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By Ryan Ries  (Click to Enlarge) This DVD was sent to me by my brother-in-law, who I would consider to be a "young-Earth creationist." This is the video version of the book by the same name, written by Dr. Don DeYoung. Dr. Don DeYoung has a Ph.D. in physics, and is a professor at Grace College and Theological Seminary in Winona Lake, Indiana. A Google search for Don or Donald DeYoung only yields some short "book jacket" blurbs from sites such as answersingenesis.com, christianbook.com, christiananswers.net, creationresearch.net, amen.org, and a couple from amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com concerning this very book. Mixed with some other pieces of his work that I gathered from the Internet search, it seems clear that Dr. DeYoung's primary motivation is reconciling the findings of the scientific community with what is written in the Christian Bible. The video is 48 minutes long, and was produced by The Institute for Creation Research. The video begins in the driveway of a suburban middle-class home somewhere in California. A mother and father are sending their son off to college, and before he drives off, they warn him that what he hears from his professors in college may not agree with what he's been taught by the Bible. Fast forward; he's sitting in a geology class in some university. The female professor asserts that zircon grains found in Australia have been dated to over 4 billion years old. A contemplative, but conflicted look flashes across the young creationist's face as he takes notes. He has a flashback of him and his family sitting in church, listening to a sermon. The preacher in his daydream says that the Earth can not be billions of years old, because if it were, then it would disagree with the Bible. (You just can't argue with that kind of logic.) The daydream ends, and class is dismissed. Our befuddled creationist sits there staring at the professor in disbelief, while the cool kid sitting in front of him just shakes his head and smirks as he grabs his personal effects and leaves. The plot then continues as he meets with his classmate, the cool kid, who also happens to reject everything that the geology professor says. The friendly creationist classmate then begins to share some of the exciting new research taking place that is crumbling the very foundations of the evil theory of evolution. End Dramatization! Okay, the scientific findings that are going to change my worldview forever are about to start. The commentator begins this part of the presentation by saying, "Should Christians reinterpret Genesis based on man's current interpretation of science, OR, re-examine science based on the clear teachings of the Bible?" (Again, this logic is going way over my head.) He then introduces a group of "creation scientists" called the RATE team, which stands for Radioisotopes and the Age of the Earth. The R.A.T.E. scientists will then take turns explaining how radiometric dating works, and how it does not give accurate results. Most memorably, the scientist explains how different radioisotopes give different results when used to determine the age of a rock. Here's the first example used in the video: This rock is: (a) 841 million years old, the potassium-argon isochron age (b) 1060 million years old, the rubidium-strontium isochron age (c) 1250 million years old, the lead-lead isochron age (d) 1379 million years old, the samarium-neodymium isochron age (e) none of the above (implying 6000 years old.) Seriously... that's their argument? That isotopes A through D vary by so little seems to me to be evidence against the case that they are trying to make! It's like one of those "which one doesn't belong" type of multiple choice questions. The RATE Team then mumbles on for a while longer on different methods of dating. Next up is helium diffusion of some sort. It was interesting, but then the video shows me a computer generated animation of two connected hour glasses, one labeled as "Nuclear Decay" and one labeled as "Helium Diffusion." Little particles travel through the hourglasses in an ordinary fashion. While the commentator is explaining to me what is going on, I notice that the hourglass on the left has a choke or spigot on it, such that one could slow or stop the flow of particles on that hourglass. During the process of explaining this experiment, the "scientist" says - quote - "The valve on the Nuclear Decay hourglass represents God's way of controlling the rate of nuclear decay." Oh, I get it. The results of the nuclear decay tell you that the Earth is billions of years old, but since you just know that simply cannot be, God must have purposely altered the laws of physics sometime between now and 6000 years ago, just to, you know, MESS WITH OUR MINDS. How scientific. The rest of the RATE Team goes on to explain some more geological anomalies, such as radiohalos and fission tracks. Radiohalos can be better explained here. After investigating fission track dating, I quickly discovered that although it is a valid scientific method of dating geological objects, it was famously used at the Olduvai Gorge to determine the age of things that were millions of years old. Furthermore, the fission track dating methods lined up perfectly with the potassium-argon dating that was also done there! It seems to me that if the RATE team would have me believe that the Earth is only six thousand years old, it would be best to just not even mention fission track dating. I stopped watching at this point, since it was obvious what this publication was designed to do, and it wasn't to present scientific facts. Perhaps that makes me a really bad movie reviewer, but I could see no redeeming social value in watching the rest of it.  (Click to Enlarge) A theory is a set of statements about the natural world which makes empirically falsifiable predictions. Creationism is, and does. Among other things, it predicts population bottlenecks for every species 6000 years ago. It predicts (because of the flood) that different species of pollen should be evenly distributed in the fossil record. It predicts that consistent-thickness varves over large surface areas shouldn't exist. All of those things in reality come out exactly the opposite of what Creation predicts. Of course, I could go on ad nauseum about the theory of Creation, but the scope of this particular article is supposed to be focused on the DVD. The fact is, the Earth is somewhere around 4.5 billion years old. That puts the Young-Earth Creationists off by a factor of... oh, about a million. Which is not a trivial error. An error of this magnitude would be akin to estimating Los Angeles and New York City to be about 29 feet away from eachother. I have never, ever met a Creationist who believed in Creationism because of the evidence for it. Which is simply because there is none. They believe in Creationism because of their religion, and religion alone. And that, my friends, is not science. If you desire further reading material on the origins of the Earth and the life on it, I recommend heading on over to the talk.origins archives. |