Journal of Creation papers

[Aggie]

Does anyone here know of a way to obtain papers published in the Journal of Creation that are less than a year old, without having to subscribe to the journal? Most of this journal's papers are eventually made available for download as PDFs, but not until more than a year after they were published in the journal's print edition.

University libraries often have subscriptions to mainstream journals, but that doesn't seem like something I can expect for a creationist journal, and the Journal of Creation also apparently doesn't have the option to purchase individual papers. I also could try contacting the paper's authors, but I doubt they'd be interested in cooperating once they realize that I'm not a creationist.

 

[AV1611VET]

Does anyone here know of a way to obtain papers published in the Journal of Creation that are less than a year old, without having to subscribe to the journal?

I don't.

But then, I'm not really interested in what some "Journal of Creation" thinks.

If I have to go to some online journal to get the 411 on creationism, then I'd say it's time for a new pastor at our church.

 

[dysert]

Does anyone here know of a way to obtain papers published in the Journal of Creation that are less than a year old, without having to subscribe to the journal? Most of this journal's papers are eventually made available for download as PDFs, but not until more than a year after they were published in the journal's print edition.

University libraries often have subscriptions to mainstream journals, but that doesn't seem like something I can expect for a creationist journal, and the Journal of Creation also apparently doesn't have the option to purchase individual papers. I also could try contacting the paper's authors, but I doubt they'd be interested in cooperating once they realize that I'm not a creationist.

I'd try contacting the authors. You might get lucky.

 

[Loudmouth]

Does anyone here know of a way to obtain papers published in the Journal of Creation that are less than a year old, without having to subscribe to the journal?

Keep pulling on the cardboard tube?

 

[Aggie]

Keep pulling on the cardboard tube?

As I said in my post here, I think it's very unwise for anyone who cares about evolution education to think journals like this one don't matter. There a lot of people who believe creationist organizations that creationism is scientifically supportable, and that argument is based on the YEC academic papers published in these journals. When we ignore the papers these journals publish, we aren't really addressing that argument.

These organizations sometimes argue more specifically that certain arguments for evolution or and old Earth are flawed because the creationist technical literature has already addressed them. For example, here is what Creation Ministries International says about Young and Stearley's book The Bible, Rocks and Time:

Young and Stearley refer to the Ice Age in several spots in the book, even citing my popular level book. However, they seem not to have read the book or any of my other books and articles on the Ice Age, which have been published during the past 30 years. For instance, they state:

“If one is inclined to attribute these fossiliferous rocks to the action of Noah’s Deluge, then one must deal with the fact that glacial deposits are more recent than the Deluge” (p. 426).

The authors think that an ice age after the Flood is something we have not dealt with, and it would be a challenge to our model. But a post-Flood Ice Age has been the standard belief of YEC for well over 50 years! This is another example of such poor scholarship that no YEC or Christian should take this book seriously.

I think it would be preferable if YECs weren't able to make this complaint. But if we want to change that, that'll have to involve keeping up with the academic material they publish.

 

[Loudmouth]

As I said in my post here, I think it's very unwise for anyone who cares about evolution education to think journals like this one don't matter. There a lot of people who believe creationist organizations that creationism is scientifically supportable, and that argument is based on the YEC academic papers published in these journals. When we ignore the papers these journals publish, we aren't really addressing that argument.

They aren't even scientific papers. A scientific paper has an introduction, methods & materials, results, and discussion sections. A paper contains original experiments and new findings.

It isn't the fault of the scientific community that people who fall for this creationist ploy lack the ability to understand how science works.

I think it would be preferable if YECs weren't able to make this complaint. But if we want to change that, that'll have to involve keeping up with the academic material they publish.

In real science, it is the job of the individual scientists to present their work to their peers in real scientific journals.

 

[Aggie]

I'm not sure you understand the point I'm making. In order to answer the other side's arguments in any debate, it's necessary to first understand the arguments they're making. These journals are where the most important creationist arguments are published. If we don't read them, we won't know what arguments are made there, and we'll end up making mistakes like responding to an argument that creationists stopped using 30 years ago.

Also, the description you gave is how original research papers are formatted. It's quite common for mainstream journals to also publish papers that are nothing but new analyses of existing research, and that are organized the same way as that creationist ERV paper.

For comparison, here's an example of an original research paper from a creationist journal: https://www.creationresearch.org/images/CRSQ-PDFs/Individual-PDFs/CRSQ Spring 2013 Cuozzo.pdf

I'm not sure if this is obvious to people who don't follow paleontology, but when you strip away the creationist claims this a pretty important discovery. There are only two other fossils that preserve evidence of a dinosaur preying on a mammal, one involving Microraptor and the other involving an undetermined deinonychosaur in the Wahweap formation. Both of those cases involve small dinosaurs, so the discovery described in this paper is the only known case where a predatory dinosaur as large as Tyrannosaurus regarded a mammal as a valid food source. It's also the only known example of this sort of interaction from the Maastrichtian age. (The other two are from the earlier parts of the Cretaceous.)

Now, obviously we can wish this discovery had been described somewhere like the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, where more people would have seen it. But like it or not, a creationist journal is where the description was published. I don't think this piece of data should be completely withheld from the paleontology world, which would be the result if nobody except creationists read these journals.

 

[Loudmouth]

I'm not sure you understand the point I'm making. In order to answer the other side's arguments in any debate, it's necessary to first understand the arguments they're making. These journals are where the most important creationist arguments are published. If we don't read them, we won't know what arguments are made there, and we'll end up making mistakes like responding to an argument that creationists stopped using 30 years ago.

It would seem to me that the best policy would be to respond to the arguments that creationists do make.

Also, the description you gave is how original research papers are formatted. It's quite common for mainstream journals to also publish papers that are nothing but new analyses of existing research, and that are organized the same way as that creationist ERV paper.

They aren't as common as original papers.

For comparison, here's an example of an original research paper from a creationist journal: https://www.creationresearch.org/images/CRSQ-PDFs/Individual-PDFs/CRSQ Spring 2013 Cuozzo.pdf

Why wasn't this submitted to a real journal where it would be read and reviewed by their scientific peers? That's the question they need to ask.

Now, obviously we can wish this discovery had been described somewhere like the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, where more people would have seen it. But like it or not, a creationist journal is where the description was published. I don't think this piece of data should be completely withheld from the paleontology world, which would be the result if nobody except creationists read these journals.

It is the job of the scientist to get information in front of their peers, not the other way around.

 

[sfs]

As I said in my post here, I think it's very unwise for anyone who cares about evolution education to think journals like this one don't matter. There a lot of people who believe creationist organizations that creationism is scientifically supportable, and that argument is based on the YEC academic papers published in these journals. When we ignore the papers these journals publish, we aren't really addressing that argument.

Color me skeptical that these papers do matter. Most people who believe that creationism is scientifically supportable do so because they want to believe that, and because professional creationists are good at sounding sciency, not because they've buried papers like these in their private journals. I doubt that one average creationist in a hundred is even aware that these publications exist. While I am fond of addressing creationist arguments myself, I don't fool myself into thinking that scientific responses matter for almost anyone. Creationists (with very rare exceptions) are not engaged in anything like a scientific exercise. They continue to use arguments against evolution that have been refuted for decades and that are, to boot, gobsmackingly stupid. I applaud your efforts to be thorough and to deal with their arguments properly, but I am not optimistic about the utility of your efforts.

I think it would be preferable if YECs weren't able to make this complaint. But if we want to change that, that'll have to involve keeping up with the academic material they publish.

Nothing will change the willingness of creationists to complain. They're still complaining about their papers being rejected from mainstream journals because of prejudice when they haven't submitted any papers in years. They're still complaining about circular logic in dating strata when that's nothing but a fantasy.

 

[Aggie]

Color me skeptical that these papers do matter. Most people who believe that creationism is scientifically supportable do so because they want to believe that, and because professional creationists are good at sounding sciency, not because they've buried papers like these in their private journals. I doubt that one average creationist in a hundred is even aware that these publications exist. While I am fond of addressing creationist arguments myself, I don't fool myself into thinking that scientific responses matter for almost anyone. Creationists (with very rare exceptions) are not engaged in anything like a scientific exercise. They continue to use arguments against evolution that have been refuted for decades and that are, to boot, gobsmackingly stupid. I applaud your efforts to be thorough and to deal with their arguments properly, but I am not optimistic about the utility of your efforts.

Well, there's a pretty sizable group of people who think that scientific responses to creationists do matter. That's the reason why websites such as Talk.Origins exist. It's one thing to say that it doesn't matter at all, but for people who think that it does, it's important to put forth the effort to do it properly.

An example of a time when this mattered was the Kitzmiller v. Dover trial. In that trial both creationists and supporters presented the evidence for their positions, and the creationists lost. That trial seems to have been a wake-up call for creation scientists, because there's been a pretty significant increase in the sophistication of their arguments during the decade since then. For a lot of these more recent arguments, nobody's yet even attempted to come up with a response, because most mainstream scientists don't pay attention to creationist publications. If a similar trial were to happen today, and proponents of creationist were to present the most sophisticated arguments they've come up with in the past decade, I suspect that supporters of evolution would not be as easily prepared to deal with them as they were in 2005. I think that's a problem, and more people should care about doing something to change it.

 

[USincognito]

For a lot of these more recent arguments, nobody's yet even attempted to come up with a response, because most mainstream scientists don't pay attention to creationist publications.

Several bloggers on Scienceblogs, Eye on ICR and a number of other pages address recent Creationist arguments. They simply don't have anything new so they pick holes in papers and post their garbage to their own websites. I find that, even as a laymen, a Google search and reading the original material is enough to debunk more recent claims.

 

[Aggie]

Several bloggers on Scienceblogs, Eye on ICR and a number of other pages address recent Creationist arguments. They simply don't have anything new so they pick holes in papers and post their garbage to their own websites. I find that, even as a laymen, a Google search and reading the original material is enough to debunk more recent claims.

That's what I initially thought also, but as I've looked more closely at creationists' most recent arguments, it's actually the case less than half of the time. This was especially noticeable while I and another person were writing the chapter about RATE in the anti-creationism book I've been working on. The RATE books are among the most influential creation science publications in existence, so one would expect that every one of their claims has been addressed thoroughly. There are certain individual claims they've made where that's the case, such as this article about their radiocarbon results. But there are other areas where in order to respond to them, we basically had to start from scratch. We had to do this in particular for their arguments about fission tracks and radiohaloes. (Note that I'm not referring to Robert Gentry's arguments about radiohaloes--Gentry's arguments about radiohaloes have been largely addressed, but RATE's haven't been.)

That's the situation for RATE, mind you. The RATE data has existed for about ten years, and is quite famous in the creation science world. There's less discussion about examples that are more recent and less famous. Here is a more recent example of a creationist paper that I've been struggling to find a response to: https://cdn-assets.answersingenesis.org/doc/articles/pdf-versions/human_GULO_pseudogene.pdf

Has anyone written an answer to this? As far as I can tell, 100% of the Google results for this paper are various creationists discussing it. (For example: https://bioorigins.wordpress.com/2014/04/20/gulo-pseudogene-evolution-debunked/ )

 

[Loudmouth]

An example of a time when this mattered was the Kitzmiller v. Dover trial. In that trial both creationists and supporters presented the evidence for their positions, and the creationists lost. That trial seems to have been a wake-up call for creation scientists, because there's been a pretty significant increase in the sophistication of their arguments during the decade since then.

And yet we have very recent threads on these forums using the decades old argument that evolution violates the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics.

For a lot of these more recent arguments, nobody's yet even attempted to come up with a response, because most mainstream scientists don't pay attention to creationist publications.

Can you show us a recent thread on these forums that cites one of these recent creationist papers? Most of the arguments I have seen on here have been around since the early days of Carl Baugh, Kent Hovind, and even George McReady Price.

 

[Aggie]

Can you show us a recent thread on these forums that cites one of these recent creationist papers? Most of the arguments I have seen on here have been around since the early days of Carl Baugh, Kent Hovind, and even George McReady Price.

I'm not active enough at these forums anymore to be able to tell you whether people here are citing them or not. However, I can see from Google that the paper I linked to in my previous post is being discussed by a sizable number of creationist bloggers, one of which I also linked to.

Whether or not creationists at this board are citing them is beside the point, though. If a moderately well-informed fence-sitter is trying to decide whether to believe evolution or creationism, I doubt they'd be basing that primarily on the arguments that YECs use at this forum. It also won't be this forum's YECs who testify if there's another trial in the future that's similar to Kitzmiller v. Dover. In either case, the creationist arguments that matter will be the ones in books and papers published by professional creationist organizations. If the mainstream response to these arguments continues to be ignoring them, the result will be for it to look like creationists are getting the upper hand.

 

[Loudmouth]

I'm not active enough at these forums anymore to be able to tell you whether people here are citing them or not. However, I can see from Google that the paper I linked to in my previous post is being discussed by a sizable number of creationist bloggers, one of which I also linked to.

I have never seen the paper presented in these forums by the rank and file creationists.

Whether or not creationists at this board are citing them is beside the point, though. If a moderately well-informed fence-sitter is trying to decide whether to believe evolution or creationism, I doubt they'd be basing that primarily on the arguments that YECs use at this forum. It also won't be this forum's YECs who testify if there's another trial in the future that's similar to Kitzmiller v. Dover. In either case, the creationist arguments that matter will be the ones in books and papers published by professional creationist organizations. If the mainstream response to these arguments continues to be ignoring them, the result will be for it to look like creationists are getting the upper hand.

You could be right, but my experience is that most creationists tend to get rather shallow arguments from AiG that have been recycled for the last 20 years. Once someone becomes moderately informed about the facts and science, they usually abandon creationism.

 

[Aggie]

You could be right, but my experience is that most creationists tend to get rather shallow arguments from AiG that have been recycled for the last 20 years. Once someone becomes moderately informed about the facts and science, they usually abandon creationism.

Are you familiar with the book Persuaded by the Evidence? It's a collection of 39 autobiographical accounts by former supporters of evolution, where they explain what it was that caused them to become young-Earth creationists. As the title of the book suggests, the majority of the time it was creationists' scientific arguments that persuaded them.

When you look at the credentials of the people discussed in this book, more than a third of them have Ph.Ds. One of them, Curt Sewell, was the president of a company that performs radioactive dating, and another, Richard Lumsden, was the dean of the Tulane University's graduate school biological sciences. These people wouldn't have fallen for the sorts of recycled PRATTs that YECs use at this forum, but I think they show the effects that the most sophisticated creationist arguments can have in the real world.

Most of them became creationists more than a decade ago, back when mainstream scientists were more diligent about responding to creationist arguments. If that's what was possible then, I imagine it's even easier for this sort of thing to happen nowadays.

 

[Loudmouth]

Are you familiar with the book Persuaded by the Evidence? It's a collection of 39 autobiographical accounts by former supporters of evolution, where they explain what it was that caused them to become young-Earth creationists. As the title of the book suggests, the majority of the time it was creationists' scientific arguments that persuaded them.

How many of them were scientists doing research in the fields of biology or geology that would be impacted by evolution?

When you look at the credentials of the people discussed in this book, more than a third of them have Ph.Ds.

PhD's in what fields? How many work in comparative genomics, or hominid evolution?

One of them, Curt Sewell, was the president of a company that performs radioactive dating, and another, Richard Lumsden, was the dean of the University of Louisiana's graduate school biological sciences.

Does Sewell have a degree in geology and have experience doing geologic research? What degree did Lumsden have, and what are the papers on his CV?

 

[Subduction Zone]

I Google searched Sewell and could find no dependable sources on his education or career. Has anyone else had any luck?

 

[sfs]

Well, there's a pretty sizable group of people who think that scientific responses to creationists do matter. That's the reason why websites such as Talk.Origins exist. It's one thing to say that it doesn't matter at all, but for people who think that it does, it's important to put forth the effort to do it properly.

Okay, maybe I got a little carried away there. It still rankles that so much time has to be wasted on arguments that are still really bad -- even the more sophisticated ones. There are so many more productive and pleasant uses of time -- tooth-flossing, for example.

I should probably look at the GULO paper. Comparative genomics is not exactly my thing, but I do like GULO as an example, so I'd better see what new counterarguments have arisen.

 

[Aggie]

Does Sewell have a degree in geology and have experience doing geologic research? What degree did Lumsden have, and what are the papers on his CV?

Here is a page with some information about Lumsden.

Dr. Richard Lumsden (1938-1997) was a professor of parasitology and cell biology at Tulane University in Louisiana where he also served as the dean of the graduate school of biological sciences. During his illustrious career, Lumsden published about 90 peer-reviewed papers and was awarded the Henry Baldwin Ward medal (the highest world-recognized award for parasitology). He also received over 21 research grants and contracts from many well-known organizations such as the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation and the United States Food & Drug Administration (FDA).

According to that page, he was a fairly active skeptic and critic of creationism before he switched sides. He's sort of like a mirror image of Glenn Morton.

What I know about Sewell is just based on his biography in that book: he worked on the Manhattan Project during World War II, and in the 1960s he was the chief engineer at Isotopes Incorporated. (This was before he became a YEC.)