Comments on: Creationists: publish and perish

By: sean d

sean d — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 04:25:05 +0000

These “papers” are complete garbage. trying to make a fitional collection of fairy tales fact. the bible has been wrong time and time again. What is wrong with these people?????they can not see what is in front of them?the whirled is not flat nor the center of the universe. if anybody thinks that garbage is real I’ve got a bridge in brooklin to sell instant money maker the tolls will make you rich!!!!!! only 4,999,999.95 dollars act now this offer won’t last!!!!!!

By: Steve Dutch

Steve Dutch — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 18:01:48 +0000

I am a geologist, so I reviewed the catastrophic granite paper. It has a lot of way cool recent references on granite emplacement, but a lotta buncha key fallacies:
1. The paper refers to processes that may vary in rate by many orders of magnitude, invariably picks the fastest rate, then reasons that because SOME granite magma MAY be emplaced and cooled quickly, ALL of it does.
2. The “news” that granite intrusions are thick disks has been common knowledge for 20+ years. It may be true that granite can rise quickly through crack networks, but that still doesn’t solve the problem of how you make room in the upper crust for this huge disk. If faulting opens cracks to make room for granite intrusions, it would have to provide kilometers of opening, and that doesn’t happen quickly.
3. The authors breathlessly report that intrusions underlie their own volcanic rocks and that the Sierra Nevada consists of thousands of smaller intrusions. Anybody wanna see my undergraduate map from 1968 showing multiple intrusions in the Sierra? This is old, old, news. The section on viscosity reads like a seventh grade science fair project.
4. As several folks have noted, the paper deals with time scales by postulating accelerated nuclear decay in the past. Creationists have gotten smarter. They generally don’t deny field evidence any more, like early creationists denied the existence of thrust faults. Instead they telescope the time scale. The paper refers to subduction of the Pacific under North America but makes it a catastrophic Flood event.
5. I pointed out in a letter to Physics Today (36 (4), 1983) that if polonium haloes can be identified in rocks, that proves nuclear decay must be constant in rate and radiometric ages are correct. If decay rates have changed, it is impossible to be sure the haloes are polonium. They can’t have it both ways. I presume creationists are crafting a very careful reply, since I’ve heard nothing in 24 years. We should note that the polonium occurs in settings typical of uranium and thorium minerals, very strange since polonium is in the same column of the Periodic Table as sulfur but perfectly understandable if it formed through straightforward decay of U and Th.
6. Diapirs are masses of light, plastic rock that rise through the overlying rocks by buoyancy. It was once common to represent intrusions schematically as diapirs. As the paper correctly points out, ALL granites are not diapirs, but SOME unquestionably are, as shown by their teardrop shapes and deformation of the surrounding rocks.

How can an author find and master a large amount of rather technical literature and yet write something so outrageous? It’s important to realize these people do not see themselves as lying. They regard the Bible as DATA, as a factually accurate account of events on a par with Pliny’s account of Vesuvius or newspaper accounts of the Battle of Gettysburg. As far as they are concerned, they have fully documented evidence; if you don’t accept the document, that’s your problem, not theirs. To creationists, that means that you, not they, have the closed mind, because you are not willing to consider their evidence. In their view, any finding that contradicts the Bible is ipso facto wrong. In all other respects, they are just as intelligent and just as capable of critical thinking as anybody else.

By: Robert Carnegie

Robert Carnegie — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 03:43:35 +0000

Re separation of AIG and DI: yes, absolutely. DI are lying cowards who deny their God by denying the bible revelation of his works and then pretending to find it out again by science, although they really don’t. AIG’s Web site seems to have changed slogan from what I remember as “upholding the truthfulness of the bible from the very first verse”, but their web icon (favicon) appears to be a figure “1:1″ that refers to it.

By: Lyle G

Lyle G — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 23:56:44 +0000

I, my Creative Anachronism persona, and my dog are Univeral Life ministers. I didn’t know anyone wasn’t.
The thought that someone would, with a straight face, write an essay on what day of creation bacterian were created just made me ..scream or laugh, one or the other.

By: Nigel Depledge

Nigel Depledge — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 12:50:27 +0000

The Centipede said:
“So, anyone know how I can become a Real Life Officialized Reverend Minister in short order and on the cheap?”

Just do what the “Reverend” Ian Paisley did: form your own church, with you as the head official. You are then legitimately entitled (pun not intended) to call yourself anything you like.

By: Nigel Depledge

Nigel Depledge — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 12:44:52 +0000

Barton Paul Levinson wrote:
“In short, I doubt either paper would pass peer review at a real science journal.”

In fact, the microbes paper would be rejected before it ever got sent out for review, because it contains no science.

By: Nigel Depledge

Nigel Depledge — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 12:42:47 +0000

Jaohn Armstrong wrote:
“Why doesn’t anyone seem to see the danger in this journal I do? We’ve been saying, “peer review” like a mantra, and now they’re setting up a journal to say “see! peer review!” What do we look like if we say, “but that doesn’t count as peer review!”?”

Well, my answer is this: what is this journal actually reporting? Where’s the science?

There’s more to “peer review” than peer review, as it were. There’s independent confirmation, which is at least as important a part of the scientific endeavour.