Creation geophysics
| Part of a series on |
| Creationism |
|
|
| Types of creationism |
|
Day-age creationism |
| Other religious views |
| Creation theology |
|
Creation in Genesis |
| Creation science |
| Controversy |
|
Politics of creationism |
| Creationism Portal · |
Young Earth creationists have made a number of claims in the field of geophysics, mostly related to flood geology and the age of the Earth. The scientific community have heavily criticised and refuted these claims, which have frequently been shown to contradict geological evidence and/or basic laws of physics.
Claims relating to flood geology
- See also: Flood geology
Hydroplates
- See also: Plate tectonics
Hydroplates are an alternative hypothesis proposed in 1980 by retired USAF colonel and mechanical engineer Walt Brown of superfast continental drift in his book titled, In the Beginning: Compelling Evidence for Creation and the Flood. His hypothesis has not been regarded by the scientific community to be founded on science. Many creationist organizations such as Answers in Genesis and the Institute for Creation Research consider the hydroplate notion to be unworkable.
Scientific criticism
The Hydroplates hypothesis has been criticised as being faulty for a number of reasons:[1][2]
- that the rock that makes up the earth's crust does not float, so that the water would have been forced to the surface long before the Genesis flood.
- that even two miles deep (far above the hypothesised depth), the earth is boiling hot (260 to 270 degrees C at 5.656 miles in one borehole; Bram et al. 1995), resulting in a superheated reservoir of water and temperatures that would not have been survivable.
- that the waters would have eroded the sides of the fissures through which they were escaping, producing poorly sorted basaltic erosional deposits. These would be concentrated mainly near the fissures, but some would be shot thousands of miles along with the water. Such deposits would be quite noticeable but have never been seen.
Catastrophic plate tectonics
- See also: Plate tectonics
Catastrophic plate tectonics is a pseudoscientific theory based on power-law creep proposed by creationist John Baumgardner, to explain the biblical global flood. It has received tentative support from Answers in Genesis.[3]
Baumgardner accepts conventional theory that the continental masses were once united in a single supercontinent. He believes that a process of "runaway subduction" initiated the catastrophic breakup of this supercontinent, which in turn precipitated the global flood of Noah. During the year-long global flood, the continents rapidly split apart and moved to their present positions.
Some creationists believe that the global flood did not solely affect the Earth, but also involved Mars and possibly other planets;[4] however, no scientific mechanism has yet been proposed for such an event.
Scientific criticism
The hypothesis of catastrophic plate tectonics is considered pseudoscience and is rejected by the vast majority of geologists in favour of the conventional geological theory of plate tectonics. It has been argued that the tremendous release of energy necessitated by such an event would boil off the Earth's oceans, making a global flood impossible.[5] Further, this hypothesis is contradicted by a considerable body of geological evidence:[6]
-
- some volcanic island chains, such as the Hawaiian islands, present evidence that the ocean floor moved slowly over erupting "hot spots." Radiometric dating and erosion levels indicate that the older islands are very much older, not close to the same age as catastrophic tectonics would require.
- Catastrophic plate tectonics requires that all ocean floor should be approximately the same age, but both radiometric dating and amounts of sedimentation indicate that the age changes gradually, from brand new to tens of millions of years old.
- As sea-floor basalt cools, it becomes denser and sinks. The elevation of sea floors is consistent with cooling appropriate for its age according to conventional geology, assuming gradual spreading.
- Guyots are flat-topped underwater mountains, whose tops were eroded flat over a long time at the ocean surface, and they sank with the sea floor. Catastrophic tectonics does not allow enough time for the sea mountain to form, erode, and sink.
- This hypothesis does not account for continent-continent collisions, such as between India and the Eurasian plate.
Catastrophic plate tectonics lacks a plausible mechanism. Particularly, the greatly lowered viscosity of the mantle, the rapid magnetic reversals, and the sudden cooling of the ocean floor afterwards cannot be explained under conventional physics.[6]
Conventional plate tectonics accounts for the geological evidence already, including innumerable details that catastrophic plate tectonics cannot, such as why there is gold in California, silver in Nevada, salt flats in Utah, and coal in Pennsylvania, without requiring any extraordinary mechanisms to do so.[6][7]
Vapor canopy
- See also: Atmospheric science
The vapour canopy is an idea adopted by some creationists which states that before the Great Flood the earth was surrounded by a "canopy" of water in either liquid, solid, or gas form, and that the water from the canopy contributed greatly to the flood waters. The earliest water canopy proposal was that of Isaac Vail in 1874, but the idea came to prominence in 1961 with the publication of the book The Genesis Flood by Henry M. Morris and John Whitcomb. The concept of the water canopy seems to come from a passage in Genesis with the phrase "the waters above the earth." Other Biblical statements that point to this possible interpretation include "never rained before", overnite condensation down on the ground appearing to be condensed vapors rising up from the ground, the sunset being the breezy part of every day, no rainbow, and the great luminary on the 4th day that becomes the sun after The Flood.
Creationists are no longer in agreement on the merits of the idea; for instance, Walt Brown's Center for Scientific Creation opposes it. It has also fallen into disfavour at Answers in Genesis,[8], which now advocates the catastrophic plate tectonics model for the Flood. One major proponent is Kent Hovind.
Scientific criticism
A number of problems have been identified with this theory:[9][10]
- To cover a mountain of a given height, the additional atmospheric water vapour required would raise the pressure at sea level to the equivalent of being at a depth in the ocean of that mountain's height.
- This addition would lead to an atmosphere that was nearly 100% water vapour, which would condense under normal conditions.
For it to remain vaporous would require atmospheric temperatures to increase to an unsurvivable level.
- Alternatively, if the water began as ice in orbit, the release of gravitational potential energy on re-entry would likewise raise the temperature past boiling.
Claims relating to the age of the Earth
- See also: Age of the Earth
Rapid-decay theory
- See also: Dynamo theory and Earth's magnetic field
This hypothesis was developed by Thomas G. Barnes, who was Creation Research Society president in the mid 1970s. Taking the assumption that the Earth's magnetic field decayed exponentially, and ignoring evidence of it fluctuating over time, he estimated that "the life of the earth's magnetic field should be reckoned in thousands, not millions or billions, of years." It has drawn harsh criticism from both scientists and some creationists.[11]
It has been long observed that Earth's magnetic field gradually changes over time (e.g., Henry Gellibrand, Gresham College, 1634). Much of this change is due to movement of the magnet poles, and changes in the Earth's non-dipole field. The earth's magnetic field strength was measured by Carl Friedrich Gauss in 1835 and has been repeatedly measured since then, showing a relative decay of about 5% over the last 150 years.[12]
While the details of the creationists' arguments have changed, in essence the argument is that if the Earth's dipole changes by 5% per century, the Earth can't be much older than 20 centuries.[citation needed]
One proposal is based on the assumption that Earth was created from pure water with all of the molecules' spins aligned creating a substantial magnetic field.[13] However spin relaxation times, which measure the time nuclear magnetisations take to return to the equilibrium, are typically measured in the range of milliseconds or seconds.
Russell Humphreys accepts a core-current based magnetic field and archaeomagnetic measurements of the magnetic field (based on measurements of human artefacts), and concludes that several reversals of the magnetic field occurred during the biblical flood.[14] Such rapid (month long) variation contradict measurements of the conductivity of the Earth's mantle.[15]
Such ideas are inconsistent with the basic physics of magnetism.[16] While short term variations have been shown to be due to a variety of factors, the long-term (million year) the variation in field intensity (and even reversal in polarity) are modeled as due to changes in electric currents in the liquid core of the Earth.
Radiometric dating
- See also: radiometric dating
Creationists involved in the Radioactivity and the Age of the Earth (R.A.T.E.) Project point to experiments they have performed, which they claim demonstrate that 1.5 billion years of nuclear decay took place over a short period of time, from which they infer that "billion-fold speed-ups of nuclear decay" have occurred, a massive violation of the principle that radioisotope decay rates are constant, a core principle underlying nuclear physics generally, and radiometric dating in particular.[17]
The scientific community points to numerous flaws in these experiments, to the fact that their results have not been accepted for publication by any peer-reviewed scientific journal, and to the fact that the creationist scientists conducting them were untrained in experimental geochronology.[18][19]
Although scientists have demonstrated that the decay rates of isotopes which decay by an electron capture mechanism can be varied slightly, these variations are of the order of 0.2 percent, far below a level that would give support to the Creationist results, and at a level that it is argued that they would not invalidate radiometric dating, nor is there any evidence of a variation in decay rates or physical constants over time. The consensus of professional scientific organisations worldwide is that no scientific evidence contradicts the age of approximately 4.5 billion years. It is further argued that "[i]t is unlikely that a variable rate would affect all the different mechanisms in the same way and to the same extent. Yet different radiometric dating techniques give consistent dates."[20]
Radiohaloes
- See also: Radiohalo
Robert V. Gentry studied these halos and concluded that the rock must have formed within three minutes if the halo was formed by Po-218. This is taken by some creationists as evidence that the earth was formed instantaneously. Other creationists, including some fellow Seventh Day Adventists, have disparaged his work, and have "accused him of wilfully ignoring pertinent evidence and of inconsistently and arbitrarily assuming nonuniform decay rates for all radioactive isotopes except polonium."[21]
Critics of Gentry from within the scientific community have pointed out that Po-218 is a decay product of radon, which as a gas can be given off by a grain of uranium in one part of the rock and collected in another part of the rock to form a uraniumless halo. Gentry's examples rely on a radon ring that is close to the Po-210 ring and it is a bit difficult to tell them apart, and it is not certain whether the rings can be positively associated with polonium.[22]
Gentry's work has been continued and expanded by the creationist R.A.T.E. project that was operating between 1997 and 2005. Radiohalos were studied as part of the R.A.T.E. project by creationists such as Andrew Snelling of Answers in Genesis, Russell Humphreys, John Baumgardner and Steven A. Austin at the Institute of Creation Research as well as others at the Creation Research Society.[citation needed] However, Lorence G. Collins, J. Richard Wakefield and others have repeatedly and soundly rebutted the radiohalo evidence for a young earth in peer-reviewed publications.[citation needed]
References
- ^ Creationist claim CH420, TalkOrigins Archive
- ^ Bram, Kurt et al. 1995. The KTB borehole -- Germany's superdeep telescope into the earth's crust. Oilfield Review 7(1): 4-22.
- ^ Andrew Snelling (2007-02-20). A Catastrophic Breakup -. Answers in Genesis. Retrieved on 2007-10-01.
- ^ Water on Mars: A Creationist Response, Russ Humphreys, Answers in Genesis
- ^ Wise, D.U. (1998). "Creationism's Geologic Time Scale American Scientist 86 (1998) 160-173.". American Scientist 86: 160-173. DOI:10.1511/1998.2.160. Retrieved on 2007-10-01.
- ^ a b c Claim CD750 TalkOrigins Archive
- ^ McPhee, John, 1998. Annals of the Former World. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
- ^ Noah's Flood—what about all that water?, Answers in Genesis
- ^ The Vapor Canopy Hypothesis Holds No Water, Paul Farrar, Bill Hyde, TalkOrigins Archive
- ^ Claim CH401, TalkOrigins Archive
- ^ p282-283, The Creationists, Expanded Edition, 2006, Ronald Numbers
- ^ Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Science, 1988 16 p.435 "Time Variations of the Earth's Magnetic Field: From Daily to Secular" by Vincent Courtillot and Jean Louis Le Mouel
- ^ "The Earth: Is It Young or Is It Old?", Dr. Jay L. Wile
- ^ "The Earth's Magnetic Field is Young ", Russell Humphreys, Institute for Creation research
- ^ Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Science, 1988 16 p.452 "Time Variations of the Earth's Magnetic Field: From Daily to Secular" by Vincent Courtillot and Jean Louis Le Mouel
- ^ Claim CD701, TalkOrigins Archive
- ^ Nuclear Decay: Evidence For A Young World, D. Russell Humphreys, Impact, Number 352, October 2002.
- ^ Young-Earth Creationist Helium Diffusion "Dates" Fallacies Based on Bad Assumptions and Questionable Data, Kevin R. Henke, TalkOrigins website, Original version: March 17, 2005, Revision: November 24, 2005.
- ^ R.A.T.E: More Faulty Creation Science from The Insitutute for Creation Research, J. G. Meert, Gondwana Research, The Official Journal of the International Association for Gondwana, November 13, 2000 (updated February 6, 2003).
- ^ Claim CF210, Mark Isaak (editor), Index to Creationist Claims, TalkOrigins website, 2004.
- ^ p282, The Creationists, Expanded Edition, 2006, Ronald Numbers
- ^ Thomas A. Baillieul, "Polonium Haloes" Refuted 2001-2005, talk.orgins archives
See also
External links
- Walt Brown's Center for Scientific Creation
- John Baumgardner's website
- Answers in Genesis
- Institute for Creation Research
- An Index to Creationist Claims on Geology, TalkOrigins Archive
Hydroplates
- http://www.cryingvoice.com/Evolution/Hydroplate1.html
- EarthAge.org — Is the Mid Atlantic Ridge Still Spreading? By Randy S. Berg
- http://home.entouch.net/dmd/hydroplate.htm
- http://mypage.direct.ca/w/writer/hydro.html
- CreationTheory.org Young-Earth Creationism — Flood Geology
Vapor canopy
- The Demise and Fall of the Water Vapor Canopy by Glenn Morton, a geophysicist and former creationist.
- Global Warming - The Aftermath of Noah's Flood
Rapid-decay theory
- "The Earth: Is It Young or Is It Old?", Dr. Jay L. Wile
- "Evidence For The Young-Earth Theory", Examine the Evidence
This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)
