in this whole thing. But, I am very interested in them for myself, to better understand the problems with the YEC claims.
I had been eyeing “The Bible, Rocks, & Time.” I’ll definitely get it now, and look into “When Faith and Science Collide.” I do appreciate Geo’s well-thought-out rebuttals to YEC arguments. Thanks also for the reminder to check back issues of ASA’s “Perspectives” journal.
Thanks, too, for the permission to e-mail questions I have. Louis, I like your e-mail address — I am a fan of Beowulf as well.
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P.S. I just went and read the Amazon.com reviews of “When Faith and Science Collide.” I’m sold on that one as well. I foresee an Amazon order in the near future :~)
Thanks again.
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Louis (#5) brings up an excellent point: many of these abstracts focus on localized geological features such as cross-bedding in sandstone or radiohalos in granitic intrusions. But one of the basic problems with YEC “flood geology” is fitting an exceedingly rich geological record into a very short time frame.
In other words: TOO MANY EVENTS, TOO LITTLE TIME.
Louis gave a brief overview of the complex geology of Southern Africa, with volcanic events, igneous intrusions, metamorphism, and a thick sedimentary sequence (Archean through Quaternary) with glacial, shallow marine, fluvial, carbonate, eolian, and coal-forming environments. All geological processes, such as crystallization, sedimentation, growth of coral reefs, and the chemical reactions of metamorphism, inherently take time. Add all of these together, and they cannot all fit into a a single event like Noah’s flood.
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Carol K (#9) brought up a common problem: parents who accept an old Earth whose child is in a Christian school that teaches young-Earth creationism. The parents may be equally committed to the truthfulness of Scripture and the historic truths of Christianity as the school is, but the textbooks and teachers are not at all old-Earth-friendly.
I know exactly where you are coming from, as our children have had teachers and youth leaders who just assumed that the only orthodox viewpoint is young-Earth creationism. Sometimes our kids have put more confidence in their teachers than in their dad.
Here are a few recommendations:
1. State that even though the school and textbook present a 6000 year old Earth, there is a diversity of beliefs about the age of the Earth among Bible-believing Christians.
2. I would focus on what the Bible actually says about creation, and point out that the young-Earth position in many cases goes far beyond what is actually in the pages of Scripture. This is really critical; if this step is skipped then the child will end up with a “The Bible says young; Mom and Dad say old” dilemma.
–The Bible does not say when the Earth was created
–It is possible that the days in Genesis 1 are not literal (as in Gen 2:4 or Ps 90:4), or that they may not be consecutive.
–The Bible does not say that there was no animal death before the fall of humans (I’ve written about this here).
–A close reading of Genesis 6-9 (more careful to the text than YEC interpretations) shows that the author did not describe a global flood, only one that was universal in terms of Noah’s experience of it. Read the flood account and substitute land for earth, sky for heaven, and hill for mountain (all legitimate translations from the Hebrew) and the story takes on a completely different feel.
3. Once a Biblical foundation for an old Earth is laid, then one can talk about the science.
I’m not sure that the books and articles suggested so far would be appropriate for any but the most advanced middle school student. I’m not familiar with When Science and Faith Collide. It looks good, but I don’t know what the reading level is. These books and articles would all be good references for parents and teachers.
One resource I would highly recommend would be a good study Bible, such as the ESV Study Bible or the Apologetics Study Bible for Students. These both give balanced treatments on topics such as the age of the Earth, and the extent of Noah’s flood. I have an older edition of the NIV Study Bible (I think it has been updated) and didn’t think it was nearly as comprehensive on these issues as the ESV Study Bible.
Another good resource (which may be out of print) is the “Examine the Evidence” series by Ralph Muncaster. I really like the little booklet Dinosaurs and the Bible.
The danger, which I’m sure you are aware of, is ending up with a child who is confused. This will take prayer, patience, and hard work.
Not knowing of a good, single resource to recommend to you, I might need to put something together myself.
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I’ll be interested on collaberating on such a project – I’ll email you about it, though I guess it might be a long term project.
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Geo,
You bring up some good points. #2 is an especially good reminder. I think I was assuming it would come along for the ride if we achieved #1. I think you are right in that I should not take it for granted.
These are my goals for my daughter in this area:
1) That she know that we will always love and accept her even if she comes to a different conclusion on origins than we have.
2) That she recognize that Christians who take the Bible seriously do differ on the issue of origins. Disagreeing with the YEC position does not equal liberal apostate.
3) That she understand that the age of the earth is a separate issue from the validity (or not) of evolution. Yes, evolution requires an old earth, but special creation does not require a young earth.
4) That she never adopt the graceless pride (I’m not sure what to call it, beyond sinful attitudes) I have witnessed in some who hold to the YEC position — the disdain with which “evolutionist”is uttered, the lack of common courtesy when dealing with those who disagree, particularly those who also consider themselves Christian, etc.
5) That she be able to think critically about the arguments for and against any origins position, being able to recognize authentic science and authentic faith (to borrow from Richard Bube) and their inauthentic counterparts when she sees them.
6) And, of course, that she continue to run the race of faith with perseverence, holding firm until the end.
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Carol,
Just in case you haven’t heard of it, there is a blog site called Old Earth Creation Homeschool, with recommendations of books and materials suitable for various ages. Look for it here:
http://oldearthcreationism.blogspot.com/
or in the site list on the right side of this blog page.
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Another possible resource — I posted a PowerPoint on slideshare.net covering the issue that is key to Flood geology and young earth creationism: were most of Earth’s fossil-bearing sedimentary rock layers deposited by Noah’s Flood? The URL is:
http://www.slideshare.net/TimH/were-earths-sedimentary-rock-layers-really-deposited-by-noahs-flood
Tim
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Tim,
The equation on slide 22 puzzled me for a couple seconds. Then slide 23-24 almost completely lost me. It probably would have helped to have the lecturing to go along with it. I had to run the numbers myself to make sense of what you were doing.
I came up with slightly different numbers, though not enough to change your point.
I’ll give it a quick summary here to maybe help others:
1609344 meters in a mile, transporting 30 kg/s/meter. (66 lb/s/meter) Over that many meters, that is: 66*1609344= 106,439,885 lbs being moved across the 1000 mile border each second.
A cubic foot of sand weighs about 100 lbs*. A cubic mile weighs (5280*5280*5280*100 = ) 14.7 trillion lbs.
To move one cubic mile (weighing 14.7 trillion lbs)of sand at a rate of 106 million lbs per second, would take 1383 seconds.
In 12 days there are 1,036,800 seconds. Divide that by 1383, and you’ll have the number of cubic miles of sand moved in 12 days. That comes out to 750 cubic miles of sand moved in those 12 days. (which is slightly different than your result, but not enough to change any points)
As you point out in your slides, that is a small fraction of what they require to be moved in that 12 days.
* Gotten from: http://www.reade.com/resources/reference-charts-particle-property-briefings/89-weight-per-cubic-foot-and-specific-gravity
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Hey Webmonk – missing decimal point could be source of the problem – there’s roughly 1609 meters in a mile. I thought of including a slide with the calculations – maybe I should have. BTW – if you download my presentation from SlideShare, do the notes pages show up? I never tried to see if they do.
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Yes, Tim, the notes show up in the Power Point. Thanks for your work on this and on the Creation Conversations site – even if no one else there appreciates it :)
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Whoops, sorry about that. I should have written 1609344 meters in one thousand miles, not a mile! :-)
I think my calculations came out right though, in spite of my incorrect statement.
I think a slide with the calculations would be useful, though it would tend to get in the way of actually doing a presentation. It would be primarily useful for looking at the slides afterward, so sticking them in the notes would probably work best. Or, as one presentation I saw, you could stick them in a handful of slides at the end of the presentation, sort of like footnotes.
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Hi Webmonk,
Thanks for keeping me on my toes. I’ll implement your idea about showing the calculations – I think I’ll include them on a slide after the two block graph slides. I did mine in metric and then converted to English units at the end.
Here’s what I get using English units like you did:
For fine sand, I used a slightly higher density – 1900 kg/m3 or 118 lb/ft3
30kg/sec-m = 20.1 lb/sec-ft
20.1 lb/ft-sec x 5280 ft x 1000 = 106,128,000 lb crossing the line ever second
1,036,800 seconds in 12 days
106,128,000 lb/sec x 1,036,800 sec = 932,487,376,271 lb (in 12 days)
1 cubic mile = 147,197,952,000 cubic feet
932,487,376,271 ft3 x 1 mi3 / 147,197,952,000 ft3 = 6.33 cubic miles
Note: with my higher density, I get 1 mi3 = 17.3 trillion lbs. I’m not sure, but I think you got messed up when you said “To move one cubic mile (weighing 14.7 trillion lbs)of sand at a rate of 106 million lbs per second, would take 1383 seconds.” That’s not necessary to know the way I did my calculations.
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I downloaded the slides and the notes are with them, including the equations. I see where we used different values – your sandstone weight makes more sense than my loose sand weight.
Huh, I checked out the Cedarville link you put in the presentation about Dr. Austin’s suggestion of “Submarine Liquefied Sediment Gravity Currents”.
WTF?!?
It’s an underwater mudslide (or sandslide). Austin said it requires a downward slope, a relatively gentle one. So, it needs a nice, gentle slope from nearly the Appalachian Mountains to Arizona while under a hundred+ feet of water? But, don’t forget that the Coconino needs to be going up and down, in and out of the Flood waters so that animals can be leaving tracks in the middle of the deposition, so for a couple dozen times during that 12 days, the entire Coconino area lifted up a hundred+ feet, animals walked over it, and then it sank back down, and the sandflows resumed (repeat dozens/hundreds of times).
What happened to that gentle slope? And the gentle slope?
Not only that, but the presentation by Dr. Austin specifically stated that only the lower Redwall portion had what he considered signs of a SLSGC deposit. What about the Coconino? What’s his explanation for that?
I’m not a geologist, but it doesn’t seem to even hold together at a surface examination, much less any detailed study of Austin’s paper.
Any guesses for how long it will take for Dr. Austin to jump to a different explanation for the sedimentation transport/deposition since this one doesn’t even attempt to explain things like the Coconino? (by Dr. Austin’s own words)
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Sorry all – I left out a step in my summary of my calculations – conversion of the weight to volume using a density of 118 lt/ft3 (result is still the same). Here’s how they should be:
30kg/sec-m = 20.1 lb/sec-ft
20.1 lb/ft-sec x 5280 ft x 1000 = 106,128,000 lb crossing the line ever second
There are 1,036,800 seconds in 12 days
106,128,000 lb/sec x 1,036,800 sec = 110,035,510,400,000 lb (in 12 days)
110,035,510,400,000 lb x 1 ft3/118 lb = 932,487,376,271 ft3
1 cubic mile = 147,197,952,000 cubic feet
932,487,376,271 ft3 x 1 mi3 / 147,197,952,000 ft3 = 6.33 cubic miles
Re the liquefied gravity currents – my understanding is that they start at the top of submarine canyons (e.g., Monterey Canyon of California), and the liquefied gravity flow goes down the slope into the flat areas of the deep. There has to be a difference in elevation to start with. How that could be going on simultaneously all over the globe at the same time is beyond me. Then, as you pointed out, how would all those complex features be formed such as cross beds (with multiple truncations) and vertebrate footprints at multiple levels of strata within the formation.
Tim
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Has anyone actually posted these issues to people like Dr. Austin? Do they recognize the problem? Do they acknowledge anything? Do they have some sort of answer?
I realize that people can get all curled up in their own little world and never see things that might be obvious to everyone else.
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I developed a paper around the sediment transport problem illustrated by the computations and bar graphs, which is published in this month’s Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith (PSCF). The YECs have people monitoring this publication, so I’m sure they’re aware of the article. Sometimes they respond to critical articles – e.g., Austin’s response to Elders’ 1998 article “Bibliolatry in the Grand Canyon” in the “Reports of the NCSE” publication, but usually they just don’t respond at all – e.g., their total silence in response to Pitts’ debunking of Humphreys’ volume cooling in the March 2009 PSCF (http://www.asa3.org/ASA/PSCF/2009/PSCF3-09Pitts.pdf).
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Meh, Humphreys is borderline even in AiG circles from what I can tell – his stuff sold well but was nonsense as far as scientific accuracy went. I’m sort of surprised they let him into the RATE study at all. I’ve seen just about zero interaction between Humphreys and any other scientist in AiG.
I can’t say I’m surprised to hear that they aren’t bothering to defend Humphreys’ stuff.
Austin is a bigger player in their circles, and I suspect that critiques of Austin works will get noticed and answered in some way, shape or form. I look forward to seeing what they may say in the coming months.
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Hi Webmonk,
I updated the presentation to show calculations, plus I added some slides at the end showing snippets of comments I’ve received thus far from YECs.
Tim
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I just came across this thread ten+ years later after trying to see if Austin’s abstract was still available online. It looks like it’s been completely removed from the web. I archived the text and could post it here if it’s o.k. with Kevin.
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Tim H – Yes, please do.
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