Creation Science — Telling Lies For God and Mammon

Ian Plimer - 1 February 1989

Professor Ian Plimer

Head, Department of Geology, University of Newcastle.

(from The Australian Geologist, March 20, 1988)

“This is a personal view in the public interest”

(Editor’s note: This article complements Professor Plimer’ s earlier contribution on Creation “Science” (see “Point of View” , TAG No. 61, December, 1986). It is quite different from that article in that it provides simple arguments for both geoscientists and the general public to use against the increasingly strident voices of the creationists trying to influence our secondary and tertiary students at schools, colleges and universities. As before, it is a provocative, no-holds-barred view of a subject of concern to many of us.)

The recent establishment of a fundamentalist religious group in Australia (Creation Science Foundation) has resulted in covert and overt teaching of religious and scientific pornography to a large number of primary and secondary state school children. The CSF has a narrow literal interpretation of the Bible which they maintain is the framework for their “science”. They claim it shows that the Earth was created a few thousands of years ago, all fossil-bearing rock sequences formed in a great flood and evolution does not exist.

Did the Earth move for you also, darling?

In order to have an Earth thousands of years old and not the 4600 million years old calculated by geologists, the CSF has had to tamper with some of the cornerstones of physics. By making simple deliberate errors of mathematics and physics, they argue that the speed of light at the time of creation was some 200 billion times faster than now. They suggest that light decreased in velocity since the first sin and this decrease stopped in 1960, thereby implying that sin vanished from the face of this Earth in 1960! Did anyone notice this significant event?

Using Einstein’s equation E = mc? where c is the speed of light, the energy released from any reaction at the time of creation would be 40 billion billion billion billion billion times that of a similar reaction today. So, if Adam and Eve lit a fire, then the energy released would be equivalent to a 50 megaton atomic blast. Adam and Eve produced three children and the energy released during each of the three necessary acts of procreation would be equivalent to an explosion of 500 tonnes of TNT. This is clearly the origin of the expression “Did the Earth move for you also darling?” In the time of Adam and Eve, there was light and with such a speed, its frequency would have been as high energy gamma radiation causing radiation sickness within minutes and death within hours.

Prostitutes forgiven

This is the level of the science that the CSF is pressurising to teach and already they have made great inroads into the school system and are providing political pressure to teach “creationism” on an equal time basis with “evolutionism”. Evolution sticks in the throat of creationists. For example, “this monkey mythology of Darwin is the cause of per-

17 missiveness, promiscuity, pills, prophylactics, perversions, pregnancies, abortion, pornotherapy, pollution, poisoning and proliferation of crimes of all types.” So, there we have it: before Darwin’s book was published in 1859 we had no poisoning, prostitutes etc. It is nice to see that the creationists now have given a reprieve for Lucretia Borgia. Manon Lescaut, Carmen, Madame de Pompadour, Marie de Plessis etc, could only have been missionaries helping gentlemen in need. Of course, there is a more fundamental question. How did the human race survive if there was no pregnancy before 1859?

Evolution is a fact, how it occurs will always be the subject of debate and this is what makes it fascinating. Darwin was the first to attempt to explain this fact but since then there have been numerous other suggestions advanced. Evolution is proved from the fossil record, biogeography, biology and genetics. Without evolution all the life sciences (including medicine) would be meaningless. We see proof of evolution every day. New breeds of livestock, grains and the humble homely pot plant are the results of scientists creating evolution in the laboratory.

Millions of people all over the world (including creationists) owe their very lives to a simple evolutionary fact. In 1943, the University of Wisconsin bombarded a strain of Penicillium with ultraviolet light and one of the resulting substrains was found to produce a million times as much penicillin as the parental wild strain. It was then possible for the first time to produce penicillin commercially.

Poisonous atmosphere

A great flood creates other interesting problems. Some 4.4 billion cubic kilometres of water would have to be added to the oceans for Mt Everest to be covered. Where did all this water come from? If it was rainfall, then the atmosphere would have been unbreathable as it would have had 99.9% water vapour. This dense atmosphere equates at air pressure being 840 times greater than at present. Water vapour condensation for rainfall must have raised atmospheric temperatures to 3500°C. Such a rarified hot high pressure atmosphere with 0.02% oxygen could not have supported any life.

Another alternative is that the water came from deep within the Earth. This requires the Earth’s crust to have a porosity of 50% in contrast to the measured figure of less than 1%. Nevertheless, let’s soldier on and forget this minor detail. The temperature of crustal rocks increases with depth and water temperatures of greater than 350°C are not uncommon in rocks only a few kilometres beneath us. If this water was released into a great flood, then the sea would have been constantly boiling throughout the year of the flood.

We are now clutching straws and so now look for an extraterrestrial source for the water for the great flood. If it derived from a comet, the impact would be equivalent to a 12 trillion megaton nuclear bomb and no Earth would have existed to flood. If extraterrestrial water condensed in the atmosphere, we are left with a high pressure oxygen poor atmosphere at 6800°C, ideal pre-cruise weather! The whole asinine scenario defies credulity.

The great flood (of absurdities)

Because the creationists refute continental drift, which we can actually measure happening today, Noah was left with a few minor logistic problems. In order to collect a pair of kangaroos, the seed of some 650 eucalypts, koalas etc., Noah was required to come to Australia (which was still undiscovered) and conduct a giant muster in all habitats from deserts, Cape York and SW Tasmania and transport these organisms back to the Middle East before the flood commenced. Poor Noah would have had to travel to every island and continent in an uncharted world to collect the endemic flora and fauna for the ark that the creationists literal interpretation of the Bible requires. Even after his year at sea, Noah’s logistic problems were still not finished because he had to deliver all the endemic flora and fauna back to their habitats whether in the Gobi Desert, Madagascar, Australia or the altoplano of Bolivia.

The science of the CSF requires a vertical thickness of over 30km of sediment to be deposited in just one short year. Deposition of over 100m per day of sediment and at least one layer of sediment per second would be required. Violent turbulence and ocean waves many kilometres high are postulated by the CSF, All mariners know that no ark 155 metres long and 15 metres high could survive in such hostile conditions for a few minutes let alone a year?

Extinction on the ark

Many animals are so sensitive that they do not survive in zoos and yet they managed in this wildly lurching ark for a year. All of the 1,700,000 species of life would be crowded on this small structure, those that could only survive on fresh plants like the koala had their special dietary needs catered for and even the large carnivores who eat living prey spent a blissful year at sea. Even extinct organisms (including fiercely carnivorous dinosaurs up to 30 metres in length) had a year-long free ride in cosy shoulder-to-shoulder comfort.

Even the smallest organism such as virus, bacteria and parasites would have spent the year at sea, even though some of them live for far less than a year. Humans are the only host for measles, pneumococcal pneumonia, typhus, typhoid fever, smallpox, poliomyelitis, syphilis, gonorrhoea, four types of malarial parasites, two types of tapeworm, an intestinal worm, pinworm, three types of lice etc. This collection of diseases that human passengers on the ark hosted for the year makes AIDS in comparison look like a minor ailment. Assuming that Noah’s poor family survived the year of kilometre high waves, sea sickness, shipboard duties such as the daily feeding of more than a million shipboard pets and ravaging diseases, the number of flood survivors are not enough to provide a 5000 million population in 4332 years since the Biblical great flood and their gene pool was certainly not nearly large enough to produce the 18 variation in humans that we see today.

Every other creature on the ark had similar endemic diseases and parasites and was faced with the same problem in producing wide genetic variation in such a short period of time. Such a variation we call evolution but this does not exist according to our fundamentalist colleagues.

The young age of the Earth, the presence of a great flood and the non-existence of evolution are to be taught as “science” in our schools, however the implications of such “science” are not critically evaluated. Such a ridiculous sequence results from the strict literal interpretation of the Bible, despite Proverbs 3:13 “Happy is the man that findeth wisdom, and the man that getteth understanding.”

Survival after the flood

Once this strange emaciated disease-ridden cargo of 1,700,000 creatures emerged blinking into the daylight at Mt Ararat in Turkey after a nightmare journey of sickness and starvation, they were faced with an insurmountable problem. What did they eat? All plants and seeds were buried so the herbivores could only have eaten mud. Year-old carrion, if it had not been buried in the flood, is somewhat unpalatable for carnivores that require fresh meat. Because herbivores exist today, they could not have been eaten by the carnivores.

-Even greater logistic problems exist by attempting to reconcile the great flood with the endemic flora and fauna that we see today. The Australian marsupials must have trekked foodless over Asia to Australia. If they crossed on a mythical land bridge, how were the koala, platypus and blind marsupial mole able to travel ahead of the Malaysian tiger and cross the land bridge before it disappeared thereby isolating the tiger? The creation “scientists” suggest that God put up signposts after the flood to guide the illiterate blind marsupial mole! Is it just remotely possible that conventional science has better explanations?

Why did the New World primates return to South America, the very area where their fossil ancestors had thrived? How did flightless birds, some up to 3m in size and 300kg in weight, manage to swim to remote islands such as Mauritius (dodo), Reunion (solitaire), Rodriguez (white dodo), New Caledonia (kagu) and New Zealand (moa)? Why did all these birds go back to the islands where their fossil ancestors had lived before the great flood? Why didn’t these birds decide to stay on the Mediterranean coast or swim to closer islands such as the Dodecanese?

There are some 2000 species of cactus in the New World. How did these organisms travel from Turkey to the New World without propagating in attractive climate regimes such as the deserts of the Middle East, Africa and Asia? After the great flood, we are expected to believe that the double coconut was transported to the Seychelles, the eucalypt to Australia, the Andean alpine flora to South America and nowhere else in the World!

This flood of absurdities continues ad nauseum if we take the literalist view of the Bible. If basic scientific observations and conclusions are ignored, then this is the ridiculous scenario that is the logical consequence and yet the CSF wish to teach their view of the Earth in part of the science course to every child.

Fossils—God’s proof of evolution

The creationists’ account of the great flood requires that all fossils derive from this year long event. This they require because the fossil record is fundamental proof of evolution. They claim that the fossil record shows death by flooding by the deep marine, shallow marine and terrestrial environments and that the ordered sequence of life evolution we see in the fossil record reflects this change in environments.

This presents us with a few minor insurmountable problems. If there was a great flood and fish live many years, why did fish die just in one specific year and become fossilised despite the fact that their environment became more attractive? Interlayered sequences of fossiliferous terrestrial and marine sequences can not be explained nor can the very thick sequences of fossiliferous rocks which were once dune sands and inland salt lakes if the whole Earth was covered by a flood. If the creationist account of the flood and the sequence of fossils is correct, it requires primitive plants (eg magnolia) to run uphill and overtake mammals with the onset of flood waters!

Flat Earth

Let’s ignore all the above inanities, close our minds, put up the “shield of faith” and maintain that the Bible is a factual presentation of science (as the CSF do in their Memorandum and Articles of Association lodged with the Corporate Affairs Commission in Brisbane). The Bible tells us that the Earth is flat (Acts 10:11). Of the 1500 members of the Flat Earth Society in the USA (where else?) a very large proportion are creationists which again tells us about the level of their science. The Bible also tells us that the Sun rotates around the Earth Joshua 10:12), the Earth stands on pillars (Job 9:6) in the sea (Genesis 7:11) and that the well-known mathematical constant 7 equals 3

(1 Kings 7:23, Chronicles 4:2) and not 3.142 or 22/7 as every school child knows. This science reflects the science of thousands of years ago and not the science of today.

Literal or literacy problems?

A literal creation in 6 days of 24 hours (as required by the CSF) requires a very narrow linguistic interpretation of a word with numerous meanings. The Hebrew word yohm used in the Bible means a day or a period of time. In some places it means many days (Proverb 25:13; Genesis 30:14), a season (Zachariah 14:8), many years (Matthew 10:15, 11:22-24) and thousands of years (Psalm 90:4, 2 Peter 3:8-10). To use such an equivocal word and conclude that the Hebrew use of yohm means only a 24 hour day is an extremely narrow and unjustifiably rigid interpretation. There are numerous inconsistencies regarding time in the Bible. For example, the great flood as we all know was preceded by 40 days and 40 nights of rain (Genesis 7) however we also learn that it was preceded by 150 days and 150 nights of rain (Genesis 8).

This flood apparently wiped out all the world’s population, changed the face of the Earth and deposited tens of kilometres of fossiliferous sediment. This view is also held by the CSF but Genesis 2:4-14 tells us the rivers (Tigris and Euphrates) and countries (Ethiopia and Assyria) existed both before and after this great flood.

A literal interpretation of the Bible presents us with a few other difficulties. We are told that the Earth was created (Genesis 1,2), the Earth evolved (Genesis 1:12), the Earth exists in a steady state (Hebrews 4:3, 2 Peter 3:3-4), and that nothing new happens in the Universe (Isiah 65:17, Revelation 21:1). If the Bible is to be literally interpreted, how can we reconcile all of these mutually contradictory accounts of the Earth’s origin? The CSF only accept the Genesis account of the origin of the Earth and ignore the rest of the Bible however Genesis tells us that the Earth was created and evolved. The CSF literal interpretation now becomes even more narrow (yes, it is possible), and they only accept the Genesis creation account of the origin of the Earth.

The Genesis account of creation also is fraught with problems. In Genesis 1, plants and animals were created before man whereas in Genesis 2, man was created before animals and plants!. What version do the CSF accept? You guessed it, the Genesis 1 account. Does this symbolically represent the level and depth of the reading by the CSF? To accept the CSF’s narrow literal Genesis 1 interpretation for the origin of the Earth, all Biblical scholarship, theology and philosophy, all social, life, earth and physical sciences and all history must be rejected. Despite all these rejections, the CSF wishes to have equal time in state schools to form children’s minds.

The harmony of religion and science

The creationists have the world polarised. Either you are a creationist (and therefore a Christian) or you are an “evolutionist”. They state that “Evolution provides the scientific orthodoxy for the philosophies of Marxism, fascism, racism, apartheid and unbridled capitalism”! Three hundred years ago Galileo said “The Bible teaches us the way to go to Heaven but not the way the heavens go.” This is still true. There is no conflict between religion and science, Christianity and science and Christianity and evolution. This polarisation is heresy and extremely offensive to Christians.

There are no scientific problems with some type of creation tens of thousands of millions of years ago. The fundamental question of where did the initial energy and matter come from forces scientists to be both creationists and evolutionists. It can be argued that God created evolution and by studying natural evolutionary earth, life and physical processes in the Universe and on this planet, we see creation still taking place.

There is no geological or historical evidence of a world wide great flood. However, the area from where biblical history derives is an area of active geological subsidence and hence, if your view of the world is small, then there must have been a great flood.

The missing link—how did $92,358 evolve into nothing

To claim respectability, the CSF claim that they are a scientific organisation which undertakes research and that their views are supported by a wide body of science and eminent scientists. Their Articles of Association surprisingly do detail that they are a fundamentalist religious organisation comprising seven members with a specific stated literal interpretation of the Bible. The Articles do not point out that they are a scientific research or educational organisation and because CSF claims in its literature that they are a scientific research organisation, they are therefore operating illegally. Their Balance Sheets lodged with the Corporate Affairs Commission show that research expenditure is less than 1% and their library consumed a massive $271 from their $250,000 turnover. Most professional scientists spend five times this figure annually for their personal library.

Of even greater interest, there is just the little question of $92,358 which went walkabout in 1985 and never came back. The balance sheets provide no explanation. Their explosive financial growth results from donations yet not one donor has pressed the directors for a satisfactory explanation. As a result of a book on the fallacious astronomical decrease in the speed of light which the CSF marketed in USA, a grant of $24,693 was received from the Federal Government’s Export Market Development Board. The grant did not go to the author and probably contravenes Section 116 of the Constitution wherein it is unconstitutional to grant money to religious organisations. This has never been tested.

Scientific credibility of creationists

A recent study showed that of some 135,000 papers submitted to 68 major scientific journals over a four year period, only 18 were on creation “science”. Not one of these 18 papers were accepted for publication. The “‘scientists” of the CSF are clearly not scientists. A check of the “qualifications” of “eminent scientists” is also enlightening. Somewhere hidden outside an established research institute in USA is the eminent Dr Richard Bliss who acquired his doctorate from the University of Sarasota.

This “prestigious” University has no campus, operates out of a Florida motel for the two periods of annual holidays and insists that potential graduates sign a pledge certifying their belief in the factual inerrancy of the Bible!

Even the residual dim light we are left with after creation is enough to cast a shadow upon the honesty and morals of the CSF. There are reams of information documented in the scientific and educational literature to show that the CSF authors deliberately distort, fabricate, misquote, misinterpret, make judicious omissions and just downright lie in order to provide the scientific “evidence” for their young Earth anti-evolution religion. One of the principals of the CSF in Australia, A.A. Snelling in 1985 and again in 1987 published in the geological scientific literature on the Proterozoic (2500-600 million year old) uranium ore deposits in Northern Territory and, in the creationist literature, on the 6000 year old age of the Earth using the same rocks! Is this just a little question of one calculation being wrong by forgetting to put six zeros on the end of a number (implying that this gentleman is far from a scientist) or is just a little question of honesty (implying that this evangelist is not a pillar of righteousness)? Snelling uses basic atomic physics in his part time employment with a uranium exploration company however this physics he denies exists in his part time employment as an evangelist. Numerous uranium ore deposits have been found using this physics yet no mineral resource on this Earth has been found using faith.

Fund by fear, falsehoods and faith

The schools provide a captive audience of uninformed sheep for smooth-sell fundamentalist evangelism masquerading as science. Honesty, science and religion are expendable when there is a magnificent corporate opportunity for the business of fundamentalist evangelism by having continual exposure to every child. This, in itself, is a turpitude in a multicultural country such as Australia where there are numerous Muslim, Hindu, Jewish, Catholic, Greek Orthodox and mainstream Protestant children in science classes. The CSF prey on the weak and insecure by providing simple dogmatic answers (albeit idiotic) to complex problems and pray that the weak will open their wallets further in order to achieve salvation.

We are warned that Satan uses many schemes to fool people (2 Corinthians 2:11), warned of false prophets (Matthew 7:15) and warned that Satan misuses the Scriptures (Matthew 4:6). The calculated misuse of the Scriptures, the double standards and abyssal lack of honesty by these fundamentalist pseudo-scientist evangelists proves that creation “science” is not the work of those with one iota of Christian faith but is the work of the Devil.

Entry has been easy in Australia by giving them a fair go and equal time in the science course. Using the same logic, we should give Devil-worship and paganism equal time in a religion course and witchdoctory equal time in a medical degree. We need to protect by legislation the young and innocent from this intellectual perversion.

Acknowledgements

The Creation Science Foundation is thanked for uniting scientists in all disciplines against their paganism, scientific and religious pornography.