5 Common Objections to Evolutionary Creationism

Faith & Science Conversation
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@johnZ - first of all, I’d like to acknowledge YEC’s commendable commitment to faith in God and Jesus Christ. While we may differ in how we interpret some parts of the Bible, there is a much deeper core of Christian values and theology that should be much more emphasized than it usually is.

When it comes to the topic at hand, I completely agree with you that there is no evidence like primary results supported by recent and established publications in major journals. And indeed it is good to go over this primary evidence ourselves, when time and expertise permit, to see if the argumentation is sound and supported by multiple lines of evidence.

Unfortunately this has not been what I have found whenever I have looked into YEC materials. Instead, I have often found misrepresentation of results, limited coverage of the literature and wishful reasoning from data to results. This is also what I found when I arbitrarily picked one of the 5 topics most related to my interests out of the 101 in the links you sent.

  1. Lazarus bacteria—bacteria revived from salt inclusions supposedly 250 million years old, suggest the salt is not millions of years old. See also Salty saga.

In this claim, the doubts about possible contamination cast on Vreeland et al 2000 (expressed in the “Salty Saga” post) do not acknowledge that the Hazen and Roedder 2001 criticism actually states that “the Permian age of these well-documented deposits is not in question” and instead goes on to conclude that “The geological formation is indeed only a few thousand years old, not 250 million.”. “Evidence #2” also does not address several other important publications that were available at the time that the “101 evidences” were written, such as Paabo et al 2004, which clearly shows enthusiasm for sequencing DNA at least 100,000s of years old. Of course, there are many other recent publications along the same lines but those are not included in the discussion either (i.e., the article seems static at this point and it’s unclear whether it’s still relevant).

But I wonder - have you actually read the primary research on these matters and found there to be fundamental flaws? If yes, what were they and on what page?

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Nuno, I have not read the primary research. I did not make up the list. So I expect that there may be occassionally a valid response to one of these 101 objections. But for the ones I have looked at, the rationalwiki responses so far, are inadequate, and display incomplete calculations or wrong logic.

I am a bit lost in your statement about the Lazarus bacteria. I have not really examined this one, since I had no heard it before. The objection is that because we find bacteria in the salt, that this salt is not 250 my old. You seem to be suggesting that the bacteria were contamination, rather than actual remnants from the salt? And then you are suggesting that Hazen and Roedder claim the salt is Permian age, while the critique claims this is not true, that the salt must only be a few thousand years old.

Vreeland et al claim no contamination of sample, while Hazen and Roedder claim the bacteria entered the formation later through some type of inclusion. There is no doubt they need to get their stories straight. But do Hazen and Roedder maintain an inclusion simply because they cannot perceive the salt to be non-permian, or because of actual evidence of inclusion? One or the other of these papers is missing something, or making an incorrect assumption. I will try to read a bit more about it.

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After further thought and reading, it seems reasonable that the discovery of the bacteria is not due to contamination. I had thought maybe the inclusion was younger than the 250 my given to the strata, but apparently this is not postulated. The stuff was 2000 feet below ground, and the only reason given for assuming contamination was that the dna was similar to some modern bacteria, which is answered by two or three explanations: either some bacteria escaped from the salt inclusions, and thus propagated into the present environment, or the bacteria is similar because it is not millions of years old, or, as some evolutionists like to claim for unchanged “ancient” animals, they did not go extinct because they were adapted to a consistent or to a number of different environment. So there is an assumption of contamination, but no reason or mechanism given for it. And the only reason for the assumption is the conclusion is deemed illegitimate, which is not a way to utilize the scientific method.

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Hi Nuno. Thanks for your kind comments and for the suggestion that I supply some resources. Sorry for my delay in responding as I have been traveling. I will offer a few online links among many, but I feel that I need to do so with some qualifications (see below).

Two secular websites are the National Center for Science Education and TalkOrigins. These sites are dedicated to promoting and protecting the science of evolution. There are extensive resources at both locations. A reader may use the “Search” option to get directly to a specific topic, or follow the various links to a wealth of information onsite and elsewhere on the web. Both NCSE and TalkOrigins accommodate belief in God and religion (they do not promote atheism), but they are specifically opposed to scientific arguments from anti-evolution Christians. The rationalwiki link on 101 evidences for the age of the earth is an excellent resource for that particular topic.

There are also some very good websites by Christian authors who embrace evolution. One I particularly recommend is Naturalis Historia. I also suggest the balanced resource pages at the American Scientific Affiliation: Resources on Science and Christian Faith and Creation and Evolution

Beyond this, I am well aware that we could continue to post different website pages that argue for the validity of evolution or for anti-evolution creationism. However, I’d like to diffuse this a bit by presenting an incredibly important, stark observation: unless someone has the scientific background to independently analyze what is presented, it is easy for readers to become confused and the tendency is to accept the arguments of authors who support the position one already believes.

This is why I think it is so critical for skeptical Christians to analyze the basis for their reservations (even fears) about evolution. It is precisely for this reason that I do not directly address biological evidences until the second half of my book (Laying Down Arms to Heal the Creation-Evolution Divide). Instead, we need to ask foundational questions such as: Should revelations in God’s natural creation help inform us how to interpret the Bible (the orthodox church position is “yes”)? Does Genesis 1 undeniably teach a six-day creation only thousands of years ago (no, this was never the sole view in church history)? Is evolution the product of a godless, atheistic worldview (absolutely not)? Does God’s sovereign creative and sustaining actions conflict with the findings of modern evolutionary theory (there is no conflict)?

My experience is that once these kinds of questions are resolved, Christians are freed to openly acknowledge the positive evidence for a long evolutionary history — and give God the glory for the marvelous evolutionary story in nature.

Gary

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@GaryFugle,

I like that answer you have given here. Are you of Anglo-Saxon origin? Your last name seems to be a cognate to fugel, the Old English word for bird. Vogel is the modern German cognate. God bless and enjoy the Holy Days.

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@Nuno,

I would like to know where this article on the Lazarus Bacteria. I believe that God could have used any theistic means to create. Have a grand Holy Day.

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@Henry, You have made me smile. Fugle is a derivation from an English surname, but my ancestry is a mixture from a variety of European countries (Danish, German, etc.). Even so, I discovered in graduate school while emphasizing research with birds (I’m a “birder” at heart), that “fugle” means bird in Danish! Imagine what a surprise and delight it was when I was searching for some important references in the library stacks at UCLA, and I stumbled upon books entitled “Danmark Fugles.”

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@johnZ - excellent analysis. We are on the same page on this and I’m glad you are taking an independent and critical approach to the data. And since your conclusion is different from the one presented at creation.com that “The geological formation is indeed only a few thousand years old, not 250 million.”, I hope this illustrates how the reasoning featured there can be frustrating at times.

That said, I will also acknowledge that this was just one example I semi-arbitrarily picked out of the 101 “evidences” listed there and thus it does not necessarily mean that there is no substance to the rest of the list. It’s just not very encouraging towards investing time exploring the other 100 claims.

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@Henry - I fully agree with you that God could have used any means of His choosing to create. The original research article on this bacterial DNA sequencing was published in Nature in 2000 - you can find the article page from here but unfortunately the technical article is not freely available. It is a highly technical article but the good news is that it is not at all likely to affect the very good core belief that God is free to create in any way He chooses.

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@GaryFugle

Thank you for the excellent links - I appreciate it. It is an art to be able to explain concepts in a clear and accessible manner so it’s always good to have resources such as these to help make points clear in forums or conversations such as this one.

While I agree that advanced technical articles should not be the starting point for most conversations, I do appreciate that RationalWiki (for example) supports their points with references to the primary research so that the most dedicated of us can follow through and make a critical and independent assessment of the underlying facts.

I will also promptly agree that there is a pressing educational challenge in the need to present scientific results in an accessible manner to the large majority of the population, Christian or non-Christian. This is a very difficult goal to achieve but the unpalatable alternative, as you also alluded to, is that people will be drawn to worldviews based on “authority” and unfortunately the “loudest” or “most scandalous” actors tend to dominate these stages.

I do expect that more comprehensive resources (such as your book) will help move the conversation forward but I also wonder how BioLogos and other online resources can help motivate people to go from little-to-no-exposure to these matters and actually decide to pick up a book. This probably does not have to be a large effort and it may be as simple as maintaining a better list of references to “Explore further” both on topic pages and at the end of each blog post. For example, I appreciate the links to resources you posted here (including the pointer to your book) but that took effort on your part to write the post (which I do appreciate) - it would be great if we could reuse that effort to make these visible to others beyond just one post in a thread with 100+ posts.

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Excellent points! @Nuno

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Although I take a critical approach to the data, I did not present a conclusion. I merely identified three options, including the one that creation.com presented, which was not invalidated. In fact, if you look closely, you will realize that creation.com has a valid conclusion. The alternatives, that bacteria escaped into the present environment and thus similar ones were found, would still lead to a conclusion that the salt formation is not that old, because how could these bacteria survive in salt for 250my. Or if these bacteria in the salt are similar to “modern” bacteria, this still does not explain how they would survive in salt for 250my, even if they could have adapted for that long to certain environments. So your example adds weight to the other 100 claims. You are just not really even understanding what I wrote. Do you wonder why?

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@johnZ

You claim that

Maybe you can illustrate exactly where you meant something different from what I read in your previous post?

When it comes to the salt/bacteria question itself, my issue with the “conclusion” at creation.com is the same as with your statement:

The fact that we don’t know how (or whether) bacteria can survive for 250my has no bearing on the age of the salt formations - which is exactly the counterpoint made at RationalWiki that

The claimed isolation of 250 million year old bacteria from salt deposits in the Delaware Basin is still debated; the age of the salt is accepted — contrary to the claims in the second link — but the age of the bacteria is not. [see also Hazen and Roedder, Nature 2001]

Thus, for you or creation.com to claim that “The obvious conclusion” is that “the geological layer is not millions of years old at all.” is plainly wrong. While this may be a compatible conclusion with Vreeland et al, Nature 2000 and Hazen and Roedder, Nature 2001, these papers are actually not questioning the age of the salt at all and the age of the bacteria found in the salt bears no relevance to the age of the salt. This is exactly because the bacteria could have infiltrated it at any time, as argued in Hazen and Roedder, Nature 2001, and is probably also why the page at creation.com fails to cite Hazen and Roedder, Nature 2001 as it clearly states that:

Here we argue that, although the Permian age of these well-documented deposits is not in question, the fluid inclusions and the viable bacterial spores contained in them may represent much more recent features. [emphasis mine]

If instead of postulating the conclusions you want to reach (as at creation.com), you can actually construct a valid scientific argument from the data in these papers to show that the salt formations are recent then I’m all ears. Just to make sure we stay on topic, this is the creation.com “evidence #2” that you’re claiming to have a valid data-centric scientific argument for:

Lazarus bacteria—bacteria revived from salt inclusions supposedly 250 million years old, suggest the salt is not millions of years old. See also Salty saga.

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However, Nuno, this is an adhoc speculation; it is not a determined conclusion from evidence. In other words, there is no explanation given for how bacteria could enter a salt formation 2000 ft below the surface (600meters), and then survive the process. It is even a speculation which uses “may represent”, as a way of recognizing the speculation. The context of the “Permian age” is a highly suspect paradigm which influences whether or not these bacteria will be assumed to come from a infiltration or not. So this is not an objective speculation, even though it is actually a conclusion presented as a speculation. There is no data given by the wiki response for expected survival of bacteria in salt formations, or in salt infiltrations, compared to the density and thickness of the salt, and the depth at which it exists. Nor is there a hypothesis for the age of the supposed infiltration. The age of these microbes must therefore remain uncertain. says the abstract in Nature. Salt is generally a bacteriacide, killing most bacteria in a short period of time. This is not just about the length of survival of dna in a realtively neutral or conducive environment, but about the survival of bacteria in a very hostile environment.

But it does have bearing. In this way. If bacteria can only survive in a hostile salt environment in a dormant state for one hundred years, and if it is found in a formation which has no indication of recent infiltration, and has every indication of infiltration resistance and inhibitors, then it is reasonable to assume that the formation must not be older than 100 years or else the bacteria would not be alive, or able to be revived. That is the reasoning, the relevance, and the argument. As long as the facts are pertinent and viable, then it is a reasonable argument. Saying that we don’t know is unscientific, or is arguing from a lack of knowledge.

Only demonstrating conclusively that the bacteria entered through an infiltration in the time period which allows survival, would counter this argument. An adhoc speculation is not a demonstration of this.

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@johnZ

If the key to your point is that:

then that is very straightforward to address and is actually alluded to in the “Halotolerant” word in the title of Vreeland et al’s paper - as you can see even from Wikipedia (emphasis mine):

The genus Halobacterium (“salt” or “ocean bacterium”) consists of several species of archaea with an aerobic metabolism which require an environment with a high concentration of salt; many of their proteins will not function in low-salt environments.

If you want to further explore the ability of these bacteria to survive in various conditions, I’d suggest references such as Gramain et al 2011 where they address just this type of question and further note (with proper references, of course) that:

There is now strong evidence that halophilic microbes remain viable inside halite crystals for tens to hundreds of thousands of years, based on multiple independent isolations

Now on to your other point that if there is “no indication of recent infiltration” and that “bacteria can only survive in a hostile salt environment in a dormant state for one hundred years” and thus “it is reasonable to assume that the formation must not be older than 100 years or else the bacteria would not be alive, or able to be revived.”

First, can you provide the primary research data for your claim that “bacteria can only survive in a hostile salt environment in a dormant state for one hundred years”?

Second, the argument in Hazen and Roedder 2001 is exactly that the possibility of infiltration was not completely excluded:

Vreeland et al. describe commonly accepted primary evaporite textures and structures –– fine-scale fluid inclusions and bedded halite, for example –– that are suggestive of the original depositional environment. But these observations are not pertinent to the question at hand because bacterial samples were not obtained from halite displaying such primary features. Instead, bacterial spores were extracted from dissolution pipes of “coarse, clear halite with fewer, but larger, fluid inclusions”. The authors claim that these dissolution pipes are contemporaneous with primary halite, because the coarser crystal pipes “are overlaid by undisturbed (presumably primary) halite beds”: however, this observation is not sufficient to establish the age of the fluid inclusions.

Third, even if the bacteria and their immediate surroundings were not millions of years old (which is possible, Hazen and Roedder 2001 mention several ways in which this could happen), it would still not have any bearing on the age of the whole salt formation, for which there are several other ways to establish how old it is. Nevertheless, dating the salt through other methods is not the point of this exchange - the point here is that the bacteria bear no relevance to the age of the whole salt formation and thus “evidence #2” does not stand.

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Sorry, this was merely hypothetical, and the 100 years was not meant to be taken literally. It was just an example. The point was that whatever length of time these bacteria can survive is an indicator of the time they were in the salt, which would correspond to when the salt was deposited and crystallized. However, a bacteria that survived in salt for 100 years would already be considered to be salt tolerant. But suppose a bacteria could survive for a thousand years, or 10,000 years… how would that be determined?

You suggest that infiltration was not excluded, and then quote a sentence that indicates that this was excluded, that the pipes are contemporaneous with primary halite. Then Hazen and Roeder ignore this merely with an adhoc statement that this is not sufficient to establish the age of the inclusions. What??!~! It doesn’t matter! The point is the pipes in which the bacteria were found are the same age as the inclusions, which means that there is no indication of a different age, or if anything, the inclusions are older than the primary halite which overlaid them. At least that is what your quote indicates.

You have not demonstrated this, nor proved it. Hazen and Roedder have not made this clear either. And the original work is clear about the “overlaid by undisturbed halite beds”. What is the presumed age of this halite overlay? Much younger than Permian?

If this isn’t enough, a recent report claims to have isolated and revived salt-resistant bacteria from a salt inclusion dated 250 million years old, doubling the length of time bacteria can survive trapped in rocks (Vreeland, Rosenzweig, and Powers, 2000)! A salt inclusion is a pocket of brine trapped as the salt crystallized. Contamination is always a concern and critics usually claim this in order to dismiss such reports. Hazen and Roedder (2001) challenge this research by claiming recrystallization. The researchers, however, took great pains to make sure their samples were not contaminated, and that the salt was not recrystallized (Vreeland, Rosenzweig, and Powers, 2000; Powers, Vreeland and Rosenzweig, 2001). The date of the formation is another area of attack by critics, but the formation is from the Delaware Basin of west Texas, supposedly well-dated by invertebrate fossils and radiometric dating within the unifomitarian system. Michael Oard

The main reason other people are suggesting either contamination or recent infiltrations, is not because they detected something faulty with the methods and materials part of the research, but because they have difficulty accepting the results. They have difficulty accepting the results because of their predilection for the assumed age of the salt (250 my), and they cannot accept that this date might be way wrong.

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@johnZ

As you might have realized, I cannot quote the whole Hazen and Roeder article for copyright reasons but, of course, they give specific reasons why “[Vreeland’s et al 2000]'s observation is not sufficient to establish the age of the fluid inclusions”. In particular, the rest of the text in Hazen and Roeder goes on to clarify that the large, clear, single-crystal nature of the halite selected is not typical of primary halite deposition but rather is more commonly associated with processes that occur after - sometimes long after - initial deposition. Most importantly, this could happen through interaction with new pulses of fluid, including potentially much more recent bacteria-bearing groundwater from above or below.

In addition to the issues with possible infiltration, Hazen and Roedder also point out that “compositions of fluid inclusions from Delaware Basin evaporites also suggest multiple sources and ages, […] [that] vary significantly in adjacent inclusions, often separated by less than 1 mm”. This is a very clear reason why comments such as your quote form Micahel Ord miss the main point: the Delaware Basin is highly heterogeneous when it comes to halite formations so there is no such thing as a “well-dated” uniform mass.

Finally, even Graur and Pupko 2001 note that there is also the additional possibility that the most-similar bacterium being used to question the age of the Permian bacterium could also have been trapped for many millions of years. If this was indeed the case then it would not be surprising to see such similarity between the compared bacterial species. Moreover, it is also known (e.g., Kuo and Ochman 2009) that the rate of 16S rRNA divergence can vary significantly even between symbiont species inhabiting the same host so it is not always clear how to calibrate sequence divergence into a “biomolecular divergence clock” - definitely this would not be expected to be anywhere near the precision of orthogonal radiometric approaches otherwise used to establish the age of Delaware Basin extracts.

All in all, given

  1. the heterogeneity of the Delaware Basin
  2. the possibility of infiltration/contamination
  3. the lack of a well calibrated “biomolecular divergence clock”
  4. the possibility that the closest known Permian bacterium homolog could also have been trapped elsewhere
  5. the non-biological independent radiometric evidence for the age of the Delaware basin

it is still anything but “obvious” to conclude that “The geological formation is indeed only a few thousand years old, not 250 million”. In fact, as far as I know (and I would challenge you to show it otherwise), this “obvious” conclusion is not mentioned in any of the Pubmed-indexed references citing Vreeland at al 2000. The only alternative I see to this being an intentionally misleading analysis is for this to reflect CMI’s lack of knowledge of the relevant literature on the subject - be it as it may, neither option makes for a valid scientific argument.

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  1. What is the youngest likely age of Delaware Basin components buried 2000 feet below the surface?
  2. What is the probability of infiltration of a salt crystal formation buried 2000 feet below the surface?
  3. Divergence assumes something that is after the fact.
  4. A close homolog trapped elsewhere, does not really answer the question. First, if they are the same, or of the same age (but how to prove that?) they both indicate the same thing. If the species has remained unchanged really, really long, then there is no way to use such to date anything.
  5. Well, radiometric dating methods and assumptions is also disputed, and with two conflicting results…
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@johnZ

Your questions 1 and 2 are really questions for Hazen and Roeder or others who might have the detailed geological data on the Delaware basin. For the purposes of this discussion though, I’d just mention 2 points about this:

a) Vreelander et al’s response to Hazen and Roeder did not question the heterogeneity of the basin nor the fact that water infiltrations can easily reach 2000 feet underground.

b) Hazen and Roeder say that “that the large, clear, single-crystal nature of the halite selected is not typical of primary halite deposition but rather is more commonly associated with processes that occur after - sometimes long after - initial deposition.” - thus the probability of this happening is at least nonzero and their wording suggests it’s much higher than that.

On your other questions:

  1. Yes, divergence assumes a time span between sequences but does not imply any particular time span.

  2. My point exactly! Bacterial sequence divergence is a poor way to define a “clock o the ages” and that’s exactly why the conclusion at creation.com is not correct, let alone “obvious”.

  3. Let’s not import the radiometric discussion into this thread. The point here is just that asserting a poor " biomolecular clock of the ages" in this case would also require disproving all applicable radiometric methods as less accurate than what you essentially admitted in point 4 to be a “non-clock”.

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But this is not the point of this objection to “old ages”. The point is that they should not have survived that long in a salt inclusion, even if they were salt tolerant bacteria. They are not saying it is a “clock”, but rather that bacterial survival expectancy should give a limit on the age of the inclusion. If this limit does not correspond to the assumed age, then the assumed age has problems. Remember salt is sediment, it cannot be dated radiometrically, but only by inference.