First, let's use the definition of Creation Science provided by creation scientists for the 1982 Arkansas Trial. That gives us the basic statements to work with.
"(a) Creation-science" means the scientific evidences for creation and the inferences from those scientific evidences. Creation-science includes the scientific evidences and related inferences that indicate: (1) Sudden creation of the universe, energy, and life from nothing; (2) the insufficiency of mutation and natural selection in bringing about development of all living things form a single organism; (3) Changes only within fixed limits of originally created kinds of plants and animals; (4) Separate ancestry for man and apes; (5) Explanations of the earth's early geology by catastrophism, including the occurrence of a worldwide flood; and (6) A relatively recent inception of the earth and its living kinds." Section 4 of Act 590 of the Arkansas legislature, 1981
Let's start with the last one first.
By "recent inception" creation science means less than 10,000 years (ICR and AiG).
1. Distant stars and galaxies. The speed of light in vacuum is a constant. This gives us the unit of distance called a light year, or the distance light travels in a year. It also, obviously, tells us how far in the past the object is. Well, a deduction from creation science is that we should see objects no more than 20,000 light years away at most. Instead, we can see objects from 4 light years to over 8
billion light years away. Falsifies #6.
2. Radioactive isotopes. If the earth is recent, then it should contain isotopes of short half-life. There are 64 nuclides that have half-lives in excess of 1,000 years. Of these, 47 have half-lives in the range 1,000 to 50 million years. Seven must be excluded from this analysis because they are being generated by interaction with cosmic rays or the decay of other nuclides. If the earth were new (within 10,000 years) then there should be significant amounts of all 40 nuclides in the earth's crust. If, on the other hand, the earth is billions of years old, then these 40 nuclides should have decayed, leaving no trace. We would then be able only to find nuclides with very long half-lives. So how many of the 40 short half-lived nuclides can we find in the crust? None. Zip. Of the 17 nuclides with half-lives greater than 50 million years, we can find detectable amounts of all 17. You may object to specific dating procedures, but this data indicates that the earth is well over 50 million years. In fact, for the half-life decay of nuclides with 50 million year half-lives to eliminate those nuclides, the earth has to be very old. Far older than 20,000 years.
#5. Explaining the earth's geology by a world-wide Flood. I already noted that this idea was falsified by 1831. There are several whole books detailing the hundreds of falsifications of this idea. I suggest
Genesis and Geology by CC. Gillespie for an overview. But here are a few deductions and consequences from an evangelical Christian who is also a professional geologist.
"I went on to criticize the flood geology of Whitcomb and Morris, introducing some still valid geological arguments that had not previously appeared in discussions of the deluge.
1. I argued that known rates of heat flow from bodies of crystallizing magma pose problems for those who contend that all fossil-bearing rocks were laid down during the single year of the biblical flood. On the New Jersey side of the Hudson River opposite Manhattan, there is a geological formation known as the Palisades sill, a thick sheet of rock of igneous origin that intruded into red sandstones and shales, Flood geologists of the Whitcomb-Morris school hold that the sand-stones and shales were laid down during the course of the flood, and hence they would logically have to assert that the magma was injected into this material during the course of the flood, cooled, hardened, tilted, and eroded before the other flood sediments settled atop it. But this would not have been possible. We know on the basis of heat flow considerations and the thickness of the sill that it would have taken several hundred years to cool and crystallize in the way it now appears. Indeed, many other much larger igneous rock bodies would have re-quired thousands to hundreds of thousands of years to lose their heat in order to crystallize. Flood geologists have made little attempt to refute this line of evidence.
2. Radiometric dating of igneous formations of the sort men-tioned above - formations that according to the Whitcomb-Morris theory must have been produced within the space of a single year -suggest that they are in fact millions of years old. These figures are consistent with ages predicted on the basis of stratigraphical relation-ships with the intruded rocks. Similar examples can be multiplied many times over
3. The phenomena of metamorphism also pose problems for flood geology. In some localities, fossils are found in rocks that also bear evidence of having undergone significant changes (metamorphism) as a result of having been exposed to very high temperatures and pressures. The problem for flood geologists is to show how a sedimen-tary rock, which they contend was formed at the surface of the earth during the course of the flood, could have been buried and heated fast enough to metamorphose. Both heat flow theory and known rates of chemical reactions indicate that such rocks could not possibly have undergone the observed metamorphism within a single year
4. A wealth of evidence associated with modern discoveries about continental drift and sea floor spreading indicate that various kinds of rocks - including varieties that the flood geologists maintain were formed during the course of the flood - must have been formed both before and after the separation of continents. If the flood geologists are right, this would imply that the continents must have been drifting apart substantially during the course of the flood. But thousands of miles of continental drift within the space of a few months is completely inconsistent with any known rates of drift.
I concluded the book with a look at Scripture, arguing that the biblical data (Gen. 2 in particular) suggest that pre-flood geography was fundamentally the same as post-flood geography which precludes the possibility of a global deluge involving a wholesale reorganization of terrestrial surface features. I also affirmed my belief that the biblical flood was in fact a historical event and not merely myth or legend. It was my intent to show how Christians could endorse the idea of a historical flood without having to commit themselves to a flood geology theory that is thoroughly in conflict with the data of creation." Davis A Young, The Biblical Flood, Pp 273-274.
Creation scientists have attempted to address the last point by proposing "runaway subduction" to get very quick movement of the plates. This has lots of problems independent of the Flood, including the problem of what is going to
stop the rapid movement.
#4. Separate ancestry of man and apes. Deductions from this include:
a. No fossils intermediate between H. sapiens and other species.
b. No morphological and physiological links between them.
c. No genetic links.
I have a list of some of the individual fossils that provide a transition from H. sapiens to H. erectus to H. habilis to A. afarensis. IT's quite a long list. Each of these falsifies Creation Science because creation science says none of them exist. Then, of course, there are the recent finds close to the ape-human split that have are so primitive that scientists argue over which lineage they are on. Again, a consequence of creation science is that these fossils would not exst.
There are numerous morphological and physiological links. See
http://aleph0.clarku.edu/huxley/CE7/index.html for Huxley's original list of these. Again, none of them should exist by creation science.
The genetic links are numerous, starting with the greater than 98% similarity. Then there are the transposons. These are short sequences of non-coding DNA in genomes. Humans share some transposons with chimps and no other species. Only common ancestry explains their presence.
#3. Changes within fixed limits of originally created kinds. One of my favorites! A deduction from this is that the DNA of different kinds is
independent of other kinds. Since there are barriers, the DNA of one kind cannot be changed into that of another kind (whatever kind may be) and thus, the genomes are independent and cannot be related.
This one got tested in the 1980s and early 1990s when fast and inexpensive DNA sequencing became available. Now large data sets of of hundreds or thousands of DNA sequences, each of which has thousands of nucleotides, are now routinely being analyzed. This led to phylogenetic analysis where DNA from many species can be compared.
What was found? "As phylogenetic analyses became commonplace in the 1980s, several groups emphasized what should have been obvious all along: Units of study in biology (from genes through organisms to higher taxa) do not represent statistically independent observations, but rather are interrelated through their historical connections." IOW, no barriers. Look it up for yourself.
DM Hillis, Biology recapitulates phylogeny, Science (11 April) 276: 276-277, 1997. Primary articles are JX Becerra, Insects on plants: macroevolutionary chemical trends in host use. Science 276: 253-256, 1997; VA Pierce and DL Crawford, Phylogenetic analysis of glycolitic enzyme expression, Science 276: 256-259; and JP Huelsenbeck and B Rannala, Phylogenetic methods come of age: testing hypotheses in an evolutionary context. Science 276: 227-233, 1997.
#2 Insufficiency of mutation and natural selection. This one is vague and takes the form of many specific statements -- what use is half of a wing, irreducible complexity, and complex specified information. There are thousands of examples of refutations for these. I'm going to give you just two.
a. The half-a-wing and irreducible complexity are the same argument. Here is an argument showing how Darwinian selection (variation and natural selection) can get any complex structure.
http://www.cbs.dtu.dk/staff/dave/articles/jtb.pdf
b. Humans use Darwinian selection to get design when the design is too tough for them. One example is having Darwinian selection
invent and get patents for the inventions!
24. Jr Koza, MA Keane, MJ Streeter, Evolving inventions. Scientific American, 52-59, Feb 2003 check out
www.genetic-programming.com
Another example is having Darwinian selection make something not found in nature -- a DNA that is also an enzyme! Something which, according to creation science, God never created. Humans didn't know how to make one either, so they had "mutation and natural selection" do it.
20. Breaker RR, Joyce GF.A DNA enzyme that cleaves RNA. Chem Biol 1994 Dec;1(4):223-9
21. Ronald R Breaker, Gerald FA Joyce DNA enzyme with Mg2+-dependent RNA
phosphoesterase activity
Chemistry & Biology 1995,
2:655-660.
This could not have been done if creation science is true.
You wanted false consequences of creationism. Here are just a few among thousands.
Oh well on with it.
Linear Mode
