I had the pleasure of meeting Ken Wolgemuth when he visited Indianapolis for the Geological Society of America conference last year. It was a cool experience and I shared photos on social media at that time, noting that NASA doesn’t have a booth at the conferences I attend.
His booth at the conference focused on addressing the claims of young-earth creationists about geology. He was particularly excited about work that he had been doing on varves. What are varves, you might ask, and what do they have to do with decisively disproving young-earth creationism? Take a look at this article Ken wrote with Gregg Davidson, and you’ll learn the answer, and much more. Here’s a snippet from the conclusion to whet your appetite:
Contrary to young-earth claims that historical science is not real science because it cannot be tested,
God has given us amazing tools for testing hypotheses and assumptions about the unobserved past.
Tree-ring growth, atmospheric carbon-14 production, radiometric decay rates, sediment couplets,
and ash chemistry are all independent phenomena. Combining these independent measurements
allows a rigorous comparison of conventional and young-earth models. The data, in total, fit
amazingly well with conventional geologic understanding, requiring no disruptions of natural
laws or unfathomably improbable alignment of unrelated processes. Even accurate biblical dates
of artifacts are possible with conventional understanding. In contrast, the young-earth model can
explain the data only by calling upon a host of unrelated processes aligning in perfect synchronization to coincidentally match conventional expectations. It requires supernatural manipulation of nature with no apparent purpose other than to mislead.
Click through to read the rest.
Here is a round up of other things that have appeared in the blogosphere in recent months related to young-earth creationism and other forms of science denial:
Can we trust radiocarbon dating? Update; full paper available
Weird Worldview Warriors take on 350 years of geology.
Christian belief in Creation in relation to Geology
I Watched an Entire Flat Earth Convention — Here’s What I Learned
Answers in Genesis Adds an (Impossible) Ice Age to the Bible
Darwinian existentialism: The history — and evolution — of the meaning of life
Creationists Are Mocking Flat Earthers for Not Understanding Science
Where is the Next Generation of Creation Scientists?
The National Center for Science Education always has a ton of interesting and useful resources that is ever-expanding through their blog.
Fine-Tuning and the Sharp-Shooter Fallacy
Denis Alexander on purpose in biology
The warfare myth continues to get attention
Michael Roberts gets hung, drawn and quartered by Australian Creationists!! the final fatal blows
Mike Beidler is blogging again!
Former Creation Museum Staffer Exposes “Toxic Culture” of Ken Ham’s Empire
A Documentary Film About Ark Encounter Just Premiered at a Film Festival
Guest Post: Being a Christian in Science
N.T. Wright, Darrell Bock and Richard Averbeck on Adam and Eve
More Evidence that Young Earth Creationism Is Literally Unfalsifiable
(See as well, however, “Why Falsificationism is False.”)
See too the response of the BioLogos Institute to survey results.
Evangelicals and the creation accounts; 3 diverse views
God’s Good Earth: The Case for an Unfallen Creation, by Jon Garvey, Chapter 3 – Other Red Herrings
Philip Jenkins quoted Philip Ball on the myth of the warfare between religion and science:
Historians of science oscillate between exasperation and resignation at the fact that nothing they say seems able to dislodge these convictions. They can point out that Copernicus’ book, published in 1543, elicited little more than mild disapproval from the Church for almost a century before Galileo’s trial. They can explain that [Giordano] Bruno’s cosmological ideas constituted a rather minor part of the heretical charges made against him. They can showthat it was Galileo’s provocative style and personality – his readiness to lampoon the Pope, say – that landed him in trouble, and that he was wrong anyway in some of his astronomical theories and disputes with clerics (on tides and comets, for example). They can reveal that the conventional narrative of science versus the Church was largely the polemical invention of John William Draper and Andrew Dickson White in the late nineteenth century. It makes no difference. In the “battle for reason”, science must have its heroic martyrs.
On the potential for creation and science to co-exist.
God has a divine sense of humor
The Arguments for Creationism and the Arguments for Evolution A Study in Contrasts
Lost World of John Walton – creation.com
Ken Ham: Schools Violate the Law By Not Taking Field Trips to Ark Encounter
See also the New Yorker article on theories of everything.
Details about a conference on the subject of Christian creation care.
Babbage and the miracle problem
On the God of the Gaps and the most recent observations of the universe
Reports from the field on science and theological education
Creation care in the Christian Century
The founder of the “Biblical Flat Earth Society” made the news
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