@AMWolfe
It’s too high-brow to be of much use to YECs. You, no doubt, are right about its value. But it’s a value that cannot be detected by the average YEC.
LOL! A man has to know his limitations. 
i found a more recent paper by Baumgardner, in which he wrote:
- “This implies that a vast amount of nuclear transmutation accompanied God’s supernatural creation of the earth, including its continents. Chemical evidence strongly suggests that God extracted the continental crust, with its large inventory of U, Th, and K, from the earth’s mantle rock by a chemical differentiation process.20 During a brief span of time—the Genesis text allows only tens of hours—God not only brought the continental crust into being, but also caused several Ga worth of nuclear transmutation to unfold within its rocks.” [John R Baumgardner, “Do radioisotope methods yield trustworthy relative ages for the earth’s rocks?” Global Flood, 2012]
I have been very busy since I last posted, but I finally found time to briefly examine Morton and Murphy’s paper. Theirs and Baumgardner’s concern about heat generation during rapid subduction is partially explained in this Kurt Wise video segment from Baumgardner’s plate model where Wise discusses the rapid collision of the Indian and Asian plates yielding High Pressure/Low Temperture minerals, rather than heat (which Wise calls “amazing stuff”). The segment lasts about 2.5 minutes
Some of Morton’s and Murphy’s concerns about the Rate are discussed in the aforementioned 2012 Baumgardner article. There is also an address of some of the concerns in this 2014 update: Are the RATE Radiocarbon (14C) Results Caused by Contamination?. Baumgardner’s conclusion is:
- “Furthermore, despite Bertsche’s emphasis on the diamond measurements, to me whether or not there is 14C in diamonds is a relatively minor issue. The dramatically more important issue, as emphasized in our RATE report, is the consistent presence of even higher levels of 14C in all fossilized living things which still retain some carbon. That fact is powerful and indisputable support that the earth is young and that the Genesis Flood really did occur not so long ago.”
Tell me what you think.
LXX
Hi LXX,
I read the Baumgardner article. He acknowledges that many samples from the RATE project, plus some additional U-Pb samples from granite, indicate ages of 500 million years - 2.95 billion years. How to account for this?
You cut the quote off a little early. Two sentences later we find an interesting statement:
Somehow God also disposed of the heat released [emphasis mine]
So basically, Baumgardner is saying: God miraculously intervened, defying the laws of physics. And once a miracle is involved, all bets are off. That’s Baumgardner’s response to Morton and Murphy: somehow God miraculously disposed of the heat.
This is just another way of saying: no matter what evidence is presented by the scientific community, I will choose to appeal to miracles. Moreover, those miracles are not even mentioned in the Bible, but I choose to believe in them anyway.
You can see why a lot of people might find this to be a less than satisfactory answer.
Let’s take a look at another implications of this proposition:
- God performed this miracle with the effect of creating a false history of billions of years in the rocks. How do we know it’s a false history? Baumgardner’s answer: Because of Genesis 1 and 2 (provided that you interpret them in a certain controversial way). And because of zircon crystals and radiohalos in many uranium samples.
It would not be suitable for us to just accept these assertions about hermeneutics, zircon crystals and radiohalos, though. We need a certain cross-examination from the other side, as the Bible teaches:
The one who states his case first seems right, until the other comes and examines him. (Proverbs 18:17, ESV)
Hermeneutics
Many, perhaps most of the scholars of Hebrew and Ancient Near East literature who attend the Society for Biblical Literature do not subscribe to the AIG and ICR interpretations of Genesis. Many of these are evangelicals. Does this mean that the AIG/ICR interpretation is wrong? Of course not; but it does mean that viable alternatives exist for an evangelical who is committed to the inerrancy of Scripture .
Retention of Helium in Zircon Crystals
Here’s an interesting analysis by a Christian geologist for you, LXX:
One of [RATE’s} most celebrated case studies involves the helium retention in zircons (ZrSiO4 crystals) from geothermal test wells at Fenton Hill, New Mexico. When the scientific merits of the Fenton Hill study are examined, five specific flaws in the data analysis and modeling are found which are serious enough to invalidate the argument for accelerated nuclear decay. Furthermore, once these errors are corrected, forward modeling of the helium diffusion from these zircons produces retention values that are commensurate with the radiometric ages of the samples. Therefore, not only is the accelerated nuclear decay argument invalidated, but the scientific evidence supports the conventional 4.5 billion year age of the earth.
The 5 errors in RATE’s analysis are:
- Invalid helium retention measurements, due to (1) ignoring helium measurements at other depths in the formation, (2) Ignoring evidence of extrinsic sourcing in sample processing (3) inaccurate calculation of He generated by alpha-decay.
- Invalid physical geometry parameters
- Invalid surface boundary conditions - the RATE team applied different physics assumptions to YEC models than to standard geological models. Moreover, the RATE analysis contradicts the assumptions necessary to validate their conclusions about radiohalos.
- Invalid thermal history - the RATE team ignored evidence of varying thermal conditions over the history of the geological formation.
- Invalid material properties - the RATE modeling of helium diffusion ignores the distinct populations of helium atoms in the crystals.
All of these errors resulted in gross errors in the RATE study. Any one of these errors by itself would invalidate the RATE findings; together, they point to the critical need for genuine peer review by the practicing scientific community. Which of course did not happen with the RATE study.
Presence of Polonium Radiohalos in Granites
Christian physicist Randy Isaac identifies key errors in the RATE study (source):
- The RATE team’s analysis requires both vastly accelerated decay rates and extraordinarily rapid cooling of granites. These two conditions are inherently contradictory.
- “[T]he presence of uranium also seems to provide a reasonable explanation for the source of the polonium and polonium halos with normal decay rates and standard ages of granite.”
LXX, I heartily recommend reading the articles I linked to.
Your second Baumgardner article (from 2014) does not even address the four arguments made by Morton and Murphy. Instead, it addresses an argument Bertsche makes with regard to the source of possible C14 contamination in radiocarbon samples. So I am not sure why you are citing it in this thread.
So as far as I can tell, Baumgardner’s main response to Morton and Murphy’s concerns about heat generation from accelerated nuclear decay is this: God must have taken care of it somehow, by miraculous means. Here is Baumgardner’s actual statement again:
Somehow God also disposed of the heat released [emphasis mine]
This is an appeal not to miracles declared in the Bible, but to miracles necessary to save a pet theory from refutation.
Have a blessed day, my brother LXX.
Chris Falter
EDIT: I realized that I did not address Kurt Wise’s statements about subduction and heat vs. pressure, but our friend @jammycakes did analyze them for us. For the record, I agree with James’ analysis.
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In response to Baumgardner’s article I would suggest you read the Wikipedia article on Radiometric dating and in particular the Uranium–lead dating method. This method uses two different half-life values and for an accelerated nuclear decay rate to work it would have to be different for the two elements. So you need two miracles, decay rates are changed and individual decay rates are changed to give the same answer as if the decay rate was constant.
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Since any Christian can always reach into his bible bag and pull out an instantaneous miracle, wrought by God, with the principle aim being God wanting to make Young Earth Creationists to be Right … and simultaneously to fool all Scientists into thinking that Young Earth Creationists are Wrong …
All you have to do, LXX, is explain why God appears to go to such great lengths to make Scientists look perfectly correct when using scientific evidence!!!
I took a quick look at that paper. He doesn’t even attempt to address the heat problem. He merely states that “somehow” God removed it.
Look, this isn’t just an appeal to miracles, it’s an appeal to pointless miracles. It’s one thing acknowledging that God works miracles. It’s a completely different matter appealing to miracles to hand-wave away evidence that you don’t like. As @Chris_Falter said, once you start appealing to miracles in that way, all bets are off. You’re not talking about the God of the Bible, who, in Romans 1:20 says that His character and nature are revealed through creation; you’re talking about a capricious and deceitful deity who would quite happily abuse miracles to mess with our minds to the extent that it’s no longer possible to tell what’s real and what isn’t.
In any case, there are far simpler and more efficient ways of eliminating the entire population of the earth except for a single family on a ship that don’t involve both miraculously accelerating nuclear decay and then supernaturally removing the heat on top of it. The RATE project’s claims of accelerated nuclear decay are nothing more nor less than a claim that God made the earth look much older than it really is in the most complicated and convoluted way imaginable. It’s neither science nor Scripture; it’s a combination of Omphalos, Harry Potter, and The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
I’m sorry, but the 2.5 minute segment doesn’t explain anything of the sort. He just states that it produced high pressure/low temperature minerals without explaining how such a collision could have happened without releasing vast quantities of heat. There are no calculations, no mathematical models, no evidence, no slides of samples, no explanation how he reached such a conclusion, nothing. Just an unsubstantiated assertion that somehow the law of conservation of mass-energy and the laws of thermodynamics were violated.
It’s contamination, it’s as simple as that.
How do we know that it’s contamination? Because scientists have measured how much contamination gets introduced by various vectors such as sample processing, and have found it to be between 0.1 and 0.7 percent modern carbon. Baumgardner claimed in the 2007 part of his essay that such figures are “absurd,” and that Bertsche “cannot support such a claim from any peer-reviewed source.” Yet Bertsche actually cited specific sources that demonstrated that such figures were, in fact, realistic and to be expected. He also made several other points showing that Baumgardner simply wasn’t getting his facts straight. Baumgardner did not address a single one of these points in his 2014 response, other than fixating on a highly technical discussion about one aspect of one paper that Bertsche cited (Taylor and Southon) that was only tangentially related to Bertsche’s argument in the first place. It’s a smoke screen, nothing more, nothing less.
The fact remains that the RATE team’s claims of evidence for “intrinsic radiocarbon” are very, very, very tenuous at best. The levels reported are simply too low to rule out both known and unknown contamination vectors, and it’s going to take a lot more than that to establish a case for fantastical science fiction claims about completely pointless accelerated nuclear decay being compensated for by equally pointless miraculous cooling mechanisms for no reason whatsoever other than to make the earth look older than it really is.
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@LXX_Researcher I didn’t forget just got busy.
I have to correct myself. What was determined before Darwin was identification of layers of rocks and the order in which fossils are found in the geologic column. Nicolas Steno established the basis for stratigraphy in 1669. He demonstrated that the layers were laid down one at a time and not en mass. For the fossil order it is interesting to note that it was done by people who were opposed to any form of gradual change such as Darwin would propose later. The absolute age of the rock layers and fossils contained therein was worked out later. Some of these early geologists suspected long periods of time were involved, but had no way to measure it. James Hutton is usually credited (incorrectly per the link below) with showing deep time after visiting Siccar Point in 1788.
If you want a slightly more detailed history take a look at these links.
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In the past century, the science and math communities have made a lot of discoveries about how “uniform” laws/relationships can give rise to dynamic systems. When you are using the word “uniformitarian,” A.M., you are talking about consistency over time and space of the laws of physics and chemistry, right?
Whereas when a YEC uses the same word, their definition is that the earth and its current processes are a static, rather than dynamic, set of systems. This is not what scientists believe, of course, but it is what YECs believe scientists believe.
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Bill, I haven’t forgot about you. My wife is disabled, and things have been a little hectic lately. Nothing serious, just time consuming. Anyway, I have the two articles (McMullen et al, and Wierzbowski) in my Research Library, and I will get back to you as soon as practicable.
LXX
… Woah.
It never occurred to me that anybody might be using “uniformitarianism” in any sense but the first one you gave above, which is indeed the sense in which I use it.
In fact, I’m not even sure I yet understand what you mean by the second definition. I can’t get my head around it. Do you have a specific example that could help me?
The rate of change in the strength and polarity of the magnetic field is a good example. Generations ago, the consensus was that the geomagnetic field has always been pretty much the way it is today. This is a static system definition of uniformitarianism.
More recently, geologists have discovered the geomagnetic field has experienced lots and lots of reversals. There are two different ways to interpret this new data:
-
The older, static view of geology is wrong. This doesn’t mean the laws of physics and chemistry are subject to change, or that radiometric dating is subject to arbitrary variance; it does mean that the earth’s magnetic field is a dynamic system.
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Uniformitarianism is wrong! Therefore we can now accept that the laws of physics did change, that the earth is only 7000 years old, that the vast majority of fossils were laid down in a single, global, cataclysmic flood, etc.
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Aha!
So this is why we had whats-his-username coming on and triumphantly telling us we were all idiots because, OBVIOUSLY, fossils are created by cataclysms, and, ipso facto, cataclysms disprove uniformitarianism, Q.E.D., BOOYAH, evolutionists! [faux mic drop]
This is why I couldn’t even understand his argument. Because it’s obvious to me that (non-flood) cataclysms are an integral part of a uniformitarian account of the universe. Otherwise, for instance, how could a meteor have ended the age of the dinosaurs?
Thank you for helping me understand.
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Yes, let me thank you too. It never occurred to me that @AMWolfe was not following how YECs were using/abusing the term!
I was not brought up in a YEC context and have not ever actually been YEC, so sometimes I still have moments where I realize they have been speaking a foreign language (YECkese 
) that I’ve never studied
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That is not the sense that I get when I read their apologetic arguments. They believe that science rejects any event as possibly being catastrophic no matter how small or how large. This allows them to argue for example that a collection of fossils that are obviously the result of a catastrophic event such as a land slide is “proof” that the idea of “uniformitarianism” is wrong. They probably got the wrong idea from the debate between geologists who were divided between uniform and deluge theories for the origin of the sedimentary rock way back when.
Hi Bill,
Thanks for sharing the history angle; that sounds quite likely.
I think that we are just using different words to describe the same thing. “Science rejects any event as possibly being catastrophic” is another way of saying “According to science, geological systems are static,” IMHO.
Blessings,
Chris
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I have to thank you, I also had been meaning to get back to this question but lacked the time to look up the resources for a good answer! So thanks for the links you provided. Scientific American recently did a whole issue on the process of figuring out the Earth’s age, that would probably be worth looking up.
Here is Biologos’s summary article of how we know, with links at the bottom to more information.
I have to confess. I did cheat. Young and Stearley covered it in depth in their book and the links I found on 100 Reasons the Earth is Old.
It is also strange to see catastrophic events in the geologic record cited as evidence for a young Earth and/or a recent global flood when none of these events require a young Earth or a recent global flood. One of the more popular examples cited by YEC’s is the Mt. St. Helens lahars and flooding. If anything, this example undoes all of their arguments because those features were not produced by a global flood, and lahars caused by volcanic eruptions can happen at any time in Earth’s 4.5 billion year history.
What these YEC arguments really are is an interesting peek into the train of thought within YEC circles. Any evidence of a catstrophic geologic event in one locale leads to the rather ludicrous leap in logic that the entire Earth was recently flooded all at the same time. They then leap from there to conclude that since Noah’s flood is real then the Earth must be young as well. When you start with the conclusion you really aren’t looking for evidence, but are instead looking for the faintest little sparkle to justify those conclusions.
Googling “How do we know the age of the Earth” is also pretty productive.