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The Origin of the Universe and Earth
(6007 years plus or minus a couple or so)
Notes on a 1.5 hour lecture with
this title presented 9-20-2003 at the Durango Christian Church, Durango,
Colorado, by Mr. Joe Sebeny. Joe is associated with a “creation science”
organization in Arizona. Their web site is: http://www.puritanhope.com/aosa/
The notes that follow
reproduce, I hope accurately, the essence of Mr. Sebeny’s lecture.
My comments are in () parentheses.
If no parentheses, I mean to convey what Joe said.
(The good news is this. Although advertised locally for the preceding month, with “a free book” being offered in a newspaper ad to the first 25 Fort Lewis students in attendance (Fort Lewis College, with > 4,000 students is about a mile from the church), by my count there were a total of 17 in the audience, none (except the presenter and a friend) under 40. At age 72, I suspect that I was in the younger 50%. OTOH, this session was one of 5 (plus Sunday morning) being presented over the weekend; it is possible that the audience size was better in the other sessions.
The senior pastor
introduced Joe with the wry observation that there were “missing links” in the
audience (he meant not in the audience). Clearly he was disappointed with the
turnout.
The primary
pastor, Mike Williams Ph-D, did not appear to be present.
In the too-often
posture of “Christian fellowship,” I was not greeted or acknowledged as I came
in (before the lecture began) and took a seat in the pews. At the conclusion of
Joe’s talk I asked him a question to which he gave a one word answer.
In advance of the
lecture, I had emailed Joe a number of questions, all relating to the age of
the earth, which I asked him to address. To the best of my knowledge, he did
not do so. The session was to start at 9:00 with another session starting at
10:30 on another dreary YEC subject. I assumed he’d take questions. I was
wrong. He spoke until 10:35 and then took a 15 minute break. He did provide
cards where questions could be written out, but it was clear he did not want to
handle them on an immediate basis. I passed one in, but with better things to
occupy my Saturday than to listen (again) to the screwy philosophies of Ellen
White, I left.)
Joe Sebeny introduced
himself as a “Rocket Scientist.” He is a young guy (to this 72-year old),
personable, a pretty good (and persuasive) speaker. He claimed two BS degrees,
one in physics and one in Aeronautical & Astronautical Engineering from MIT
as well as “Ph.D studies.” I did not hear any dates given for these. His
employment is that of an engineer with Raytheon Missile Systems. He claimed 23
years of experience in the Defense Industry and 10 years of conducting seminars
on “the Bible and true science.”
(I have no reasons to doubt those claims.)
“The Bible and true science
are in harmony.”
(I don’t personally know any Christian, conservative or liberal, who would challenge that statement. But what Joe meant was “The Bible as I interpret it (literally) and true science are in harmony.”)
There are two philosophies,
creation and evolution
(Joe made the usual YEC mistake of committing the fallacy of the excluded middle).
The creation model involved
processes not now taking place.
Genesis 1 is history and is
chronological.
(Joe calls the big bang an “explosion.” Most physicists (I think) don’t do that. But it IS a popular way of thinking of it. An “explosion,” of course, presupposes a space into which something explodes, and space was (by the latest thinking) created as part of the process. But this is a nit).
Joe referred frequently to
“the unobserved past.”
Joe argued that there are
three fundamental principles of science, and that all three were consistent
with creation and did not support evolution.
1. Causality
2. The 1st law of
thermodynamics
3. The 2nd law of
thermodynamics
(note – Joe may
have tightly defined the word “evolution” in the previous night’s lecture. He
sure did not in this one. In context, I think he meant by the word when he did
use it was the general meaning “we
are here by accident through a long (billions of years) process from chemicals
to humanity and there was nothing divine involved, either at the beginning or
during the process.” If I substitute the phrase “philosophical naturalism”
for “evolution” in his presentation it makes sense. It seems that MIT did not
teach well the concepts of methodological naturalism. )
Joe made three points, all
of which show that the 3 principles of science support creation:
1. Where did all the
information come from? Had to be there in the beginning. No natural process
creates information.
2. The 1st and 2nd
laws are PROVEN and cannot be broken, therefore the universe could not
have created itself. (Joe is clearly not a fan of Karl Popper)
3. The 2nd law
PROVES that the universe must have had a beginning.
(Joe set up and demolished a few strawmen here, as well as other places, but I’ll pass over those.)
The theistic evolutionist (any non-YECer) does not worship the God of the Bible.
(suspecting Joe would say this, I had asked him to at least add a caveat that he did not, thereby, challenge the Christianity of a TE. He did not do so; it was a flat statement. Some time much later he did, in an unrelated part of the lecture, mutter (literally) such a caveat. And, via email, Joe has asserted that while he thinks TEs are “inconsistent” and “doing the cause of Christ a great disservice,” he does not challenge their Christianity.)
Joe’s claim: The universe, as well as the earth, is young (6007 + or – a few years).
We don’t observe evolving
galaxies, only completed ones.
We don’t observe evolving
stars, only completed ones.
Earth was created on day 1
as a “big ball of water.” (Joe probably meant a big
ball covered with water).
He brought up Hugh Ross’s
views and dissed them.
Many comparisons of
scientific statements with Bible verses. Very
persuasive here.
The Bible is inerrant, true
in all its parts. One flaw would invalidate the whole.
“God made” has to mean “God
made quickly.”
Stars are supposed to form
from gas clouds. But gas clouds expand, not contract. So that theory is invalid
and so stars had to be created intact. Therefore – recent creation.
We have NEVER seen a star
being formed. Cited Alfren (1976), DeYoung (2000), both of whom are YECers (I
think) and Whipple (date not shown).
(I guess I’ve never seen a mountain being formed, by that criteria. <G>)
Science deals only in the
present.
We don’t understand star
formation – therefore recent creation.
There is no accepted
explanation for the formation of the solar system, therefore recent creation;
the solar system is designed. Cites Kepler as an authority here.
Argues the special conditions
of the earth-moon-sun system as evidence of design and therefore evidence of
recent creation (again, fallacy of the excluded
middle).
Recommends the Moody Bible
Institute Science Series films (I had thought better
of MBI than this).
The tenet that the earth is
not young challenges the veracity of scripture.
The geological column was
caused by Noah’s flood. (Glenn – note that he did not
challenge the column’s existence. This may be a change in the YEC strategy).
Scripture says Adam and Eve
were made AT THE BEGINNING, and so the model of a young earth and old universe
is falsified. Q. E. D.
If you say otherwise, you
are saying Jesus Christ was a liar. (Again, no caveat).
Scientists are sinners just
as we. (OK).
Liberal theology (I think he means anything not YEC) compromises
scripture.
Discussed the word “yom.”
That word cannot be used figuratively before it has been used literally. Since
Genesis is book one, it must be the oldest written, and therefore when it says
“yom” it must mean a literal day.
(Modern scholarship says Genesis was written fairly recently; some conservative scholars differ. If the latter are right he has a point here).
“When I read Genesis as a
young child, I understood it. That’s how it should be read as an adult. Literally.
“Nobody prior to the modern
age (he did not quantify this) questioned the
biblical chronology or the 24 hour days of Genesis 1.”
(words escape me here).
While the year, month and
day are “natural,” the “week” is God-given in Genesis. The proof of this is Ex 20:11. Expects the ACLU to sue on this eventually. (probably joking here, but it was hard to tell).
There are absolutely
no gaps in the genealogies of Genesis 5 and 11. 6007 plus or minus a few years at
most. The evolution model adds millions (actually
billions, but who is counting) of years of death before Adam and Eve.
But death was not present before that time – for there was no time before that
time.
(Joe carefully stayed away from the possibility of death between Adam’s fiat creation and the expulsion from Eden, although one of the questions I had emailed to him asked about this. <G>)
If you say otherwise, you
are attacking the Bible and doing great damage to the cause of Christ.
Evolutionists (who are they? He
did not define the word.) claim the earth’s age of 4.5 BY is “fact.”
(Joe does not understand, in spite of his training at MIT, that “fact” to a scientist is not the same as “absolute proven unquestionable truth.” Just as the physicist’s word “work” does not encompass a person standing still with an 80 pound bag of cement on his shoulder, “fact” is a term which means “generally accepted within numerical boundaries of precision to be used in subsequent experiments and computations.” It is a “fact” that the earth is round if one wishes to make an ocean voyage. It is NOT a “fact” that the earth is round if one is driving up a jeep trail in the San Juans, just 50 miles north of Durango,)
Scripture pinpoints the
errors of the evolutionists. 2nd Peter 3:3-6. Therefore
evolutionists are the “scoffers Peter is writing about.” Therefore recent
creation.
Joe then turned to
radiometric dating. Used the candle illustration
(never pointed out that candles burn more or less linearly while radioactive
isotopes don’t). But the points he made were valid enough. More on this
later.
Science HEAVILY favors a
recent creation. There are HUNDREDS of physical processes which show this.
Slide shown with at least 58 listed.
(He used a log scale to illustrate five of these, not identified), With the log scale, which I must assume most non-technical people are not used to, the discrepancy between 6007 years and 4.5 BY does not look (to the eye) like all that much. Joe has apparently never read Tufte’s book on the creation of graphics which do not mislead an audience. Or “How to Lie with statistics,” a classic book (forget the author) of fifty years ago. That sort of stuff was required reading at Carnegie Tech – could MIT have ignored it?).
Creation Scientists publish
“lots of papers.” (He did not mention where. Has there
EVER been one in the American Journal of Physics? I think not. Has ANY
reputable scientist -- I define reputable as simply one who does not subscribe
to the YEC nonsense -- EVER published in a YEC “journal?” Actually – yes. But
Glenn Morton subsequently saw the fallacies involved, and repudiated those
papers. For which he has taken more grief from the YECs than any person of
integrity ought to experience.)
Evidences that the universe
is young. Galaxies wind themselves up too fast, outside slow – inside fast.
Therefore the universe is young.
(By my calculations the Milky Way galaxy has rotated about 50 or 60 times since it came into being. By Joe’s calculation it has yet to take the first tick of a clock).
Comets crumble too quickly
--- therefore recent creation. Joe did not mention the Oort cloud model.
It has been shown that one
can change plant matter into coal in a few hours – therefore RC (recent creation). Similarly, oil. Similarly
petrified wood.
British Columbia strata are
folded and not fractured, therefore RC.
A fossilized Teddy Bear was
found somewhere, therefore RC.
Polystrate fossils prove RC.
The earths magnetic field
decay is too fast, therefore RC.
(Joe carefully stayed away from the evidences of field reversal. and, of course, the incredibly inept work done by the professor, Thomas Barnes, at UT El Paso ? on the source data. I really thought that this argument, like moon dust, had been buried by even AIG.)
Cited with approval the work
and writings of Humphreys. Asserted that Humphrey’s creationist model had
accurately predicted certain findings of the space probes.
Seafloor sedimentation
evidence supports RC.
Joe turned to radiometric
dating. Described accurately the three boundary conditions and assumptions,
possible intrusions,
amount of daughter element
present at the beginning,
decay rate constant,
which surround any such
measures. (Did not mention the absence of short life
radioactives on the planet. This was another evidence against RC that I had
asked him about.) Asserted that researcher get many “wrong” answers,
publish only those who agree. Asserted that many researchers in radiometrics
“deliberately lie.” Said that their techniques do not work on objects of known
age.
All coal has C14 – therefore
RC
Top layers of the Grand
Canyon are older than the bottom layers, therefore RC.
Not enough helium argument.
New research (by ICR’s RATE project) into decay
rates. “Cutting edge.”
The creation model – very
fast radioactive decay -- unknown mechanism -- in days 1-3 and again during the
Flood of Noah’s time. Joe identified this as a hypothesis, no more. (I would call it a speculation, but no matter).
Helium in the rocks. 1km is
58%. 3 km is 19%. therefore RC. (I could not follow his argument here).
Other arguments –
Oil/gas pressures
the receding moon
population studies (I almost choked on this one)
Red blood cells found in
dino bones
Anything not directly
measured is not a fact. Summary – trust the Bible first. Not science.
In summary. I sat
through a session like this put on by ICR back in 1988. It was nonsense then.
It has not changed. Its advocates are, I must assume this, sincere. They are
wrong, and their efforts dishonor both science and Christianity.
jwb, 9/2003