Atheist Universe: The Thinking Person's Answer to Christian Fundamentalism by David Mills & Dorion Sagan

Author:David Mills & Dorion Sagan [Mills, David & Sagan, Dorion]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: General, Religion, Atheism, Religion; Politics & State, Religion and Science, Religion & Science, Intelligent Design (Teleology), Atheists, Christianity and Atheism
ISBN: 9781569755679
Google: 9ebVIaHZ95QC
Amazon: 1569755671
Publisher: Ulysses Press
Published: 2008-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

ATHEIST UNIVERSE

4. Why do river and ocean sedimentary deposits consist of hundreds of thousands of annual layers, all of which lie above much older rock?

Creationists truly suffer a schizophrenic mindset on the issue of radiometric dating techniques, which point to a 4.5-billion-year-old Earth. First, creationists scoff at these dating methods, claiming that they are highly unreliable. Then, in the next breath, creationists say that they expected radiometric dating to reveal an ancient Earth, since Earth was created by God with the "appearance of age."

Creationists assert that radiometric dating is based upon the

"fallacy" of uniformitarianism. Uniformitarianism holds that the laws of physics operate today as they have in past centuries and in ancient times. Earlier in this book, we noted that the constancy of physical law is cited by creationists as evidence of God's existence.

Regarding the physical laws describing radioactive decay, however, creationists sing a different tune. Here, creationists assume that the laws of Nature were completely different only a few thousand years ago—so that any geologist who assumes a constant rate of radioactive decay will conclude "erroneously" that Earth is much older than 6000 years.

What evidence is offered by creationists to substantiate a recent reversal of the rates of radioactive decay? None. Their only

"evidence" is that the Book of Genesis disagrees with the radiometric test results. So while masquerading as scientists, creationists choose Scripture over science every time.

Creationists commonly argue that external forces may have affected radioactive decay rates and that uniformitarianism is therefore a blind assumption. But such an argument reveals the creationists' embarrassing unfamiliarity with atomic structure. For all chemical reactions to which the radioactive elements may have been exposed would involve only the electron shells—never the nucleus. And it is precisely for this reason that atomic nuclei are so thoroughly isolated from any external influences. An element's 1 4 0

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