Bill Nye Choked on Radiometric Dating Question

Comedian, actor and former mechanical engineer William Sanford Nye (b. 1955) is best known for the show Bill Nye the Science Guy (1993–98).  Nye gave a very poor response to the question regarding radiometric dating in the recent debate with Ken Ham (see the 2 hour and 7 minute mark).

First, he side-stepped the issue and brought up old stars.  That’s right, he was dancing with the stars!  Russell Humphreys (Ph.D. Physics, formerly with Sandia National Labs) wrote Starlight and Time in 1994 and gave a plausible answer to this question based on the General Theory of Relativity and gravitational time dilation.  A reasonable man or woman can see that the light travel problem applies to both the Big Bang and Creation models (as Ken pointed out regarding the horizon problem).

Nye defended an old earth based on depositional rates.  In 1883, Alexander Winchell, former State Geologist of Michigan, estimated the age of the earth at 3M years. [1]  That’s a far cry from 4.5 billion years.  That was back when gradualistic uniformitarianism was in vogue.  But now catastrophism has a wide following even within mainstream Geology.  So, if most deposits were formed rapidly, such as turbidites, the depositional rates favor Young Earth Science (YES).

Nye said Charles Lyell (d. 1875) came up with the phrase “deep time.”  Actually, it was John McPhee who wrote Basin and Range in 1980.  McPhee said, “The human mind may not have evolved enough to be able to comprehend deep time” (p. 133). 

Marie Skłodowska-Curie (d. 1934) came up with the term “radioactivity.”  Nye made the very common mistake in stating that radioactivity contradicted Kelvin’s age for the Earth (his final estimate was 24M).  In 1895, before the discovery of radioactivity, John Perry showed that convection in the Earth's interior modified Kelvin’s age of the Earth.

Some claim that YES is pseudoscience.  Bill Nye the Science Guy had an episode on that topic.  Nye said there must be aliens because there are so many stars.  Yet no one has seen aliens and there are no cities on Mars.  Extraordinary claims (aliens) require extraordinary evidence.  Nye was skeptical of the Loch Ness Monster.  According to the Smithsonian’s online encyclopedia, “Even though most scientists believe the likelihood of a monster is small, they keep an open mind …”  Perhaps Nye should be open minded towards YES.  An article in National Geographic was very fair towards Nessie and included reports from very reliable witnesses. [2]

A number of times in the debate ice core dating was brought up.  We have a post on ice cores.

Nye should read Kicking the Sacred Cow by former aeronautical engineer and award winning SciFi author James Hogan.  Hogan is very sympathetic to YES.  Ken Ham sent Nye a book in The New Answers Book series – will Nye have an open mind and read it and seriously consider the evidence?

As for the question posed to Nye in the debate, Ephraim Fischbach (Purdue University) gave a talk at the Institute for Theoretical, Atomic and Molecular and Optical Physics (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics) providing firm data that indicates that the sun affects radioactive decay rates.  John Woodmorappe (M.A. Geology) has written an excellent book refuting radiometric dating and millions of years.  Jay Wile (Ph.D. Nuclear Chemistry, Univ. of Rochester), at one time a skeptic regarding accelerated radioactive decay, has some great info on varying decay rates.

Soft tissue in dinos, as discovered by Mary Schweitzer and others, says that dinos are young and the dating methods are wrong.  As Tim Stafford (The Adam Quest) asks, “How could something as delicate as blood cells survive sixty million [sic] years?” [3]

Pray for Bill.  The Apostle Paul persecuted the church.  Bill is persecuting YES.  Paul was gloriously converted (Acts 9, 22, 26).  The same thing can happen to Bill!  Will Bill Nye the Science Guy be blinded by the light (Acts 22:11)?

Nye is the head of the Planetary Society.  Feel free to send him a letter of encouragement or some creation books (such as the New Answers Books):

Attn. Bill Nye

The Planetary Society

85 South Grand Ave

Pasadena  CA  91105

Notes:

1) "Celebrating the age of the Earth" by Simon Knell and Cherry Lewis, Geological Society, London, Special Publications, 2001, vol. 190, p. 1-14, p. 7.

2) “Loch Ness: the lake and the legend” by William Ellis, National Geographic, Vol. 151, No. 6, June 1977, p. 759.

3) The Adam Quest by Tim Stafford (Nelson Books, Nashville, TN, 2013), p. 105.

Young Earth Science (YES)

                                                  *** UPDATE ***

Be sure to catch our latest video.  We tackle a potpourri of topics:  Thunder & C-14, Tree Rings & Ammonites,  Norman Macbeth (Darwin Retried), OMNI magazine & censorship ... #Rubio #NormanMacbeth #Darwin #AltMed #TreeRings

YES as shorthand for Young Earth Science is on the rise.  We use many TLA’s (3 letter acronyms) every day:

If you google “Young Earth Science” you get 690K hits.  Change the search to: YES "young earth" geology catastrophism, and you obtain 244K items.

Our recent blog highlighted the pro-YES website of Bob Enyart who has interviewed such notables as Lawrence Krauss (The Physics of Star Trek) and Jack Horner (Jurassic Park).  There is a site YoungEarthScientist.com dedicated to “students and teachers who recognize the overwhelming scientific evidence supporting the history of a Young Earth …”  Jeannie Fulbright is a homeschool science author.  She has a web page titled “young-earth-science” where she states, “… there is scientific evidence for a young earth … which is often mentioned throughout our science course narratives. [1]  The Puritan Board also has a YES discussion page.  Reasons to Affirm a Young Earth by Paul Humber supports YES:  “… there is good scientific evidence that the earth is less than ten thousand years old. …[it can be] shown that scientific data supports the [young] age of the earth…”  Cambridge University Press published The New Catastrophism by Derek Ager, former President of the British Geological Association, in 1995.  Ager shows that most rock formations were formed rapidly and not over millions of years.  There is even a facebook page:  www.facebook.com/youngearthscience  which proclaims that, “More and more scientific evidence is mounting suggesting the earth is much younger than [mainstream] scientists have thought.”  Are “likers” of Old Earth Fallacies (OEF) following a ritual when they reject YES?

Beyond the gates of OEF delirium we can awaken to the true evidence for YES.  In Lake Walensee (Switzerland) over 300 layers formed in 160 years. [2]  Roger Patterson, who has studied bias in high school science textbooks, states,

The layer known as the Navajo Sandstone contains minerals that were eroded from the Appalachian Mountains. … The Tapeats Sandstone contains large boulders and was deposited in storm conditions over an immense area of North America.  The Redwall Limestone extends from the Southwest to Pennsylvania and Tennessee – obviously deposited as the result of a massive catastrophe. [3]

An amazing dating anomaly involves the volcanic ash layer nearby where Richard Leakey found Skull 1470 had been dated at 212M to 230M years by the K-Ar method. [4]  This age, of course, was rejected because of PreSuppositions regarding human origins.  Kata Tjuta (i.e. Olgas) in central Australia is an exhibit for YES:  “Even evolutionary geologists admit that the large boulders in the layers of Kata Tjuta must have been deposited relatively quickly by a torrent of water” Patterson explains. [5]  YES deniers are on a vicious roundabout when they refuse to get off the OEF train and explore geochronology options.

Darwiniacs are going for the Billions, but the hard facts lead to YES.  At Ramshorn Peak in Montana there is a polystrate tree that is 34 feet tall! [6] 

Polystrate fossils indicate rapid deposition.  The lack of fulgurites (lightning glass) points to YES. [7]  There is a clear deviation of the expected geologic age versus the radiometric date for many samples: [8]

The dashed line represents equality which does not match the general trend of the data.  Clearly there are problems with the dating methods.  The Samarium-Neodymium dating method has undergone a drastic revision.  According to Physics Today, the half-life went from 103M to 68M years.  Does this indicate some fatal flaws in the PreSuppositions of radioactive dating?  University of Washington research concludes that most harmful protein-coding human mutations arose in the past 5,000 to 10,000 years.  Could this be because humans have only been around that long?  Certain moon rocks have remnant magnetism which runs contrary to a moon that’s allegedly billions of years old. [9]  The sun is almost a perfect sphere – if it were as old as assumed it should have flattened out somewhat. [10]

Award winning scifi author and former aeronautical engineer James Hogan points out that, “Nuclear tracks on interplanetary dust particles collected in the Earth’s stratosphere also indicate an age no greater than ten thousand years.” [11]  Hogan is truly close to the edge of YES.  Even anti-YES writer Ronald Bailey admits, “… modern [mainstream] geologists do acknowledge that there have been essentially global catastrophes in the past.  The extreme volcanism of the Siberian Traps nearly wiped out all life at the end of the Permian period 251 million years ago …”

There is an eye-opening chapter in Sacred Cows in Science edited by Norbert Smith (Ph.D. Zoology, Texas Tech) on Global Catastrophe. [12]  If most of the Geologic Column was deposited in one event, then OEF collapses.  Of the hundreds of flood legends throughout the world it is evident that the account of the Great Flood in Genesis is the most accurate.

Why have so many adopted OEF?  Charles Lyell’s Principles of Geology (pub. 1830) brainwashed generations of geologist into gradualism.  Writing in Science, W. D. Allmon said that Lyell’s teachings led to “… the rejection of sudden or catastrophic events in the face of positive evidence for them, for no reason other than they were not gradual.” [13]  J. Harlan Bretz (d. 1981) views about the catastrophic origin of the Channeled Scablands were rejected for 40 years because of the bias towards gradualism. [14]  If the OEF fans refuse to join the YES cohort, they will truly become the owners of a lonely heart.  YES we can!  From OEF to YES – it can happen today!  Just say “YES.”    

“He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also He has put eternity in their hearts, except that no one can find out the work that God does from beginning to end” (Eccl. 3:11).

How old is the Earth?  Is Darwinism valid?  How does the Renaissance of Catastrophism relate to the age of the world?  Is your favorite planet thousands or billions of years old?  Discover the shocking evidence in this powerful new book, YES – Young Earth Science by Jay Hall (at Amazon.com). 

Here are some cool Zazzle items on Young Earth Science (YES):

Notes:

1) emphasis added.
2) Evolution Exposed:  Earth Science by Roger Patterson (Answers in Genesis, Hebron, KY, 2008), pp. 101, 102.
3) Ibid., p. 130.
4) Ibid., p. 133.
5) Ibid., p. 138.
6) “Upright Petrified Trees of Ramshorn Peak, Montana” by Arthur Manning (CRSQ, Vol. 49, No. 3, Winter 2013), pp. 230-235.
7) “A Survey of Lightning” by Don DeYoung (CRSQ, Vol. 49, No. 4, Spring 2013), pp. 284, 285.
8) “Critics of RATE Overlook Its Results” by Russell Humphreys (CRSQ, Vol. 49, No. 4, Spring 2013, letter), p. 321.
9) “Lunar Upsets Challenge Paradigms” by David Coppedge (Creation Matters, Vol. 17, No. 2, Mar/Apr 2012), p. 9.
10) “Sun, moon and stars in the news” by David Coppedge (Creation Matters, Vol. 17, No. 4, Jul/Aug 2012), p. 9.
11) Kicking the Sacred Cow by James Hogan (Baen, Riverdale, NY, 2004), p. 207 (emphasis added).
12) “Global Catastrophe and the Historicity of Noah” by Jay Hall in Sacred Cows in Science ed. by Norbert Smith (CreateSpace, 2011), pp. 193-202.
13) quoted in “Thor’s Hammer” by Kevin Anderson (CRSQ, Vol. 49, No. 4, Spring 2013), p. 261.
14) “The Revolution of Creationism” by David Shormann (Creation Matters, Vol. 17, No. 6, Nov./Dec. 2012), p. 3.

The Iceman Cometh (Dembski version)

Young Earth Science (YES) holds that scripture and science supports the view the this planet is thousands of years old (not billions). William Dembski, the prominent Intelligent Design (ID) advocate, is somewhat sympathetic to YES: “I myself would adopt it in a heartbeat except that nature seems to present such strong evidence against it.” [1] Is this really true? Dembski counsels, “Young-earth creationists do not merely want to show why the other side is wrong; they also want to show why their side is right.” [2] They have done so Dr. Dembski.

Dembski claims that the multiple layers in ice cores in Greenland pose a problem for the YES idea of one Ice Age after the Flood. However, the layers are not always annual – many layers can occur in one year. J. Southon writing in Quaternary Research freely admits, “… the GISP2 (Greenland Ice Sheet Project) ice contains many subannual structures which mimic annual bands …” R. B. Alley et al. stated in the Journal of Geophysical Research, “… it is almost certain that variability exists at the subseasonal or storm level, at the annual level… We certainly must entertain the possibility of misidentifying the deposit of a large storm or a snow dune as an entire year…” The Post-Flood Ice Age would have produced “hyper-canes” at the poles which would make multiple layers in the ice record each year. [3]
One wonders how much of the excellent research on the Ice Age by Michael Oard and Larry Vardiman that Dembski has read:
Dembski criticizes the “post-flood rapid ice age model,” but fails to see its power and success in predicting the reality on the ground. [4] Evolutionists cannot explain the Ice Age and over 60 theories have been proposed. J. K. Charlesworth explains that there are “… an absolute riot of theories ranging from the remotely possible to the mutually contradictory and the palpably inadequate.” [5] The Flood implies the Ice Age! Volcanic ash cooled the earth; tremendous eruptions in the seas (Ge 7:11) heated up the oceans. This combination of higher precipitation, caused by the hot seas, and cooler summers produced the Ice Age after the Flood. This is the only model that successfully predicts ice sheets where we know they existed and it only takes a few hundred years! [6] This model gives thinner ice sheets than the mainstream view, but this makes it easier to explain the no-ice regions we find in Wisconsin. Assuming the widely accepted huge glacier thickness, we would expect a significant “bounce-back” after the tremendous weight of the ice melted – this would take about 25,000 years. Ohio, Illinois and Indiana show virtually no rebound. [7] Andrew Snelling explains, “… ocean temperatures increased [based on fossil oxygen isotopes] during deposition of the Paleozoic and Mesozoic strata, and then decreased during Tertiary (post-Flood) deposition.” [8] This is exactly what the Post-Flood Ice Age model predicts.

Dembski has a Ph.D. in Mathematics from the University of Chicago. Mathematicians are always Killing Lies* – that is they are challenging false assumptions. One example is the old claim that you can only fold a paper in half seven times. YES advocates are also challenging falsehoods promoted by mainstream science. Commenting on ice cores, Dembski claims that Orthodox Protestants who take Genesis as Historical Narrative (OPGHN, “opgane”) are interested in “… devising loopholes to support an otherwise untenable position.” [9] Not so, my brother; in fact, the Post-Flood Rapid Ice Age Model (PRIAM**) is the only explanation that works and fits the data in the real world.
Dembski should take a hint from former aeronautical engineer and award winning SciFi author, James Hogan who said, “A comparatively young word [Y6K] – in the sense of the surface we observe today – is compatible with unguided Catastrophist theories…” [10] Hogan states that conventional dating, “was more a product of materialism’s fight with religion than an empirical construct … [it was] manufactured to provide the long time scales that Lyell and Darwin needed.” [11] Hogan maintains that, “Mountain uplifts and other formations show indications of being younger than conventional geology maintains.” [12] One example that Hogan presents that challenges standard dating uses thermoluminescence of lunar material which was dated at less than 10,000 years. [13] If the Moon is thousands of years old, then maybe the Earth is too!

The Ice Age is apparently referenced in Job, “From whose womb comes the ice? And the frost of heaven, who gives it birth? The waters harden like stone, and the surface of the deep is frozen” (Job 38:29–30).

Evolution itself has a chilling effect and Darwinism demands depression.
Don’t mock the faith! Have you no respect for religion…
- Larry in The Iceman Cometh by Eugene O'Neill

If I have told you of things that happen right here on the earth and yet none of you believes Me, how can you believe (trust Me, adhere to Me, rely on Me) if I tell you of heavenly things? (Jn. 3:12, Amp)

Notes:
1) The End of Christianity by William Dembski (Broadman & Holman, Nashville, TN, 2009), p. 55.
2) Ibid., p. 56.
3) Earth’s Catastrophic Past by Andrew Snelling (Institute for Creation Research, Dallas, TX, 2009, Vol. 2), pp. 778.
4) Dembski, p. 61.
5) quoted in Snelling, p. 770.
6) Snelling, p. 774.
7) Snelling, p. 776.
8) Snelling, p. 773.
9) Dembski, p. 61.
10) Kicking the Sacred Cow by James Hogan (Baen, New York, NY, 2004), p. 47.
11) Ibid., p. 175, Note: Hogan is endorsing Velikovsky’s opinion.
12) Ibid., p. 174.
13) Ibid., p. 206.

*Wilhelm Killing and Sophus Lie were mathematicians
**can you say “Troy?”