Steve Jones wrote on 25th March:
>> "We can `accept' the Bible" and "We can `accept' science".
I was only giving "basic" positions - I did not pretend to give
every nuance of accepting science and the Bible.>>
Yes - I knew it really :-) I wanted to make a point - that
"accepting the Bible" and "accepting science" means different
things to different people.
I'll skip some threads where it seems to me that we are in
essential agreement, and move to your evidences for an Old Earth.
SJ "1. Evidence for ordinary rate processes 100 years before
Darwin were sufficient to establish that the earth was millions
of years old."
DT: "There are a few cases of theorists speculating about millions
of years - but 100 years before Darwin most people who had a
contribution in earth science did not adopt long chronologies."
SJ: "I was following Hayward:
"...It is important to note that it was in the eighteenth century
that this first happened - well before Darwin was born. The
pioneer geologist James Hutton, for instance, wrote that he could
see 'no vestige of a beginning' to the earth's history - and he
died in 1797."
While "100 years" may be an overstatement, the fact is that
scientific belief in an old Earth pre-dated Darwin."
I suppose I was reacting to the overstatement. Long geological
ages were beginning to be proposed 100 years before Darwin, and
I accept that by the time of Hutton, most of the active
geological writers accepted long geological timescales.
SJ " ... even the catastrophists believed in an old Earth:
"...Lyell...set up a straw man to demolish. By 1830, no serious
scientific catastrophist believed that cataclysms had a
supernatural cause or that the earth was 6,000 years old ...
(Gould S.J., "Ever Since Darwin", Penguin: London, 1977, p149)
This is not correct. I could point to Young: who wrote the first
serious geological memoir of the Yorkshire coast rocks in England
(now regarded as a "classic" sequence). He published the first
edition in 1822 and the second in 1828. Also, to Brande at the
Royal Institution and a colleague of Michael Faraday. He was a
geochemist and wrote a textbook on rocks in 1829. These were
serious scientific catastrophists who considered that the Earth
was young and accepted the Genesis account as narrative/history.
There are quite a few others in this period - they've had a bad
press over the years because they were "wrong", but the history
of science needs to be re-examined to evaluate these men in
context.
Regarding radiometric dating, you responded to my comments:
"Again, all this is very interesting and no doubt the radiometric
dating may be "partly wrong" as I said above. But even if it's
99% wrong, that would be no comfort to a YEC. The remaining 1%
would still be 46 million years!"
My objective was to point out the way presuppositions operate,
and to give a couple of examples of it in geo-chronology. Your
comment presupposes that the presuppositions of these radiometric
dating methods are valid. But if the isotopic data is better
understood in terms of geochemical or non-radiogenic geophysical
causes, the data is not meaningful in a chronological sense. My
concern is that the academic world is NOT alert to, or even
looking for, such alternative perspectives on the data.
Regarding the arguments from cosmology, I suggested an
alternative to the following presupposition:
DT: "For example, instead of thinking that the universe is
infinite and it appears the same from every perspective within
it, try developing the idea that the universe is finite."
You replied:
SJ: "Who argues that "the universe is infinite"? If it's
"between 8 and 20 billion years old", then it's by definition
"finite"!"
ALL modern mathematical representations of the cosmos use the
Copernican Principle: our position in space is not special in any
way and so we can consider the universe spatially homogeneous.
This means that, as far as the maths is concerned, the universe
is unbounded and infinite.
Your fourth line of evidence was that there are no sustainable
evidences for a young earth, and I concurred, adding:
DT>In my view, all "clocks" have been so disrupted by
catastrophes in the past that we cannot be sure of the accuracy
of any dating method."
SJ: "I do not claim that "all `clocks' have been so disrupted by
catastrophes in the past", although I once thought this was
possible. However my agnostic evolutionist fidonet former
sparring partner Derek Mclarnen (a lurker on the Reflector) has
pointed out that neutron fluxes from supernovae cannot penetrate
more than a few metres and neutrinos have little or no effect.
There seems to be no other known mechanisms AFAIK to effect the
drastic resetting of radiometric clocks required by YEC."
To my knowledge, this mechanism has been invoked only by Melvin
Cook in "Prehistory and Earth Models" (1966) - in the context of
the U-Th-Pb decay series. (He claims it is relevant also to Rb-
Sr and K-Ar dating, but does not develop this significantly).
I have to acknowledge that I am open-minded about its relevance
at present. However, I think that it needs more serious
discussion than it has been given.
In his "Scientific Prehistory" (1993), Melvin Cook writes:
"Fast neutron physics seems to provide the explanation for the
neutron flux seen in U-Th minerals showing the effects of alpha-
recoil from fission reactions. The theory given in PEM, while
fundamentally sound, need not be repeated here except for the
following summary: ..."
I note that he is still enthusiastic about this mechanism after
30 years. He provides examples of data emerging over this period
which suggest that this transmutation mechanism is more
defensible now than it was in 1966. Very low neutron fluxes are
suggested to be all that's needed. Melvin Cook is a serious
writer and deserves more attention than he's been given.
I indicated that I thought some dating methods (giving C-14 as
an example) could provide relative dates, although "our general
desire to define accurately a chronology of the earth will always
meet insurmountable problems."
SJ: "There seems to a little bit of YEC-style verbal sleight of
hand here? :-) (I am not claiming you are a YEC David, but this
type of argument is common in YEC literature). It is not enough
that "`clocks" have been so disrupted...in the past that we
cannot be sure of the accuracy of any dating method". YEC
depends not on "clocks" being merely "disrupted" but being
continually reset back to zero! YEC needs not merely that "we
cannot be sure of the accuracy of any dating method", but the
radiometric dating method must be wrong to a fantastic degree
that is quite unprecedented in science."
How do I respond to this! Please bear in mind that the exchange
is about PRESUPPOSITIONS. I am suggesting that, in general, the
various methods do not provide evidence for age without these
presuppositions (which are inseparably linked to the assumption
of great ages). Radiocarbon is different because it can be
calibrated with samples of known age. This reveals that although
variations in atmospheric C-14 concentration have occurred, a
pattern is still present and meaningful.
To conclude by returning to the beginning of this response: to
say we "believe science" is over-simplistic. Science cannot be
separated from its presuppositions. The big debates in science
are all over presuppositions - whether it be over the role of DNA
or the meaning of isotopic variations found in rocks. I think that
everyone participating in this Reflector is committed to the
scientific enterprise - but much of where we differ concerns
underlying presuppositions.
Best wishes,
*** From David J. Tyler, CDT Department, Hollings Faculty,
Manchester Metropolitan University, UK.
Telephone: 0161-247-2636 ***