The Clever Badger I'm not dead yet!

Reply to Johnathan Bartlett

(Note:  This took longer to assemble than I intended - I had some family concerns to attend to.  Even so, I'm not totally happy with it.  I reserve the right to edit and elaborate after posting.  Any such changes will be clearly indicated, and I'll edit the comments if necessary to ensure that it's clear which version of the post those comments refer to.  Also, I acknowledge up front that in discussions such as this, it is difficult to avoid falling into the trap of overgeneralizing - to assume that all creationist beliefs are the same or that all scientists are objective and so on.  I realize that this is not the case, and any such overgeneralization on my part is unintentional.)

In response to my post here, Johnathan Bartlett offered the following comment:

Also, on your two links, I should point out that:

1) it is true that Creationists regularly publish papers in secular journals that reference timeframes in the millions of years. That is simply because it is required in the secular scientific world. You simply couldn’t get a paper published if the paper expressed reservations about such things. Imagine that someone have given you a grant of X tens of thousands of dollars, you do some amazing research, and then go to publish it but no one will because it expresses doubts about ages. Should you keep the research to yourself, or share it with the rest of the community by using their wording and their assumptions? For one scientists story, see this NYT article on Marcus Ross.

As for the T.O. page, as usual, they are cherry picking both the data and the source. In fact, Snelling is quite critical of Gentry’s usage of radiohalos in several areas, but T.O. treats them as if they were exact parrots of each other. T.O. fails to point out that the halos found along cracks are all Polonium 210 halos, which are not the ones of interest to either Snelling or Gentry (they were looking at Polonium 218 halos). Which is surprising considering that the article they cite render’s T.O.’s point #1 irrelevant and they don’t even bother to comment on it. I guess, considering that it’s T.O., it really isn’t that surprising.

For a look at the differences between the two models, see Paul Garner’s discussion of them.

Johnathan also wrote a post at his blog discussing some different facets of our exchange in the comments of my original post.

I'd like to say up front that I appreciate Johnathan taking his time to respond in a civilized manner.  I will endeavor to respond to his comments in a similarly civilized manner.

Now, to his first point:  Yes, some creationists get papers published in what Johnathan calls "secular" journals.¹ The way Johnathan phrases the matter almost suggests that one could take an article written from a Young Earth Creationist perspective, switch the dating scale, and get it published in any secular journal.  If that's what he is in fact suggesting, I'm very skeptical of that claim.  If he's simply claiming that creationist writers are capable of writing papers that are accepted by the mainstream scientific community, I won't dispute that point.  I would raise the following question, though:  If creationists working in a creationist framework are actually doing amazing, paradigm shifting research, why aren't they publishing in mainstream peer reviewed journals?  Such research, if it were sound, would bring more attention to their cause than publishing in obscure creationist journals.  Scientists dream of overturning conventional wisdom.  I submit that the reason that papers written from a creationist perspective don't get published in secular journals isn't because the authors express doubts about the ages but because the authors aren't doing sound research when they produce such papers.  There isn't a conspiracy of journal editors working specifically to keep creationist materials out, but the peer review process itself acts as a filter to keep out poorly designed research, and while the process isn't perfect and occasionally papers get through that are later retracted, overall it works quite well.

To Johnathan's second point:  Snelling is critical of Gentry.  Snelling basically dismantles Gentry.  Gentry's claim, in a nutshell, is that the halos stand as evidence of the creation event itself.  Snelling's claim is that the halos stand as evidence of the Genesis flood.  In the article you directed me to, Snelling's article on his Hydrothermal Fluid Transport Model, he is most definitely interested in ²¹⁰Po halos and not ²¹⁸Po halos. ²¹⁰Po halos are difficult to distinguish from ²²²Rn halos (See article here), a fact that Snelling doesn't appear to acknowledge.  Snelling also makes (at least) two unsupported assumptions - that radioactive decay rates were much higher in the past, and that the Genesis flood actually occurred.  The first assumption is necessary because treating radioactive decay rates as constant leads unavoidably to the conclusion that the Earth is Really Really Old.  Unfortunately, since we can observe decay rates now, creationists had to come up with some way to explain that inconvenient fact away - enter variable decay rates.  But there is exactly zero evidence to suggest that radioactive decay rates have changed, and very good reasons to suspect that they haven't.  One of the most obvious is heat, and a somewhat humorous analysis of this problem can be found here.   Snelling's second assumption is broader - that the Genesis flood was a real historical event.   The problems with this one are legion, and you can do a google search just as easily as I can.  Some of the really awkward problems are:

• The supposedly worldwide flood that wiped out all but 8 people appears to have been completely unnoticed by civilizations like the Egyptians, the ancient Chinese, and the paleoindians in the Americas who, according to the archaeological record, did not experience any significant disruption in their cultures during the period of interest.
• The flood waters that (according to creationists) were able to selectively and precisely sort organisms into the fossil record that we see today, which indicates a nested hierarchy of descent precisely like the one predicted by the modern synthesis of evolutionary theory were also violent enough to carve features like the Grand Canyon.
• The radiation and distribution of modern flora and fauna, and also of languages and other cultural markers, does not indicate radiation from a single point as would be required if the entire world were repopulated from a very small number of representatives disembarking from a boat stranded on a mountaintop.  The distribution of marsupial mammals is particularly relevant to consider here.

Now, one could certainly advance the claim that all of the things that people point out as counting against the idea of the Genesis flood aren't really problems because God tinkered with things to make them look like the flood never happened, but that's not a scientific claim.  It can't be tested, and more importantly it can't be falsified.  By attempting to explain everything, it doesn't really explain anything, any more than I would were I to claim that a magical leprechaun named O'Shaughnessy created the world last Thursday and deliberately rigged everything to look like the world was much older.   Is the T.O. article I cited cherry picking?  Maybe.  But it's not as if that single article is the only discussion out there dismantling the Po halo claims.  Within the T.O site are some other discussions, and googling around for a few minutes yields quite a few other articles.  I really don't want to get into a protracted debate over the Po halo issue here, though - it's not central to the point I was originally trying to make.  There is a huge number of on-line discussion forums that would be better places to get into the nuts and bolts of this particular claim, or any other specific ones you'd care to look into.

This brings us around to the post on Johnathan's blog where he continues our discussion from the comments from my original post.

Johnathan had referred me to Snelling's article in the AiG publication, Answers Research Journal.   I cited the combination of ARJ's self description, its instructions to authors, and the AiG statement of faith as indicative that the entire journal is basically assuming that which it seeks to prove, and is thus circular.  I'll re-post those cites here:

The Answers Research Journal (where the linked article was published) describes itself thus:

ARJ is a professional, peer-reviewed technical journal for the publication of interdisciplinary scientific and other relevant research from the perspective of the recent Creation and the global Flood within a biblical framework.

here:

This is made explicitly clear in the ARJ Instructions to Authors:

Remark:
The editor-in-chief will not be afraid to reject a paper if it does not properly satisfy the above criteria or it
conflicts with the best interests of AiG as judged by its biblical stand and goals outlined in its statement of faith. The editors play a very important initial role in preserving a high level of quality in the ARJ, as well as
protecting AiG from unnecessary controversy and review of clearly inappropriate papers.

and here (I didn't directly cite the statement of faith before for space reasons, but I will now. This is section 4, which is arguably the most relevant.):

The following are held by members of the Board of Answers in Genesis to be either consistent with Scripture or implied by Scripture.

1. Scripture teaches a recent origin for man and the whole creation, spanning approximately 4,000 years from creation to Christ.
2. The days in Genesis do not correspond to geologic ages, but are six [6] consecutive twenty-four [24] hour days of creation.
3. The Noachian Flood was a significant geological event and much (but not all) fossiliferous sediment originated at that time.
4. The gap theory has no basis in Scripture.
5. The view, commonly used to evade the implications or the authority of biblical teaching, that knowledge and/or truth may be divided into secular and religious, is rejected.
6. By definition, no apparent, perceived or claimed evidence in any field, including history and chronology, can be valid if it contradicts the scriptural record. Of primary importance is the fact that evidence is always subject to interpretation by fallible people who do not possess all information.

The emphasis on number 6 there is mine.   If you're writing an article for ARJ, you must affirm that anything that disagrees with the Bible is invalid.  Period.  End of discussion.

Johnathan contrasts the first part of this, the ARJ self-description with that of the journal Evolution, published by Wiley-Blackwell:

Evolution, published for the Society for the Study of Evolution, is the premier publication devoted to the study of organic evolution and the integration of the various fields of science concerned with evolution. The journal presents significant and original results that extend our understanding of evolutionary phenomena and processes.²

He then makes this comparison:

So, ARJ is a journal published by a Creation organization, for the purposes of furthering our understanding of Creation in an interdisciplinary manner.  Evolution, is a journal published by the Society for the Study of Evolution, for the purposes of furthering our understanding of evolution in an interdisciplinary manner.

Hmmmm......

As you can see, every scientist presupposes the basic tenets of their field.  The purpose of these fields is to learn and understand more on the basis of these tenets.  The journal Evolution presupposes common ancestry (I challenge anyone to find an article in Evolution giving a comparison of common ancestry to other hypotheses), the journal ARJ presupposes Biblical Creation.

Now, Johnathan didn't get into the Evolution author guidelines, but if he had, he'd have found this:

The journal Evolution publishes articles in all areas of evolutionary biology. We welcome manuscripts presenting significant and original results that extend our understanding of evolutionary phenomena and processes.

This gives authors a lot of leeway.  "Extending our understanding" includes not only elaborating processes and phenomena that we already know a lot about, but also potentially paradigm-shifting research.  There is no caveat comparable to the ARJ remark that the editor can reject papers that conflict with the AiG statement of faith.  Further, there is nothing remotely comparable to the AiG statement of faith at all - nothing that requires potential authors to adhere to any sort of affirmation of transcendent Darwinian truth that must be upheld in the face of any disconfirming evidence.

The presupposition that scientific authors are expected to adhere to is, in a nutshell, that the scientific method of inquiry works, and that it allows us to make logical inferences from observations that we make.  We have very good reasons to hold to that presupposition - literally mountains of good reasons, and the consilience among different fields of study (e.g. physics and geology) is a very important one.

There just isn't any way to reconcile the ARJ's a priori commitment to reject evidence that contradicts scripture (or specific scriptural interpretations) with a genuine scientific enterprise.

Johnathan then shifts gears a little, and throws out a number of names of religious scientists - Nicolas Steno (writing in the mid-1600s) , Gregor Mendel (writing in the mid-1800s), Johannes Kepler (writing in the late 1500s-early 1600s) - as examples of scientists who used Biblical perspectives in their work.  (He engages in just a little sleight of hand here by insinuating that they weren't "evolutionists", despite the fact that Darwin hadn't published when the aforementioned gentlemen were working.  To suggest that they wouldn't have accepted evolution through common descent had the concept been available to them is not justified.)

To claim that scientists like Steno, Mendel, and Kepler were religious, or that they had Biblical concepts in mind when they were working isn't particularly interesting.  Scientists today like Brown University's Ken Miller are religious.  However to claim that scientists like Steno, Mendel, and Kepler were creationists in the modern sense of the term doesn't make any sense whatsoever, since modern creationism as a movement directly opposed to evolution traces to the work of Henry Morris in the 1960s.

Johnathan then writes:

In specific reference to Creationism, it is interesting to note that criticisms of evolution have been allowed in the secular, scientific literature, but only when it is posed as an "unsolved problem" for understanding evolution, rather than as a possibility that evolution is false.  For instance see this abstract.  I know of several ID papers published in this same manner over the last few years, but the authors have asked me not to disclose them as IDists because they want the papers to be evaluated "on their own merits".

It is implied here that there is some sort of grand conspiracy to suppress work that is critical of evolution - that only "unsolved" problems are suitable for the scientific literature.  Johnathon insinuates that ID-themed papers aren't published because they are ID-themed.  He seems to ignore the possibility that perhaps ID papers simply aren't built on good science.  One need only to look at the published work of people like William Dembski and Michael Behe, and the criticism that they attract to see that the problems with their work aren't related to their religious beliefs.  Dembski, for example, is just sloppy.  It's not appropriate to cloak poor science behind claims of religious persecution.³

Johnathan's next point:

So, going back to my discussion with Clever Badger, Clever Badger also notes the apologetic aspect of Creationism.  However, showing that scientific theory X doesn't make sense, or that theory Y is a better explanation for facts A, B, and C is in fact a legitimate part of science.

He's referring to this portion of one of my responses in the comments:

Do you not see the problem here? Before we even read the article, we know what it’s going to say: “{Fill in the blank subject} supports Young Earth Creationism!” ARJ lacks even a scintilla of scientific credibility simply because they’re not publishing science. They’re publishing complicated apologetics. If you fail to understand that you simply cannot assume the truth of that which you are trying to prove, then we’re at an impasse.

I'm not sure how his second statement, about "showing that scientific theory X doesn't make sense" relates to my comment about the apologetic nature of ARJ (specifically) and creationist writings (in general).  I'd certainly agree that showing that one theory better explains the observations than another, and if creationism actually did explain the body of observations better than evolution, there would be something to talk about, but it quite simply doesn't.   This gets back to the comment I made in my original post about ignoring broader contexts and chains of evidence.  When Snelling brings up an absurd idea like variable radioactive decay rates, he's not proposing a better explanation for observations.  He's introducing an unsupported concept intended only to force the observations to fit within the box defined by his literal interpretation of Genesis.  That.  Is.  Not.  Science.

Johnathan begins his wrap-up by bringing up a peculiar example of Stephen Jay Gould's alleged Marxist beliefs (while Gould's father was a Marxist, Gould wasn't) influencing his description of punctuated equilibrium.  Johnathan's point being that external beliefs of a scientist can act as heuristics leading to scientific ideas.  That's certainly true.  I don't disagree with that.  Nor do I disagree with Johnathan's assertion that such use of external beliefs is valid so long as the evidence supporting the idea stands on its own merits.  However I have to disagree with Johnathan's next statement:

Likewise, for apologetic Creationism, the Bible is used as a heuristic for finding one's own position, but not as an external justification for it.

As we've seen when we look back at the ARJ mission statement, then through the remark in the Instructions to Authors, and finally the AiG Statement of Faith, the Bible is most assuredly used as the external justification for the position in question.

The bottom line here is this:

If you're starting from a position affirming the accuracy of the Bible (in particular the Genesis stories), and you declare from the onset that anything contradictory to that position is, by definition, invalid, and you engage in "research" that requires you to distort the observational data to fit your affirmed starting position, you're working in circles.  Period.

If you're doing science, you must be willing and ready to throw out your preconceived ideas if sufficient disconfirming evidence comes along.  I have yet to see a creationist writer, publication, or organization that is prepared to do that.

Jay

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¹ I would just call such journals "journals". I'll use Johnathan's term to preserve the distinction between mainstream journals and Creationist journals.

² Bonus points if anyone can figure out why I footnoted this.

³It's interesting that Johnathan brought up Intelligent Design (ID).  Kitzmiller v. Dover should have been the death blow for attempts to paint ID as science, yet ID continues to skulk around just outside the door waiting to be let in.

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