by DWise1
Bill's question:
"Do you think the earth is 4.6 billion years old? Why?"
This was the first "impossible" question that Bill Morgan threw at me. Rather than make the message overly long, I refered Bill to the web page on geology that I had written. Bill's response was ironic, though I did not realize it at the time. He jumped up and down (I could imagine from his messages), berating me for hiding behind somebody else's web page, even though I had clearly identified it as my own page. I said "ironic", because Bill's own modus operandi has been to refuse to respond to most of my questions. For example, after having answered his question, I turned it about and asked him whether he thought the earth was no more than 10,000 years old and why. Even though I asked him that same question at least a dozen times, he refused to answer it, until 1998 July 23, about a year later, when he made the false claim that he had answered that question. Then he refused to substantiate that false claim and cancelled his AOL account about a month or two later.
In all that time and ever since, I do not believe that Bill Morgan has ever read my web page for the answer that he had asked for. Kind of makes you wonder why he had asked the question in the first place, doesn't it?
This exchange started with me sharing with Bill a letter to the editor which had not gotten printed. That letter was in response to another creationist who had presented two of the lamer "young-earth proofs" in existence: the "shrinking sun" and the growth of the human population. I passed it on to Bill, thinking that he might know this other creationist and could pass it on to him. Please note that Bill didn't even try to touch what I had said about those other two claims.
In the following text, I am "DWise1" and Bill Morgan is "BillyJack6." Liber8r was a third-party witness to our correspondence.
######################################## Just a little something extra, Bill. I had written a reply to a letter in the Register, but neither it nor any other reply was ever published. You'll have to look up the original letter yourself, if you don't already have it. My additional comments are in square brackets: letters@link.freedom.com In Re: Randall Bowman "Who says man didn't live among dinosaurs?" 15 Jun 97 Purveyors of "creation science" oppose any ideas that may conflict with their literal interpretation of Genesis, including evidence that the earth is more than 10,000 years old. They do this by claiming to have scientific evidence supporting their position and declaring the opposing findings of science to be erroneous and invalid. In reality, virtually all of their "evidences" are based on misrepresenting scientific sources and methods and on ignoring or wishing away the existence of opposing evidence. Mr. Bowman's letter (Randall Bowman, "Who says man didn't live among dinosaurs?," 15 Jun 1997) is filled with typical examples of "creation science" misrepresentation. For example, he misrepresents evolution as a Lamarckian "ladder of evolutionary 'progress'", which is not a part of current evolutionary thought. He specifically names carbon-14 as being used to date fossils, which C-14 is ill-suited for because it uses organic material and has too short a half-life to date anything older than 50,000 years. Mr. Bowman tries to "prove" a young earth in typical "creation science" fashion by casting doubt on scientific methods and offering contradictory "evidence." He dismisses the great preponderance of evidence that humans did not exist until millions of years after the last traces of dinosaurs by declaring radiometric methods "flawed" and the entire system of geologic eras "conjecture," then he offers a list of 80 tests for determining the age of the earth. I recognize that list from a "creation science" book and it did not include any actual scientific tests. Both of his examples have been known to be false for over a decade now, their falsehood has been demonstrated repeatedly to creationists, and yet creationists continue to make the same false claims, in typical "creation science" fashion. Flimsy as his examples are, they are about as good as it gets in "creation science." The "shrinking sun" claim is based solely on a 1979 report by Eddy and Boornazian in which they deduced a shrinkage rate for the sun from direct observations. But creationists don't tell you that even at that time astronomers knew that the sun's size oscillates and had published several articles about that effect. They also don't tell you that later, in 1984, Eddy reported the exact opposite finding, that from 1967 to 1980 the sun had INCREASED in size at an even higher rate than he had previously found it to have been shrinking. [actually, this claim is not taken from that 1979 report itself, but rather from the ABSTRACT for that report. Had the creationist actually read the article, he would have learned that the sun oscillates. Duh?] A more complete report on the "shrinking sun" claim can be found on the Web at http://www.reall.org/newsletter/v04-n11/sunshrink.html. The human-population-growth claim, better known as the "Bunny Blunder," is one of the more hilarious claims, especially if we take it seriously and use it to predict what the world population was at any given time in the past. Using the published version which yields a date of 4300 BCE for the origin of the human population, we find that in 2500 BCE the total world population was 750 people, giving us only about 200 able-bodied males available in Egypt to build the Great Pyramid of Cheops, all 50 million tons of it. During the preceding 200 years, even fewer men built six neighboring pyramids and many other large structures. Things were even more hectic back between 3800 BCE and 3600 BCE when the total world population of 10 to 20 people, including women and children, rushed madly back and forth between Crete and the Indus River Valley building and abandoning enough fortified cities to have housed millions of people. The "Bunny Blunder" gets its name from applying this model to rabbits, whereupon we find that the world rabbit population had to have come from two bunnies created about 100 years ago, which, by this claim's logic, means that the Earth could be no more than 100 years old. The blunder lies in the fact that this claim completely ignores the effects of several factors in the environment which limit the size and growth of a population. This population model is presented in introductory textbooks on math modeling as the "pure-birth model" and is shown to be an extremely poor model of natural populations precisely because it completely ignores the environment. Constrained by the environment, the human population, like the rabbit population, could indeed be millions of years old and still be no larger than we find it at present. "Creation science" claims involving math are notorious for incorrectly setting up the problem and for misinterpreting the results; they are typical cases of "garbage in, garbage out." [A more complete write-up can be found off of my creation/evolution web-page, http://members.aol.com/dwise1/cre_ev.html. The sad part of all this is that Mr. Bowman did not deliberately set out to misinform us or to lie to us, but rather he had been misinformed himself by his own "creation science" sources, just as our children are misinformed whenever this nonsense is taught in the classroom. If Mr. Bowman really wants to oppose certain scientific ideas, then he needs to learn everything he can about those ideas and then oppose THEM, not his misconceptions about them; "know your enemy and know yourself." "Creation science" is perhaps the single worst possible resource for learning about science, unless you are studying why their claims are false. A very good source of information on the Web about "creation science" claims are the FAQ files in the Talk.Origins Archive at http://www.talkorigins.org/origins/faqs-index.html. ##################################### Subj: Re: A Letter the Register Would Not Print Date: 97-08-10 21:54:42 EDT From: BillyJack6 To: DWise1 Do you think the earth is 4.6 billion years old? Why? ######################################## >Subj: Re: A Letter the Register Would Not Print >Date: 97-08-10 21:54:42 EDT >From: BillyJack6 >To: DWise1 > >Do you think the earth is 4.6 billion years old? Why? > I do not recall trying to claim an exact age of the earth. Surely the "exact" age is and will continue to be a subject of active debate and investigation, from determining at which point in its formation the earth could be considered as having actually come into being (eg, assuming an accretion model, do you start the clock when the very first planetessimals start to clump or when most of the current mass had accreted, or somewhere inbetween?) to the accuracy and the concurrence of the dating methods used. So I would not necessarily claim that the earth is exactly 4.6 billion years old (give or take 100 million years), but I see no scientific reason to seriously doubt that order of magnitude (while I can understand some religious reasons). "Why?" Because the preponderance of geological evidence shows that the earth has had a very long history. I understand from your writings that you are a young-earth creationist, which would mean that you believe the earth to be about 6000 years old (I would assume that you are not taken with the ICR's lame attempt at stealth tactics when they try to hide their biblical basis by claiming 10,000 years instead). The geological evidence clearly shows that the earth is much older than 6000 years, many times over. Clearly enough for creationist geologist Glenn R. Morton, who as a creationist would dearly love to find the earth to be young, but as a practicing geologist must accept the evidence that it is instead quite ancient. And clearly enough for the creationist geology students he had hired and who suffered severe crises of faith when confronted with that hard geological evidence (please note that they did not suffer any crises of GEOLOGY). Again, I refer you to my web page on the subject: http://members.aol.com/dwise1/geology.html which is linked to by my creation/evolution web page: http://members.aol.com/dwise1/cre_ev.html Since you have an AOL account, I know that you have access to the Web. Now, I should reverse your question: Do you think the earth is less than 10,000 years old? Why? Perhaps you would also like to comment on Randall Bowman's "shrinking sun" (see http://www.reall.org/newsletter/v04-n11/sunshrink.html) or "Bunny Blunder" (see http://members.aol.com/dwise1/bunny.html) claims. The first draft of my reply was twice as long, mainly due to more development of the "Bunny Blunder" claim. I might still have a copy of that first draft floating around somewhere; if I find it, would you want to read it? Actually, I had sent you that e-mail thinking that you might know Randall Bowman and would have shared my letter with him. If so, then what were his comments? Did he realize that his claims have such serious problems? As before, I would recommend the FAQ files in the Talk.Origins Archive at http://www.talkorigins.org/origins/faqs-index.html, so that you can approach creation science claims with an open and inquiring mind. It always helps to read criticisms by your opponents. If you need help in learning how to use the AOL web browser (miserable thing that it is), just ask. ############################################## Subj: Re: A Letter the Register Would Not Print Date: 97-08-17 18:01:32 EDT From: BillyJack6 To: DWise1 Wait! Time out! You did not answer why you think teh earth is 4.6 billion +/- 100 million years old. All you said is "geology." Please tell me what evidence from geology convinces you of this. Thank you, Bill %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% >Subj: Re: A Letter the Register Would Not Print >Date: 97-08-17 18:01:32 EDT >From: BillyJack6 >To: DWise1 > >Wait! Time out! You did not answer why you think teh earth is 4.6 billion >+/- 100 million years old. All you said is "geology." Please tell me what >evidence from geology convinces you of this. Now, Bill, you know that is not true. I did answer your question: "Because the preponderance of geological evidence shows that the earth has had a very long history. ... The geological evidence clearly shows that the earth is much older than 6000 years, many times over." That the earth has had a much longer and more complex history than biblical literalism would allow has been evident almost from the very beginning of the science of geology, so much so that 19th century biblical literalists did everything they could to counter this threat, up to and including Philip Henry Gosse's Omphalos Argument, which he advanced in his 1857 book, "Omphalos: An Attempt to Untie the Geological Knot" (see my Omphalos page at http://cre-ev.dwise1.net/omphalos.html). I then pointed you directly to a more complete explanation of my answer, filled with examples: the Geology page of the Creation/Evolution segment of my web site. Again, the URLs are: Geology page -- http://cre-ev.dwise1.net/geology.html Creation/Evolution page -- http://cre-ev.dwise1.net/index.html I had pointed you to that web page because I assumed that you would not want an e-mail message over 50,000 bytes long. And I gave you a URL because I knew that you do have at least one ISP, namely AOL. I even offered to help you figure out how to use the AOL browser if you did not already know. Of course, if you have some ideological aversion the Web, then tell me and I can attach that HTML file to an e-mail (since I had just applied an HTML wrapper onto an old CompuServe file of mine, the HTML tags should not detract from its readability -- I have not found a way to start up that browser offline, let alone try to read a local HTML file like you can with NetScape, Mosaic, and Internet Explorer). But you have to let me know. Otherwise, I can only continue to consider the giving of a URL as a helpful gesture. So much for the mote in my eye, but what about the beam in your own eye, Bill? While I had answered your question and pointed you directly to a more complete explanation, you completely ignored my own question to you. Here it is again: Do you think the earth is less than 10,000 years old? Why? Of course, I do not blame you for not addressing the "shrinking sun" claim nor the "Bunny Blunder". Perhaps you would want to cite the claim that a recent NASA document, written "well into the space age," shows that if the moon were really about 4.5 billion years old, then there should have been much more meteoric dust on it than we had actually found (if you have read what I have sent to you, then you will know to avoid this claim as well). %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% ############################################## Subj: Re: Yes, Geology Date: 97-08-21 21:46:47 EDT From: BillyJack6 To: DWise1 you are very eloquent but also very evasive. No where did you answerhte question..you said "geology." And pointed me to a web page. I expect more of you. Do not hide behind some else's web page....give me your answer. BillBillyJack6 Re: Yes, Geology response was given on-line to the effect that that web page is indeed mine and written by me, so I have indeed answered the question. Yet again, I offer to get that file to him by other means if he is either unable or unwilling to access the Web. I concluded by asking that he not prove my wife right in her opinion of creationists. ##############################################Bill offered no response at that time. I repeated my question, "Do you think the earth is less than 10,000 years old? Why?", several times after that and each time he refused to respond. I also refered him to my geology web page about a half-dozen times more, with no indication that he ever looked at it.
Then suddenly, nearly a full year later:
########################################### Subj: Re: TMA/ Again with the Mitosis/Meiosis Date: 98-07-23 23:56:35 EDT From: BillyJack6 To: DWise1 In a message dated 98-07-09 02:05:13 EDT, you write: << And what is this business of "explain how they 'evolved into meisosis animals." What, so now I have to be a god myself, required to possess omniscience that I can peer into the past and gather all the little details? All while you repeatedly weasel out of even the simplest of questions, like "Do you think the earth is less than 10,000 years old? >> You're weasling. I told you the earth is less than 10 k because the Bible clearly teaches it and science doth not falsify it. [DWISE1 Note: the following paragraph was from my previous message; Bill did not mark it properly as a quote.] This would be analogous to my demanding that you provide us with a detailed itinerary for Moses and the Israelites showing in detail how far they travelled and precisely where they made camp every single day of their 40-year journey from Egypt to Canaan. Could you do that? Would it be a reasonable question for me to ask you? Do you know Brad Sparks? ########################################### Subj: Weasel is as Weasel Does Date: 98-07-31 22:33:06 EDT From: DWise1 To: BillyJack6 CC: liber8r@mcs.com, DWise1 ### BEGIN ### Subj: Re: TMA/ Again with the Mitosis/Meiosis Date: 98-07-23 23:56:35 EDT From: BillyJack6 To: DWise1 In a message dated 98-07-09 02:05:13 EDT, you write: << And what is this business of "explain how they 'evolved into meisosis animals." What, so now I have to be a god myself, required to possess omniscience that I can peer into the past and gather all the little details? All while you repeatedly weasel out of even the simplest of questions, like "Do you think the earth is less than 10,000 years old? >> You're weasling. I told you the earth is less than 10 k because the Bible clearly teaches it and science doth not falsify it. This would be analogous to my demanding that you provide us with a detailed itinerary for Moses and the Israelites showing in detail how far they travelled and precisely where they made camp every single day of their 40-year journey from Egypt to Canaan. Could you do that? Would it be a reasonable question for me to ask you? Do you know Brad Sparks? ### END ### >> << ... All while you repeatedly weasel out of even the simplest of questions, like "Do you think the earth is less than 10,000 years old? >> You're weasling. I told you the earth is less than 10 k because the Bible clearly teaches it and science doth not falsify it.<< When was that, Bill? This is the first time I have ever seen you respond to that particular question. This is also the first time I have ever seen you make that statement. Even though I had asked that question several times (from 97-08-10 21:57:10 EDT to 98-07-09 02:05:13 EDT), I never saw you answer it; if you want, I can compile a listing of every message where I had asked it. I just looked through all the messages again and still could not see where you had ever answered that question. For that matter, if you had answered that question before, why then did you make no attempt to defend your honor until now, given that I had taken you to task so many times before this over the exact same question? WHEN did you answer that question? BTW, this is also the first time that I have seen this statement at all. I commend you for stating this position more honestly than any other creationist I have spoken or corresponded with. Certainly, since they are so strongly tied to the game of "hide the Bible" in order to sneak creationism into the public schools, mainstream creation science [an oxymoron?] cannot make such a statement, nor can they afford to without giving away their charade. Remember, they keep claiming that their claims are based on and supported by science and have nothing to do with the Bible nor religion. Here, you admit that your young-earth claim is based on the Bible (actually, upon one INTERPRETATION of parts of the Bible) and, instead of claiming SUPPORT from science, you only claim that science has not disproven a young earth. At the same time, I see two main problems with your position. Unfortunately, I do not have time to discuss them right now, so it will have to wait until next week. I am also waiting for you to answer my more general question of whenever you are claiming to have answered all the other questions in that list. Here it is again: ### BEGIN REPEAT ### Subj: Show Me Your 100% Date: 98-07-09 02:04:48 EDT From: DWise1 To: BillyJack6 CC: liber8r@mcs.com, DWise1 ### BEGIN ### Subj: Re: Thanks for Offer Date: 98-06-26 23:47:15 EDT From: BillyJack6 To: DWise1 12.6 % no way! I answered 100% you just did not lke my answers! ### END ### "100%"??? Well, since you claim to have answered 100% of my questions (ie, every single one of them), let's look at a few of the questions from the list in QUESTI~1.TXT (it was QUESTIONS.TXT, but 16-bit AOL 3.0 cannot handle long names) and you can tell me when and how you had answered them. Oh, and please keep in mind that I have asked several of these questions repeatedly and have never received an answer. ### END REPEAT ### Bill, you claimed 100%, but in a year of correspondence, Liber8r and I have definitely NOT seen 100%; you can ask Liber8r to verify that he has seen the same thing as I have. And to me, 12.6% seems an exorbinantly high figure, but then I did say that I had been overly generous to you in arriving at that figure, thus inflating it. A more accurate figure should be much less than 10%. The transcript of our email since 1996 clearly reveals that the vast majority of my questions to you had gone unanswered. The evidence and our witnessing of events indicate that your claim of "100%" is utterly false. YOU NEED TO SUBSTANTIATE YOUR CLAIM or else admit that your claim is false, whether intentionally or not. If you need to review the record, I can email you a copy of the transcript. It is just over 1 MB in size, though I can compress it down to just under 400 KB. Though I am surprised that you have not maintained your own records. >>Do you know Brad Sparks?<< No, though I have seen his name mentioned as a guest speaker. Does this have anything to do with the discussion or is it yet another non sequitur? ####################################################### Subj: Weasel Is As Weasel Does, Part 2 Date: 98-08-06 22:52:26 EDT From: DWise1 To: BillyJack6 CC: liber8r@mcs.com, DWise1 ### BEGIN ### Subj: Re: TMA/ Again with the Mitosis/Meiosis Date: 98-07-23 23:56:35 EDT From: BillyJack6 To: DWise1 In a message dated 98-07-09 02:05:13 EDT, you write: [snipped] You're weasling. I told you the earth is less than 10 k because the Bible clearly teaches it and science doth not falsify it. [snipped] ### END ### >> ... the earth is less than 10 k because the Bible clearly teaches it and science doth not falsify it.<< As I said in the first response, this is the first time that I have seen this statement at all. I commend you for stating this position more honestly than any other creationist I have spoken or corresponded with. Certainly, since they are so strongly tied to the game of "hide the Bible" in order to sneak creationism into the public schools, mainstream creation science [an oxymoron?] cannot make such a statement, nor can they afford to without giving away their charade. Remember, they maintain that their claims are based on and supported by science and have nothing to do with the Bible nor religion. They need to do that to try to sneak it past the courts. Here, you admit that your young-earth claim is based solely on the Bible (actually, upon one INTERPRETATION of parts of the Bible) and, instead of claiming SUPPORT from science, you only claim that science has not disproven a young earth. Yet at the same time, you have claimed elsewhere that science supports your claims and in AOLCREAT.DOC you claimed that you were going to support your position with science (which you never did, by the way). Also, in your question of whether children should be taught about "God", it appears that you advocate using the public schools to proselytize. Furthermore, your interest in creation science seems to focus almost exclusively on its use as a tool for proselytizing. Since you give presentations in local high schools (we still would like some more detailed information about this, including who [ie, what organizations or what officials] arranges for your presentations) and have not indicated otherwise, we assume that you advocate having creation science taught in the public schools. Therefore, we understand your position to be the same as that of mainstream creation science, that you want to have creation science taught in the public schools in order to reach that student population in order to proselytize them and to convert them to your religion, without their parents' knowledge and regardless of their parents' wishes. And we would assume that, despite this assault on the family, you would also claim to believe in and support family values. That you do not use the stealth language of mainstream creation science indicates to me that you are a follower who actually believes in creation science. An analogy might be the Party in "1984." The Party ran on lies, which were handled and propagated by the Ministry of Truth. The Inner Party members would create the lies and the Outer Party members would administer them. All Party members were to believe the lies to be true, requiring a skill known as "doublethink," the ability to hold two contradictory thoughts and to believe them both to be true. Because the Inner Party members had to create the lies and keep them all straight along with the truth, they needed to be very skilled in doublethink. The leaders of creation science need to devise their claims and arguments just so in order to artfully twist the truth. They have to know what they are doing in order to word their claims just so (eg, Walter Brown's rattlesnake-protein claim), while at the same time believing that their claims are true, requiring considerable skill in doublethink. Gish has also demonstrated his skill at doublethink; with a copy of the title page of a NASA document, complete with the date of 1965, right in front of him, he still insisted that the document's date was 1976. Their followers, such as yourself, are not involved in the actual creation of the false claims and so are freer to naively accept those false claims as true without having to think about them. Glenn R. Morton was such a follower. He accepted the ICR's claims as true and wrote several creationist geology articles as well as ghost-writing the creationist geology section of a Josh McDowell book. It is because he actually believed those claims to be true that his faith was shattered when he started working directly with the hard geological evidence that he had been taught did not exist and could not exist if Scripture were to have any meaning (have you visited Morton's site yet? I didn't think so.). >> ... the earth is less than 10 k because the Bible clearly teaches it and science doth not falsify it.<< Well, I see two main problems with your position: 1) you are automatically assuming that your position is correct if it cannot be disproven and 2) you are assuming, quite incorrectly, that your position has not been falsified by science. First, your position is not different from countless other mythologies, including the stories of gremlins (the Book of Phluk) and of the Blue Fairies. All those other mythologies clearly teach things that science has not disproven and cannot disprove. The one has just as much validity as ALL the others. They ALL have equal standing. Does that make ALL of them true? No. If any of them contradict each other, which almost all of them do, then how are you supposed to pick one of them over all the others? If you wish to claim that YOUR mythology is the only true one, then precisely what basis do you have for making such a claim? Just what is supposed to be so special about YOUR mythology that it should be chosen over all the rest? No self-referential arguments please (eg, "because the Bible tells me so"). This is indicative of a fundamental weakness in your position. On 96-05-31 00:44:08 EDT, you wrote to me: "I have given you all the arguments Ic an. Indeed there are more issues to share on but I know athat a pearl of wisdom would make you ever say..hery, thats right there is a God."[sic] Well, Bill, which god? Whose god? Why do you assume that if I were to come to such a conclusion that it would be YOUR god whose existence I would realize? Why would it not be Brahman-Atman? Or Bel and Anu (who had given the Code to Hammurabi, centuries before Moses claimed to have received it from JHWH)? Or one of any number of other god-concepts? You are unthinkingly making a broad assumption based solely on ethnocentrism, like just about every other fundamentalist I've talked with (and even most non-fundamentalist Christians, or most people of any religion, for that matter). Ethnocentrism is common among humans, but that does not make claims based on ethnocentrism logically valid, nor necessarily true. In everything you say and think about religion, we see you proceeding from the fundamental premise that YOUR religion, YOUR god, YOUR mythology, YOUR theology is the only valid one and that it would be the natural choice for anybody to arrive at. This premise is clearly false. Creation science's Two-Model Approach (TMA) proceeds from that same faulty premise, so its logic is similarly fallacious. Basically, the TMA posits that there are two and only two mutually exclusive models of origins and that the one, the "creation model," can be proven solely by disproving the other, the "evolution model." Now, proof by contradiction IS a valid form of argument, but only if you can clearly define a dichotomy. For example (thinking of an engineer joke a math prof once told us), if you wanted to use proof by contradiction to prove that not all odd numbers are prime, you would assume the opposite, that all odd numbers ARE prime, then find at least one example that disproves that statement, thus proving that your first statement, that not all odd numbers are prime, is true. But what if you cannot clearly define a dichotomy? You want to prove creation -- ie, the literal truth of Genesis -- through proof by contradiction, so you present its opposite, the "evolution model", in order to disprove that "model." But although you can clearly define the "creation model", its "opposite", the so-called "evolution model", is a huge incongruous self-contradictory messy mish-mash. It would be something like defining a dicotomy between Bill Morgan and everything else in the universe. Even though you bill the exercise as choosing between evolution and creation, you are really pitting literalist Genesis against ALL other ideas about origins, including MOST OF THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS, BOTH ANCIENT AND MODERN, as Henry Morris himself told me in a letter. You only take a few token swipes (AKA, "death by a thousand pin-pricks") at a few ideas about evolution, usually old and discarded ideas or misconceptions -- the better for to misrepresent scientists as being anti-evolutionary when they say anything against those ideas -- , and never address the other creation myths that have been lumped into the "evolution model." Even if you were to succeed in proving that a supernatural event had to have occurred, you would still need to determine whether that event was part of the "creation model" or the "evolution model." Look again at how you need to do a proof by contradiction. You need to be trying to falsify a statement that can be falsified by mathematical contradiction or by a single example. That means that the statement can only be true if each and every element of it is true; if even one element is false, then the entire statement is false. This is called logical ANDing, expressed in Boolean Algebra as S = A AND B AND C AND D; every single element must be true or else the statement cannot be true. If the statement to be falsified cannot be so expressed, then you do not want to use proof by contradiction, because you will be reduced to disproving each and every element and example of that statement. If the number of elements is of any appreciable size, then the proof would become increasingly intractable (ie, possible, but it would take too long to do to be of any practical use). In the TMA, the "creation model" (CM) is clearly defined as any creation account with agrees with a literal interpretation of Genesis (are there any other creation accounts that would qualify?) and the "evolution model" (EM) is defined as all other ideas dealing with origins, including, but not restricted to, scientific theories and hypotheses, materialistic ideas, panspermia, LGMs ("little green men", even though ufologists will often call one species "grays"), Blue Fairies, gremlins, a multitude of science-fiction storylines, Hollywood misunderstandings of science, the vast majority of creation myths that have ever existed, and a multitude of ideas that we have not yet discovered. Most of the ideas within the EM do not depend on each other, so not every idea in the EM needs to be true in order for the EM to be true. All that needs to happen to keep you from disproving the EM is for just one of its ideas to be true. This is expressed in Boolean Algebra as S = A OR B OR C OR D; as long as even one element is true, then the entire statement is true. To prove the CM by disproving the EM, you will need to disprove each and every element of the EM, even the ones that we have not thought of yet. Just the sheer size of the EM would make this an intractable task at best. However, the inclusion of a large number of SUPERNATURAL elements in the EM promotes the task from intractable to impossible; we cannot prove nor disprove a supernaturalistic explanation. Therefore, proving the CM through disproof of the EM is an impossible task. Obviously, the TMA's choice of dichotomy is flawed. A better choice would be between naturalistic and supernaturalist explanations. However, that would leave us with two large collections of OR'd models; hence the task of disproving the naturalistic models would again be intractable and the task of disproving the supernaturalistic models would again be impossible. Even if one were able to show that all possible naturalistic explanations would fail and that a supernaturalistic explanation would need to be true, then one would need to determine WHICH supernaturalistic explanation was true, if any (remember that due to our very limited abilities to deal with the supernatural, it is most likely that NONE of our ideas about the supernatural is true). So, Bill, we see that you cannot simply sit back and assume that your particular mythology is the only alternative, because it isn't. Nor is it the one that everybody would naturally turn to, because there are so many better choices, besides which one's culture would usually have a strong influence on that choice. You cannot advocate having your claims to be taught in the science classroom if you have nothing scientific to offer in its SUPPORT (claims of lack of falsification, false in themselves, do not constitute support). In order for it to be considered, it must be supported. Second, your claim that science has not falsified the claim that the earth is less than 10,000 years old is itself false. The geological evidence clearly indicates that the earth has had a long and eventful history. The evidence that we would expect to find if Flood Geology were true is not to be found and the evidence that we do find contradicts the claims of Flood Geology. Several examples of varving represent time spans of several thousands and of millions of years. Bill, HAVE YOU READ MY GEOLOGY PAGE YET? What does the geological evidence show, Bill? If the evidence clearly indicated a young earth, then creationists could present that evidence, hard-core geologists would try to ignore it, and independent observers should be able to see it for what it is. If the evidence clearly indicated an ancient earth, then geologists could present that evidence, hard-core creationists would try to ignore it, and independent observers should be able to see it for what it is. If the evidence were inconclusive either way, then both sides could present that evidence and interpret the evidence according to their own preconceived ideas and independent observers wouldn't know what to make of it. I submit that we have a situation in which geologists present the evidence while creationists try to make weak misrepresentations of what they consider to be counter-evidence (eg, "poly-strate" fossils and polonium halos in "basement granite") and most independent observers don't know enough about geology to understand the evidence. But, you may say, as they look at the evidence, geologists are biased towards interpreting that evidence as supporting an ancient earth. Maybe, but the creationists most certainly are biased. Yes, you may say, but at least we will admit it. So, is the whole thing a matter of one's training and perspective determining how he will interpret the data? Yes, exactly, you may say. Then consider the following case. Glenn R. Morton was a hard-core creationist who went to work as a geologist. He entered into that field with a strongly creationist bias and viewed the evidence he was encountering from a definitely creationist perspective. He had also learned Flood Geology and wrote a number of creationist geology articles for major creationist periodicals and ghost-wrote on the same subject for Josh McDowell. But as he learned more and more from his hands-on work with the hard evidence, he saw more and more that the hard evidence contradicted what he had been taught and he began to have his doubts. He hired several young geologists from Christian Heritage College, who had been thoroughly schooled in Flood Geology and who also entered the field with a strongly creationist bias and also viewed the evidence they were encountering from a definitely creationist perspective. He watched as they also began to see that the evidence contradicted what they had been taught and they started to suffer severe crises of faith. He himself ended up on the brink of atheism. It should be seen as significant that they had all suffered crises of FAITH, but not of GEOLOGY. The facts of geology were all too clear to them. So, Bill, we have a situation in which the geological evidence for an ancient earth is so strong that hard-core creationists viewing it could not deny that evidence. Nobody had to present an old-earth interpretation to them. Nobody had to "indoctrinate" them in the "dogma" of old-earth geology. They expected the evidence to support their young-earth beliefs and they WANTED the evidence to support their young-earth beliefs, in the strongest way possible. If there had been any way in which they could have re-interpreted the evidence to support their young-earth beliefs, then they would have done that. Yet the evidence was so strong in and of itself that, despite their having approached it from the strongest possible creationist perspective and with the strongest possible creationist bias, they had no choice but to follow that evidence where it took them, to the realization that the earth is ancient, that Flood Geology is all wet, and that their religious leaders had all lied to them. And down that path lies the destruction of faith, not because of science, but because of very bad theology, the theology of creation science. Bill, you cannot continue to avoid this issue. You must address it. At your request to learn what geological evidence they had encountered, I directed you to Morton's web site. To date, indications are that you have never visited that site. BILL, WHEN WILL YOU VISIT GLENN MORTON'S SITE? WHEN WILL YOU TALK WITH GLENN MORTON? WHEN WILL YOU STOP HIDING FROM THE FACTS AND THE TRUTH? WHEN WILL YOU STOP LEADING OTHERS DOWN THE PATH TO THE DESTRUCTION OF THEIR FAITH? ###########################################I never heard anything more from Bill on this subject. He never made any attempt to support his false claim of having answered my question before. For that matter, I never received another message from him. Within two months, Bill Morgan closed his AOL account and left no forwarding address, effectively disappearing.
Or rather, he seemed to have slipped into a stealth mode. Within a couple months, I found a website, "Welcome to Creation vs. Evolution" at http://www.webmecca.com/creation/ (link now broken), that featured Bill's writings, but always refered to him in the third person and never stated who owned it. That site went through a progression of email addresses for Bill, though he never responded to any email I sent to those addresses, at least not when I used my DWise1 account. It was a full year since his disappearance before he started publishing his new email address, BillyJack1@hotmail.com in his newsletter and a full two years since his disappearance before he started publishing the URL of that website, which finally did turn out to be his.
Share and enjoy!
Return to Top of Page
Return to DWise1's "Bill Morgan's 'Unanswerable' Questions" Page
Return to DWise1's "Bill Morgan" Page
Return to DWise1's "Creation/Evolution" Page