Cause and Effect and Eternity
By Lloyd Gardner
The esteemed scientist Julie Andrews said in the Sound of Music, “Nothing comes from nothing. Nothing ever could.” I believe she had more understanding of the scientific law of cause and effect than most evolutionist scientists today. Even the concept of “nothing” cannot be fathomed by the human mind. Of course that doesn’t stop scientists from trying to explain it.
First of all, pause and ponder the idea of “nothing.” The word is made up of two words, “no” and “thing.” Webster has a two-inch long definition of the word “thing” and the best I can gather from it is that a thing is an entity, idea, or quality that exists. So the word “nothing” means a condition in which there is no existence of any entity, idea, or quality. In other words it is a total lack of existence.
No atoms, molecules, matter, cells, light, living things, non-living things, people, planets, stars, galaxies, or anything else your mind can perceive. “Nothing” even excludes the notion of space because space is something because light is able to travel through it. Nothing—no God, no Creator, or anything He has created. Nothing—not even the idea of thought, because thought must come from a mind and in nothing a mind cannot exist. The idea of nothing is unfathomable perhaps because it is impossibility.
And yet scientists are continuously postulating their hypotheses about how the Big Bang, their pet idea, came into existence from nothing. If we do not believe that there is a realm of existence that is beyond our ability to comprehend, then we are left talking and thinking ourselves into a vicious circle of reasoning that will simply leave us dizzy and confused.
In an April, 2012 BBC documentary, “What Happened before the Big Bang?” several well known experts in the field of physics put forth their ideas trying to answer the question of the documentary. Listening to their postulations is like trying to follow the famous Abbot and Costello comic routine, “Who’s on First?” It leaves your mind boggled and still confused.
Dr. Michio Kaku, professor of theoretical physics at City University responded, “So for me the universe did not come from absolute nothing—that is a state of no equations, no empty space, no time; it came from a pre-existing state—also a state of nothing.” Dr. Kaku cannot fathom a true nothingness and so he postulates that there was some kind of “pre-existing state” that also is a “state of nothing.” Huh?
Dr. Param Singh, Distinguished Research Fellow at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada remarked, “Instead of emerging from nothing, our universe owes its existence to a previous one that had the misfortune to collapse in on itself.” He goes on to say, “So the Big Bang was not a bang at all. It was rather a big bounce.” Dr. Singh enlightens us with the knowledge that the universe emerged from a previous universe “that collapsed in on itself.” He refers to this as the “big bounce” as opposed to the Big Bang. That helps a lot!
Professor Lee Smolin, a researcher at the Perimeter Institute said, “Before the big bang there was another universe much like our own. In that universe was a big cloud of gases. It collapsed to form a massive star. That star exploded.” So, here we have a preexisting universe with gases that collapsed to form a humungous star that became the thing that exploded in the Big Bang to form our universe. I wonder what scientists in that universe were saying to explain its existence!
Round and round we go with one mind-boggling explanation after another without anyone explaining the cause that resulted in the effect we see. These are apparently the greatest minds in the area of physics in the world today and this is the best they can do.
The host of this BBC documentary concluded about these ideas, “They would be easier to dismiss as the half-baked musings of the lunatic fringe were it not for the fact that some of the very people who constructed the everything-from-nothing big bang model are themselves starting to dismantle it.”
Yes, the very people who proposed the Big Bang are now reasoning themselves out of it because they cannot answer the question, “What happened before the Big Bang?” In other words, they cannot answer the question, “What is the Cause of all of the effects we see using scientific observation?” The answers end up being less than scientific to say the least.
Creationists have the simple answer. There is an eternal God who created all things out of nothing. The writer of the Book of Hebrews in the Bible wrote, “By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible” (Heb. 11:3). In other words, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” (Gen. 1:1).
Of course this is the big roadblock to people of disbelief. To acknowledge God would be to acknowledge that there is a divine person who purposed them as well and He expects us to respond to Him. The bigness of the universe demands a Creator bigger than the creation.
That, my friends, is very big. He would have to be a being that is independent of the effect of creation. He would have to be an infinitely powerful God who transcended time and space and came before all the “things” we see. He would have to be a spiritual being, One who is not bound by the “things” and He would have to be a person because the personhood we see in humanity had to have an origin.
Unbelievers will then ask, “But what caused God?” Scientists are left with a dead end at the point of explaining the Divine Origin. We who believe in God know that He is past finding out with the human mind. This demands the human spirit, that candle within us that is capable of knowing Him and being lit by His fire.
The Bible says that He has placed eternity inside of us. King Solomon wrote, “He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man's heart, without which he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.”(Eccl. 3:11). Julie Andrews was right, “Nothing comes from nothing.”
No man can fathom this eternal God or His creation with mere human reasoning. But He has made it possible for us to know Him and the greatness of His creation. It would be good to get to know this amazing God.
The Galaxy that Shouln't Be there
Lloyd Gardner
Astronomers, using NASA’s Hubble telescope, have apparently discovered the earliest spiral galaxy every observed, according to the University of Toronto. The claim is being made that the spiral galaxy is being observed when the universe was about 3 billion years old and that the light from this galaxy has been traveling 10.7 billion years to reach planet earth.
The problem is this galaxy should not be there because it comes from a time years before such spiral galaxies were supposed to have existed. Scientists use the term “grand design” to describe this spiral shape. Up to this point they have believed that such galaxies did not exist at such an early stage in the development of the universe. Apparently it is quite large when compared to other galaxies in this time period.
According to Big Bang theorists the galaxies this early in the development of the universe should be irregularly shaped since they are early in development. The perfectly shaped spiral galaxy cannot possibly have been formed this early, so their thinking goes.
Already the guessing has begun as to how this well-developed galaxy appeared so early in what Big Bang theorists claim is early in the development of the universe. It is being conjectured by some that the unexpected galaxy shape may be caused by the gravitational interaction caused by a companion dwarf galaxy nearby. This interaction would, they say, have shaped the galaxy as a spiral long before it would normally do so. Regardless, it is apparent that this discovery is a major blip in the progress of Big Bang theory development.
Time is a major point of dispute in the search for answers about the creation of the universe. Most scientists insist that the universe is between 12 and 14 billions years old. The solar system is said to be about 4.5 billion years old and humans evolved on earth a few million years ago. Several methods are used to measure the age of the universe. Each is burdened with difficulties. One method is to find the oldest stars, measure the rate of expansion of the universe and then extrapolate back to the assumed Big Bang.
Another method is using the “Hubble constant.” Here the current expansion rate of the universe is measured and then extrapolated back to the assumed Big Bang. In every case the Big Bang is assumed. Therein lies the problem. The Big Bang is not accepted as fact by many scientists. A petition signed by hundreds of qualified scientists protests the prejudiced funding of the Big Bang theory when it has so many problems. The scientists are concerned that the Big Bang theory is based on “hypothetical objects” being used in “bridging the gap between theory and observation.”1
As optical telescopes are improved more and better data is raising questions about the theory. One serious question involves “quantization of red shifts.” The red shift supposedly helps scientists determine how far away a star is. Quantization is the notion that the galaxies fall into very distinct groups instead of being evenly distributed.
The data on this idea are very impressive and Big Bangers are having a tough time dealing with its impact. For example Geoffrey Burbidge, professor of physics at the University of California, San Diego stated:
Big bang cosmology is probably as widely believed as has been any theory of the universe in the history of Western civilization. It rests, however, on many untested, and [in] many cases, untestable assumptions. Indeed, big bang cosmology has become a bandwagon of thought that reflects faith as much as objective truth.2
The “untestable assumptions” are the fly in the Big Bang ointment. They are leaving some scientists wondering about its validity.
The age of the earth is not a settled issue. Creationist scientists are constantly working on theories that present an entirely different picture. Cosmologists from every corner of the earth are constantly turning out theories about how the universe came into existence and continues to this day.
We creationists believe that secular cosmologists are working out of their league because they will not consider what is obvious to all people of common sense. It is reasonable to us that God “stretched out the heavens” to the amazing extent of the known universe in just one 24 hour day and then stopped stretching it out. On day four of creation God set the stars in their place and then as Genesis 1:15 says, “And it was so.”
Here are some passages from the Bible (ESV, emphasis mine) verifying this stretching out of the heavens:
…who alone stretched out the heavens and trampled the waves of the sea; (Job: 9:8).
It is he who sits above the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers; who stretches out the heavens like a curtain, and spreads them like a tent to dwell in; (Isa. 4:22)
Thus says God, the LORD, who created the heavens and stretched them out, who spread out the earth and what comes from it, who gives breath to the people on it and spirit to those who walk in it (Isa. 42:5)
It is he who made the earth by his power, who established the world by his wisdom, and by his understanding stretched out the heavens. (Jer. 10:12).
Thus declares the LORD, who stretched out the heavens and founded the earth and formed the spirit of man within him (Zech. 12:1)
There you have it. God stretched out the heavens when He created the universe. Man has been trying to figure it out ever since.
Big Bang cosmology Scientific American, p. 96, February 1992.
The Dating Game of Evolutionary Science
Lloyd Gardner
The Fossil Discovery Center north of Madera, California is a valuable resource for people looking for scientific answers in regard to the history of life forms in the Central Valley. The center is located on the Fairmead landfill where the first fossils were discovered in 1993. A worker was digging a large fill site for garbage and uncovered a Columbian mammoth tusk 35 feet below the surface. At the time, Paleontologists from the University of California, Berkeley were called in to study the fossils.
Since that time hundreds of fossils have been discovered anywhere from 12 feet to 67 feet below the surface. The discovery of this deposit of fossils has been the catalyst behind the development of the Fossil Center.
The site is one of the largest fossil sites on the West Coast and has helped scientists learn a great deal about life in the San Joaquin Valley many years ago. Evolutionist scientists date the fossils during the Pleistocene epoch, which supposedly ended about 10,000 years ago. That was allegedly the time of the Ice Age, which covered much of North America for many years. Evolutionist scientists have dated the Fairmead fossils at between 500,000 to 700,000 years old.
The site reveals that this area was home to Columbian mammoths, giant sloths, horses, camels, Dire wolves, and Saber-toothed tigers. There are many other fossils of birds, reptiles, fish, and amphibians, giving scientists a good idea what the ecology of the areas was like years ago. The site is open to visitors and is located north of Madera, California west of Highway 99 at 19450 Avenue 21½, 93610.
My use of the words “supposedly” and “allegedly” indicates my skepticism about the dating of the fossils and the epoch in which they are assigned. The carbon 14 dating method is considered useless for these fossils because they are assumed to be over 500,000 years old. The half life of carbon 14 is considered 5,570 years, so there should be no measureable carbon after 50,000 years.
The only way to date the fossils, then, is using the assumptions of the geological time scale that evolutionists consider factual. The assumption is made that the Pleistocene epoch covers a certain period, so animal fossils found that they say belong in that period are used to fix the date.
This, of course, is circular reasoning. The geological strata are dated by the fossils found there and the fossils are dated by the strata in which they are found. The geological scale is simply a patchwork of stratas found around the world interpreted using the assumption that the earth is millions of years old.
The problem that evolutionists have is that their theory is based on serious assumptions that are failing actual observational tests. In fact many observational facts are being uncovered that cast serious doubt on their dating methods. Coal from Russia, considered to be 330 million years old, was dated at 1,680 years. Natural gas which evolutionist would have placed at 50 to 135 million years old gave Carbon 14 dates of 30,000 to 34,000 years. A saber-toothed tiger from the LaBrea tar pits, supposedly 100,000 years old was dated at 28,000 years. A block of wood supposedly 70 million years old encase in a block of Cambrian Rock (supposedly hundreds of millions of years earlier) gave a date of 4,000 years.
Of course evolutionists simply reject any tests that show a young earth. There are many tests being made showing carbon present in rocks millions of years old. Uniformitarian scientists dismiss these results as being the result of contamination. Fossil wood, for example, found in 142 to 205 million years old rock in Marlstone England was dated at around 23,000 years old. This, of course, can’t be a true, say evolutionists because it does not fit their long ages theory. So they assume that there must have been some kind of contamination that skewed the tests.
People seeking to know the truth about the age of the earth and the fossils and rocks in its crust should be skeptical of the ages assigned by evolutionists who apply their assumptions. They might say that creationists also make assumptions based on biblical data. That may be true but what is becoming an embarrassment for them is the continuing validation of the Bible’s view of a young earth and the calling into question of the assumptions they use for dating the earth.
Scientific Evidence Demonstrating a Young Earth Continues to Mount
Lloyd Gardner
As more and more fossil discoveries of dinosaurs are discovered and modern tests applied, the evidence for a young earth is growing every day. To the consternation of uniformitarian evolutionists, the evidence is a devastating blow to the long age assumptions of their theory.
When helium began to show up in granites assumed to be millions of years old, evolutionists were baffled. Helium is supposed to diffuse rapidly out of rocks into the atmosphere but it was being found nevertheless. Evolutionists must insist on some kind of non-scientific explanation that counters this experimentally obtained data.
When new tests began to identify carbon in supposedly millions of years old diamonds and coal, the evolutionists had to make some more assumptions. They all know that carbon cannot possibly exist in formerly living things for more than thousands of years, much less millions. It can’t possibly show that the earth is only thousands of years old, the evolutionists counter, so there must be some other explanation. Their long-age assumption again nullifies the scientifically gained information.
Biomaterials are showing up in the strangest places. DNA is showing up in very old fossils of plants and animals, and even ancient humans. According to laboratory studies, DNA cannot possibly survive for more than a few thousand years. Its presence is signaling a serious flaw in evolutionary thinking. These are certainly unexpected results in the eyes of evolution believers. Creationist fully expected these experimentally obtained results.
Perhaps the most well known of these discoveries was made by evolutionist Mary Schweitzer. In 1991 and 2005 she discovered fresh soft tissue T. Rex bones. Evolutionists insisted that her process had contaminated the test with protein from modern species and her find was discredited because it violated the long-age assumption of evolution. In 2009, however, she found blood cells in a hadrosaur leg bone. This time she was careful not to contaminate the tissue. The results were even more revealing. “How could blood cells survive that long?” she remarked at the time.
Of course the original assumption by evolutionists is that the fossil is 80 million years old. It has also been determined based on real science that collagen could not possibly last that long. Since the long age assumption is a sacred cow to the evolutionists, the scramble now is to readjust their assumption about collagen. Now the thinking is, “Perhaps this protein can survive for millions of years after all. This must be true for after all we know that the dinosaur is 80 million years old.” This type of circular reasoning calls into question the credibility of evolutionists who claim to follow the rules of science.
The entire body of a hadrosaur was uncovered in Montana. When a piece of the exterior broke off it was discovered that the hadrosaur’s last meal consisted of magnolia, conifers, and spores of liverworts. Liverworts grow in subtropical climate and would not have been present in a dry environment. The tissue would have quickly decomposed in such a hot, moist environment. This means that the dinosaur died and was quickly buried in sand, which hardened to become sandstone. Then the body was preserved through rapid mineralization caused by water circulating through the sand under high pressure.
Of course evolutionists cannot accept this explanation because it implies a young earth and perhaps a catastrophic flood that quickly buried the dinosaur and caused the “mummification” process.
Proponents of evolution must violently defend their “millions of years” hypothesis because it is the holy grail of their world view. Without it evolution cannot be the explanation for the development of life and that would leave us with only one explanation—God.
Creationists welcome these discoveries because they validate the model they have been defending all along—the earth is only thousands of years old, not millions, and humans were created by God.
Political Correctness Run Amuck
Lloyd Gardner
Political correctness is the adult rendition of the high school concept of being cool. It is driven by a strange desire to be popular instead of correct. It has no connection to reality but is rooted in everyone’s tendency to act according to how they will be perceived by others. Political correctness has run amuck in our society today and has invaded the realm of science, which in its search for truth, is supposed to be free from the clutches of ideological pressures like political correctness.
In high school there were those people who were considered cool. They were popular only in the minds of others who judged people and things superficially without looking at the reality below the surface. People who were motivated by the desire to be cool often failed to have an inner moral compass because they were able to float through life relying on their good looks, personalities, or academic prowess. The academic part was often overruled by the good looks and personality. Someone would say, “He’s really a cool guy.” If you asked what it was that made the person cool you would get an empty stare, because cool is undefined and totally subjective.
In the world of politics and science cool people are prevailing in the minds of many except now we refer to it as “political correctness”. To be politically correct is to choose the “cool” position that will bring the most popularity. The downside of this way of thinking is that it is riddled with prejudice defined as judgment based on external factors without consideration of reality.
Science is supposed to be motivated and governed by the scientific method. There are many renditions of this method but its basis is the methodical quest for truth through the process of making hypotheses and then using observational science to test the hypotheses for accuracy. This testing connects the matter under question to a genuine quest for the truth rather than for a politically correct position that is popular. Popularity has no place in a genuine search for truth.
Therein lies the problem we have in science today. There is tremendous pressure to be in the politically correct crowd so that one is given validity by the others in the politically correct crowd. To be in that crowd one must believe that humans are the result of evolution over millions of years. During this millions of years period, life developed from simple cells, the origin of which no one has a clue. Through some process no one has successfully identified, evolution produced intelligent life from unintelligent one-celled animals appearing from nowhere.
Remember the first principle of political correctness—it doesn’t have to make sense—it only has to be accepted by the “cool” people. In today’s secular science world, intelligent people are accepting a bizarre explanation for the origin of man because the only other explanation isn’t cool at all—a Creator.
The fraternity of secular scientists who allow themselves to be persuaded by the cool comfort of political correctness are also motivated by the official acceptance of the politically correct establishment which heads up the awarding of financial grants and peer review permissions in the major science journals.
If a scientist is so “uncool” as to believe that human intelligence must have an intelligent Creator, he/she will be ostracized from the politically correct crowd and the cool people handing out grants will ignore them even if they have phenomenal scientific contributions to offer. The peer review committees write them off as being flat earthers or Bible thumping kooks who have no validity. Never mind that their qualifications and contributions are as impressive as the cool guys.
Creationists are often criticized for not having articles in peer reviewed science journals but they are routinely rejected by those peer review committees, not for the lack of scientific expertise, but because they have not accepted the popular evolutionist dogma.
There are many examples but let’s take the ordeal of Dr. William Dembski, formerly a professor at Baylor University. Dr. Dembski’s qualifications are impeccable. He possesses a B.A. in psychology, Ph.D. in mathematics, Ph.D. in philosophy, M.S. in statistics, and a M.Div. from Princeton, University. He has many other accomplishments that are far too numerous to mention. His scholarly competence is not questioned by anyone who knows him.
When teaching at Baylor University he was hired by university president Sloan to create and operate a center for the development of design theory. Upon hearing about this proposal the faculty rose up in opposition to such a center and voted to shut it down. President Sloan deferred the decision on the center to an independent panel of experts from other universities. The panel generally was supportive of the project with a few minor adjustments. In an interview Dembski thanked the panel for its support but made the “uncool” mistake of mentioning the “intolerant attacks” that tried to shut down the project.
President Sloan eventually succumbed to the pressure applied by the antagonistic politically correct faculty and fired Dr. Dembski from his directorship of the center and it was turned over to another person.
From his current position at Southwestern Seminary Dembski was doing research on “evolutionary informatics” with Robert Marks, an engineer on the faculty at Baylor. According to Dembski, “evolutionary informatics” proposes that evolution, pictured as a search, requires information to be successful.
Then Baylor president John Lilley found out about the association of Robert Marks with Dembski and the intelligent design notion and demanded that he remove his work on the project from the university server. When he failed to do so, the university removed it for him. Proponents of intelligent design are lumped in with young earth creationists as religious fanatics who want to impose their religion on society. They are not allowed a foot in the door of academia.
The William Dembski debacle is just the tip of the iceberg in the world of political correctness run amuck. Their economic livelihood, educational status and personal wellbeing are dependent on the worldview that surrounds the concept of evolution. They cannot afford to give creationists an inch because they sense that the reality of creation will automatically take a mile in scientific standing.
Evolution and the biblical account are not compatible ideas. One cannot exist with the other. One is true and one is not. Evolutionists inherently know this and true believers know it as well. At this point in history the atheistic attitude is winning out in the market place of political correctness but in the market place of ideas with merit it is gradually losing the battle.
When proponents of an idea are afraid to allow their idea to be placed on the table for true intelligent scrutiny, who go out of their way to discredit the messengers so they don’t have to deal with the message, you can be sure that a new paradigm is replacing an old one. The new paradigm is the realization that the dogma of Darwinism is in its last days. Who knows what the politically correct crowd will come up with next.
The Deception of the Geological Dating Game
Lloyd Gardner
Imagine yourself walking along the road one morning and you look down to discover a piece of black, glass-like obsidian rock. From living in the area you know that obsidian is an igneous rock formed from lava flows that cooled rapidly. As you examine the rock you wonder how old it is. All obsidian looks the same to you so its age is difficult to determine. You have no idea when the volcanic activity took place and no idea what conditions were present at the time or since it was formed. As far as you know it could be hundreds, thousands or millions of years old.
Some scientists claim to be able to use dating methods to determine the date of a particular rock. You have read the articles and textbooks that assign millions of years to such rocks, and you wonder how the scientists can make such determinations.
The theory of evolution is the secular explanation for the origin of life and all that exists. The premise of the theory demands billions of years for the creation of the universe, our solar system, earth, and life on our planet. The massive amount of time is needed to provide a historical context in which the changes claimed by evolutionists can take place. In one way it can be said that evolutionists have replaced the Creator with massive amounts of time. According to their thinking, the billions of years provided nature with an opportunity for random changes in nature to slowly produce all that we know of existence.
So, the theory needs some scientific validation of the immense amount of time demanded by its premise. To provide that validation, scientists have devised various dating methods that claim to be able to measure the age of rocks in the earth’s crust through radioisotope methods and organic materials through the carbon-14 dating method. Since we are dealing with fossil or mineral material thousands to millions of years old, it follows that these dating methods must be verified for their reliability. Therein lies the problem. Are they actually able to precisely date the material or is it just a dating game?
Creationists, of course, believe the biblical account of creation and conclude that the earth is only thousands of years old rather than millions. For this reason, when dates are reached through these methods that show ages long before the Bible’s account of creation, creationists want to examine closely the assumptions being made and attempt to determine if the dating method truly is reliable. The application of the scientific method to these old age results often reveals the unreliability of the methods.
Carbon-14 dates are determined by measuring the ratio of radioactive carbon-14 to normal carbon-12. This dating method can only be used on living or once living organisms because carbon is present in all organic matter but disappears over a period of time. These ratios are compared with the carbon present in currently living things and a date is assigned assuming that carbon-14 has a half-life of about 5700 years. The theory is that this method will determine the age of an organic object. Dating of objects up to 40,000 years old are supposedly possible.
The problem is in the assumptions. One assumption is made that there was a certain amount of carbon-14 in the living thing when it died. How can that be determined precisely? If material had less to start with it would appear to be older than it actually is.
This dating method assumes that the amount of carbon in the atmosphere has remained constant throughout history. Of course, no one can determine that because no one was there to see the circumstances.
Another assumption is that there were no conditions that may have contaminated the material being tested. Any contamination would skew the results of the test by as much as thousands of years.
Perhaps the biggest negative assumption being made is that the Genesis account in the Bible cannot possibly be true because of its spiritual ramifications. Evolutionists, of course, dismiss the possibility of a global flood as presented in the Genesis account so they miss out on any changes in this process that might have been caused by a global hydraulic catastrophe. Noah’s flood would have lowered the amount of carbon by burying masses of living things deep in the crust of the earth where there would be no interaction with the atmosphere, thus affecting the amount of carbon-14.
There are many radio-dating methods in use by scientists but one of the most common is the potassium-argon method. This test is based upon the fact that the isotope potassium-40 decays into argon-40. It is especially used with igneous rock that have hardened from molten magma. Geologists like this method because argon is an inert gas making it possible for them to assume that all argon gas escapes from the magma in its liquid state. They think this solves the problem of the question of the initial amount of the decayed element. The assumption is that the beginning amount of argon is zero.
So here are the assumptions being made using this method:
- Any argon-40 in the sample must have been produced by the decay of potassium-40 since the time the rock became solid.
- The rock sealed when the magma solidified and the rock has remained sealed for millions of years.
- The radioactive decay must have been consistent.
The geologist cannot be sure about the assumptions he is making so his only recourse is to check his results with other tests that have been run to see if they fall in the same range. If they do they are accepted and if they do not, adjustments are made in his assumptions. If the measurement is too old he will say the sample was contaminated with excess argon-40. If the age is too young he will say that some extreme heat took place that released more argon-40 from the rock.
If the measurement is satisfactory to the geologist, fitting his other assumptions about time, he accepts the result. This process is overflowing with assumptions depending on assumptions depending on assumptions. And still this geologist will insist that his results are accurate. He does so because he has accepted as fact that millions of years were necessary for his view of evolution to work. To him, any test that shows anything to the contrary cannot be accurate.
Geologist Dr. Stephen Austin decided to put the potassium-argon test to the test. The 1980 eruption of Mt. St. Helens provided him with the opportunity to have some of the rock from the eruption tested. Since it was so recent there should be no indication of any argon in the samples provide. Dr. Austin took a block of dacite from the eruption and provided scientifically prepared samples to be tested by professional isotope lab Geochron Laboratories of Cambridge, MA.
The results of various samples from this rock ranged from 340,000 years old to 2.8 million years old. The accurate results should have been 0. Apparently some argon-40 was present in the rock from the beginning giving the appearance of great age when the actual sample was only 10 years old.
Obviously the dating method utterly failed but many other such tests have been performed. For example the same respected commercial laboratory tested 60-year-old rocks from Mt. Ngauruhoe in New Zealand. This analysis returned dates of up to 3.5 million years on rocks that formed in the 1950s. If this test cannot be trusted for rock with a known age, how can we trust it for rocks of an unknown age?
Adding to the confusion, this dating method is also used to date the age of fossils discovered nearby. The evolutionist, whose theory demands long ages, will give the fossil a date based on the date arrived at by the potassium-argon method applied to rocks in the vacinity. Thus, the fossil is dated incorrectly because the rock is given an erroneous date.
So, when you pick up that rock on your next walk, try to imagine its age. Is it millions of years old? Thousands? Years? If you were looking at a chunk of the dacite from the Mt. St. Helens eruption, you might think it is millions of years old. You would be wrong. And so are many other evolutionist scientists who depend on this error prone dating game to satisfy their long age assumptions.
Destructive Assumptions of the Political Left
Lloyd Gardner
The market place of ideas is not a comfortable place for people who make serious assumptions and then consider the assumptions as fact for the rest of their belief system. Anyone can be guilty of this fault but the political left seems to build its very system of belief on unproven assumptions that are turned by their thinking into facts. Those assumptions are often motivated by a political agenda and supported by a complicit media that often uses the same tactics.
Take global warming as an example. Not too many people doubt that we are in the middle of a temporary warming trend. But, the political left embraces this trend as an opportunity to make the unproven assumption that it is definitely caused by man. When making an assumption, one must be able to at least back up the assumption with enough viable facts that the assumption is not dangling in the air without support. If our assumption cannot be connected to factual discovery then we need to refrain from insisting that drastic action be taken until the facts are conclusive.
But the political left has an environmental agenda and global warming has provided an opportunity for them to push their cause with their fact-weak assumptions. Check out books and websites pushing the man-made theory and notice how they usually begin with their assumption stated as fact. One website, for example, begins this way:
Climate change is the single biggest environmental and humanitarian crisis of our time. The Earth's atmosphere is overloaded with heat-trapping carbon dioxide, which threatens large-scale disruptions in climate with disastrous consequences.
This is the way their argument begins, not the way it ends after all the facts are presented. The assumption provides the basis of their argument and is always considered fact. The truth is that we are a long way from assigning current warming trends to man-made carbon dioxide levels. We certainly are not currently able to accurately calculate man’s impact on future climate conditions. It is doubtful whether human interventions today will succeed in reducing carbon dioxide years from now. But the climate change drumbeat of the left goes on with the help of much of the media who are sympathetic to their cause.
The left applies this same tactic to the assumptions surrounding present social trends. They make their assumptions, which are propped up by the compliant media, and then proceed to approach their social assumptions as if they are fact.
Same-sex marriage is the most prominent current example. The assumption is made that same-sex activity is normal and this leads to the claim that this “normal” behavior is deserving of equality status. Any facts obtained through observational science are rejected as biased and their bias is simply inserted as the truth. A claim is then made that same-sex relationships are deserving of equal treatment in the eyes of the law. Ironically, the same argument could be made regarding polygamy or pedophilia. All that is necessary is reaching the status of “normal” in their eyes and then the rest of the argument can be forced on the public.
The same can be said of abortion. The facts show that abortion is simply the taking of the life of an unborn human being. The propaganda of the left for many years has been the assumption that the fetus is not a viable human being and so a woman has the right to take the life of her unborn child. The assumption then leads to the equal rights argument, which results in legal changes that negatively affect society, especially if you are one of the unborn babies. 55 million abortions later we as a nation are still reeling from the societal affects of this atrocity.
Present trends are not necessarily based on fact. They tend to be based on that ever-changing definition of “normal.” Notice the young people who have their bodies tattooed from top to bottom. It has become “normal” because young people see their sports and entertainment heroes doing it. My advice to young people is to take notice of the fact that the “normal” will change and one day they may be living in a world where tattooed people are considered quite abnormal.
Another assumption being made by the assuming left is the notion that the universe is the result of natural causes. Certainly, they argue, the option of a Creator cannot be considered because that option does not fit their assumption. In some ways they begin to act like God themselves by insisting that everything observable is subject to their assessment of it. No spiritual conclusions can be accepted because they do not fit their assumption of natural causation.
Never mind that this worldview has no inkling of how to explain the ultimate cause. They just shrug their shoulders at that one because any answer they give falls way short of any observational, scientific support. The assumption trumps all other arguments even though it is devoid of conclusive evidence.
The natural cause approach leads to the assumption that evolution explains all present reality. Whether it is the formation of the Grand Canyon or the present existence of human beings, evolution is assumed to be the cause. When facts are brought forth that appear to contradict their assumption they can just respond with their shrugged shoulders because their assumption trumps any evidence, no matter how convincing it is.
Never mind that transitional fossils are lacking for the millions of years of biological development, or that their theory violates even some of science’s own laws, their arguments always begin by stating their assumption as fact. Because they assume that naturalism is factual they do not consider any evidence to the contrary. This is one reason they lose most of the debates on the subject. Their assumptions have led them toward laziness in their development of hard scientific evidence.
This has led to angry outbursts and biased assertions on the part of many on the left. Using their assumption as fact they rail at those of us who disagree with them, using loaded words like “flat-earthers,” and “climate change-deniers”. Of course these words are used like others would use the words “idiot” or “stupid”. This is only possible because in their minds their assumption is fact and anyone who doesn’t accept their assumptions is dim-witted or ignorant.
It is often necessary to make assumptions in the search for truth. Assumptions by themselves are not erroneous. It is when assumptions constitute the basis of one’s approach without eventual development in fact that they should be questioned. To assume something is to enter into a state of passivity where the thinking process is set aside and a quest for truth ended. When honest people are involved in seeking truth they should be willing to admit their assumptions and continue the quest for facts that support what they assume. To do otherwise is to take a shortcut through the discover process. The victim of such behavior is truth itself.
