Re: RATE Vol. II

Until now I had been urging Roman to get a dialog or analysis of RATE for
PSCF. He has actually made progress and has tentatively scheduled it for an
issue within the year. However, having read the RATE II book, I'm having
serious second thoughts. Though I have read and critiqued creation science
material for decades, I was shocked by the degree of selective logic. With
less justification than any work of science fiction, some 'scientific'
constraints are considered real and others are dismissed without
explanation. Logic is so inconsistently applied that I'm afraid any attempt
at direct refutation is futile.

Here's another example. Having noted that the heat dissipation problem is
so great that a mechanism other than convection, conduction, or radiation is
required as well as something that is selective to cool radioactive material
and not water, they go on to state: "Of course, the concept of a complex
cooling rate being dependent on temperature is not unusual. We know, for
example, that Planck's radiation cooling law is a function of the absolute
temperature to the fourth power. If such a relationship were to be applied
to volumetric cooling, hot objects would cool orders of magnitude faster
than cool objects." Never mind that, as George pointed out, the
cosmological expansion leading to volumetric cooling doesn't apply to bound
particles (nor does it get turned on for a year and then off again), there's
no basis for applying a radiation law to it. Yet, "the RATE group is
confident that these issues will be solved...", so much so that they don't
need to be mentioned in the lay version.

The book is filled with phrases like "could have" or "we might suppose" to
reconcile many types of problems. Any attempt to refute these quickly
becomes tedious and would inevitably be met with counter-illogic. The books'
authors anticipate criticism and dismiss all criticisms in advance. p. 768
"The viability of the concept of accelerated decay has not yet been
demonstrated to the satisfaction of many even within sympathetic creationist
circles...[the Rate team] does not expect the findings currently in hand by
themselves to be adequate yet to precipitate a full-fledged revolution in
thinking about the age of the earth." Nevertheless they can confidently
tell the lay community that science has affirmed the young age of the earth.

Ironically, an appendix by Henry Morris Jr is devoted to the need for ethics
and peer review of creationist literature. Peer reviewers are to be drawn
from the creationist community, for example. He notes: "Christian men and
women of science should follow even a higher standard in this connection
than their secular colleagues...They must, therefore, be scrupulously honest
in reporting the results of their research."

Past experiences by many people over many decades show that scientific or
logical refutation of these claims won't sway anyone. The answer is known.
Perhaps the most effective approach we can take is to show the inconsistency
and self-contradiction and the misrepresentation being proclaimed.

Randy

----- Original Message -----
From: "George Murphy" <gmurphy@raex.com>
To: "Freeman, Louise Margaret" <lfreeman@mbc.edu>; "ASA" <asa@calvin.edu>
Sent: Monday, May 22, 2006 8:53 AM
Subject: Re: RATE Vol. II

> Various views on the age of the earth, including objections to an old
> earth based on radioactive dating, have long since been given a fair
> hearing. Just because some diehards can get enough money to publish &
> promote material promoting YEC doesn't mean that it should be given
> _another_ fair hearing. If we take that route then it never ends.
>
>
> Shalom
> George
> http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Freeman, Louise Margaret" <lfreeman@mbc.edu>
> To: "ASA" <asa@calvin.edu>
> Sent: Monday, May 22, 2006 8:01 AM
> Subject: RE: RATE Vol. II
>
>
>>
>>> I suggest we devote one issue of PSCF to old earth evidence submitted
>>> by
>>> all the members with the best articles selected by Roman Miller. Make
>>> it a special issue where we can order hundreds of copies each and hand
>>> them out to whoever we think can best benefit from them. The numbers
>>> of
>>> new members we can recruit from that alone would more than make up for
>>> any lost from taking a stance in the first place.
>>
>> A special journal issue with public access (print or online) could be a
>> great idea, even if
>> ASA is not ready to take a formal old-earth position. I am reminded of a
>> scientific journal
>> who devoted some extra space to Peter Duesberg's "HIV doesn't cause AIDS"
>> idea a few
>> years ago. As I recall, Duesberg and supporters contibuted a few
>> articles, ands responded
>> to ones from the other side, but there were many more from the HIV causes
>> AIDS camp
>> (reflecting their overwhelming numerical majority) and they were invited
>> to write responses
>> to Duesberg articles. The staff editorial for this issue, signed by the
>> majority of editiors,
>> said that they felt the bulk of the evidence supported an HIV-AIDS
>> connection.
>>
>> The key is to take the wind out of the "we can't get a fair hearing"
>> sail. Many would argue
>> that the "ID is a valid scientific theory" camp got a perfectely fair
>> hearing in Dover; they
>> simpy didn't convince the judge. The claims of RATE II could be given a
>> similar treatment.
>> I wonder if ASA and ACG couldundertake a joint project?
>>
>> It would take an editorial team with the wisdom of Solomon to keep the
>> scientific
>> disagreements from becoming name-calling fests, but Christians, of all
>> people, should be
>> able to manage that.
>>
>>
>>
>
Received on Mon May 22 21:25:47 2006