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MARK L. BAKKE'S
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REPLY #20c TO
"EVOLUTION VS. CREATIONISM"
Boldfaced statements are parts of the original essay (or a subsequent reply) to which the respondent has directed his comments.
 Italicized/emphasized comments prefaced by (R) are those of the respondent and are presented unedited. My replies appear under the respondent's comments in blue text and are prefaced by my initials (MB). This is the last of a three-part reply. (R) Even evolutionists agree that comets last only an estimated 10,000 years. (MB) Why should the lifetime of a small, volatile object like a comet have any bearing on the age of the Earth? Is there any reason to believe that every single object which populates the Oort Cloud, Hills Cloud or Kuiper Belt is currently orbiting in a manner which will bring it close enough to the Sun to cause its eventual destruction in the recent future? (R) Why do you think Mr. Oort invented this. (MB) Because he could properly do the math and interpret the orbital data for the comets in his study. (R) It's explained at the end of the excerpt. He knew, that the age of the comets were a problem for evolutionists who believe that comets were formed with the inception of the solar system 4.5 billion years ago. (MB) The life and times of comets are not a matter which is any part of evolution. It falls into the realm of astrophysics. His study was meant to explain the cometary data, not to bolster evolution. (R) He knew that if you took the time away from the comets there wouldn't be enough time for everything to evolve. Everything that evolutionists date revolve around the assumed course of evolution on earth. Everything is dated with this presupposition strictly in mind. It totally contradicts the evolutionary belief system. (MB) You'll need to explain the actual evidence (rather than positing the Creationist delusions) in order to justify the "age of comets" fairy tale. You'll also need to explain how the age of anything not of this Earth has any impact on the process of evolution. Finally, if the supposedly "young" age of comets "disproves" the timeline of evolution, why doesn't the vast age of quasars provide conclusive support for it? (R) If the moon isn't leaving at two inches per year then how much is it? (MB) The current rate is two inches per year. That rate has not been the same in the past (as shown in my previous reply). Creationist argument requires that the current rate must have been unchanged throughout the existence of the Earth-Moon system. (R) How do you know the lost energy of the earth is used by the moon? (MB) Because it can't be otherwise (according to the Law of Conservation of Angular Momentum). (R) Here's another moon matter: Did you know the moon is slowly accumulating cosmic dust? It is. Since the moon has no erosion but is also accumulating cosmic dust at a regular rate we should discover something. (MB) What we discover is another Creationist mangling of the facts -- as you will demonstrate in your next argument... (R) At present rates NASA experts were expecting a tremendous layer of dust on the moon due to its 4.5 to 5 billion year supposed age. The most conservative estimates were expecting 54 feet of dust on the moon! Can you imagine landing in a flower sack that deep? (MB) Actually, that's not true. This Creationist argument was first put forth by Morris in "Scientific Creationism" (1974). It draws upon a 1960 study by H. Petterson who said that his figure provided an *upper* limit (not Morris' "lower limit") for the accumulation of cosmic dust. Petterson's article also cautioned that his results may be way too high and that he personally preferred a figure less than 1/3 that amount. Morris, however, ignored that caveat and jumped all over the upper limit to make his claims. Morris also conveniently ignored the results of further studies published in 1963 and 1965 which concluded that there was no extensive dust layer on the surface of the Moon and which were proven by the Surveyor landing in 1966. Therefore, Morris based his calculations on data which had been obsolete for a decade prior to the publication of his book! Yet, Creationists still trumpet it as "proof" of their ideas. Why? (R) What a surprise when men did finally land on the moon. It was actually hard for them to put in the American flag. They found only an eighth of an inch to three inches of dust! That would have taken fewer than 8,000 years to stack up! They wasted millions of dollars building these giant legs for the lunar lander all for nothing. (MB) The legs of the lunar lander are hardly "giant". They were only as long as they were so that they would extend past the bottom of the rocket cone under the lower stage of the lander. There was absolutely no concern about the lander sinking into a deep layer of lunar dust. (R) You say no plants or trees show signs of a catastrophic flood. I never said I thought any plant survived the flood. I don't think it would be able to. Earth's oldest living plants and trees probably sprouted some time after the flood. (MB) That's not even the case by Creationist figuring. Creationists admit to a 5,000 year age for the oldest trees, but the Flood couldn't have happened more than about 4,400 years ago (by Biblical chronology). (R) You also said, basically, that you thought trees had life spans of no more than several thousand years. If this were the case then do you expect the redwoods, bristle cones, sequoias and other old trees to topple down or become petrified soon? (MB) What I said was that there is conclusive evidence that the oldest trees predate the supposed Noachian Flood and that this fact disproves Creationist arguments. As to the non-sequitur portion of your paragraph, trees die all the time and do not have to live to reach the maximum possible age. Also, while some will die, others are continually growing to replace them or are continuing to thrive. (R) Another thing you said was that trees are almost always older because of missing tree rings. Explain to me how you know that? If there are rings on a tree that are missing how would anyone know that? If they aren't there you can't see them and therefore nobody can know. (MB) This is determined by examining the rings of numerous trees in the same location and matching them up. Obviously, there is no way to find a "missing ring" by looking at only one tree. (R) You stated that if the sun is shrinking it would leave scientists with "an impossible situation." (MB) Where did I say that? Wasn't that your (actually Russell Akridge's) premise? Scientists don't buy the Creationist "sun is shrinking" idea. (R) If you think bout it, it's only impossible if you believe in the old earth. (MB) It's only impossible if you don't use proper data and mathematics. (R) You also said that there were errors in the calculations of the sun's shrinkage. May I ask what errors you're referring to? (MB) One such documentation of these errors is contained within the Gemini article I referred to in my first reply about this and details data gathered since 1715 which shows no evidence of any continual shrinking of the Sun. (R) If you're right about the sun's supposed "80 day oscillation cycle" then why didn't researchers notice this cycle during the last hundred years? (MB) They have. Remember that your argument is based upon the invalid extrapolation of bad data by Akridge. He totally ignores the physics of a star's normal life cycle in the course of concocting his fairy tale. (R) Let me say that all of the fossil "proof" for evolving apes wouldn't be able to fill a regular coffin. For those of you who are reading this, and don't know, the evolutionary chain for ape evolving into man is mainly built around a few bones. It's true! (MB) No, it's not true. Apes did not evolve into Man. Man and apes descended from a common ancestor. The Creationists' inability to understand this simple and basic point invalidates any other arguments they make about the subject. (R) Artists draw entire pictures, to the slightest detail, out of bone fragments. You'd never think, from the artist's conception, that they never really had anything to work with! I'd like to hear your response on this. (MB) The evidence for the evolution of Man and Ape from a common ancestor fills museums and laboratories around the world. Ignoring it doesn't make it go away. (R) This one's been bugging me. You basically said, in a section of your last reply to me, that the chances of life forming from dead matter at one point is infinitely higher than erosion causing face patterns resembling dead presidents on the side of the mountain. You really need a lot of faith to believe that! Life is infinitely more complex than rock formations. (MB) Do you understand about how living organisms are created by a limited set of actions of self-ordering parts while erosion is a random process with an essentially infinite number of possibilities? It takes no "faith" whatsoever to realize that a finite possibility drawn from a limited set is infinitely more likely to occur than is a random possibility drawn from a near-infinite set. This is basic mathematics. (R) My other example was a computer appearing by chance. You're absolutely right, a computer is vastly inferior to a living being. But you must think this through. You believe people came from dead matter at one point. Life from non-life, by chance, correct? It's illogical! (MB) How? It's only illogical if you believe that living organisms aren't made of the same basic elements and processes that make everything else in the universe -- and that is clear nonsense. Once you understand that elementary point, you can begin to understand how living organisms are formed. (R) Here's an example: In the past, people had recipes for making mice. They believed if you took a sweaty shirt, a few grains of wheat and left them outside for a few days there would be mice. Most people literally believed they could make mice! The majority of people believed in this spontaneous generation until the 19th century. Obviously that isn't true since life only comes from life; it would break the scientific law of biogenesis. Although, if you believe in life just happening to form by nothing, this scientific law would have had to have been broken. You believe that law must been leapt over at some point in time. (MB) So, the nonsense believed by the scientifically-illiterate peasants of the past is proof of Creationism? Also, you are mistakenly attempting to parallel the old silly belief in spontaneous generation with the chemistry of how the organic building blocks of life are produced. There is no real science being violated here. (R) That's one. (MB) Don't you mean "that's another one"? Another debunked one, that is? (R) Another law evolution breaks is the second law of thermodynamics. (MB) ***YAWN*** This is so old and throughly refuted that even most Creationists don't bother with it any longer. But, if we must....... (R) The second law of thermodynamics states that the energy in the universe is going from a higher state of order to a lower state of order. Or you could say that the energy in the universe is being continually wasted or unused. The scientific measurement of the amount of unusable energy in a system is called the system's entropy. (MB) This isn't correct. The 2nd Law of Thermodynamics states that the total amount of disorder must increase in any system to which no energy is input. Local increases in order are permissable so long as the total overall disorder of the system increases. For example, this is why living things can grow by eating food. Most of the energy of the food is converted into disordered forms (such as heat) while a small amount contributes towards the growth (or increase in local order) of the individual living thing. Therefore, the living thing grows while overall disorder increases. In other words, entropy always increases. (R) Then why is it that evolution starts at dead matter and continues through time until people show up. (MB) Because the processes involved create small amounts of local order at the cost of increased overall disorder -- just as the 2nd Law demands. (R) You believe everything's becoming better and more orderly, am I right? (MB) No, I believe that "everything" is progressing more and more towards an eventual state of maximum disorder. Small and insignificant local exceptions, such as the evolution of life on Earth, don't change the overall state of things and don't invalidate the 2nd Law in any way. (R) Evolution is opposed to the second law of thermodynamics. (MB) Nope, it is in perfect accord with that law -- as is every other physical process in the universe. On the contrary, it would seem to be the special creation of heaven and Earth from a void -- the claim of the Creationists -- that would violate the 2nd Law. (R) That's two. (MB) Indeed, the score is mounting against the Creationists... (R) Yet another scientific law you have to break is the law of cause and effect. For every cause there's an effect and vice versa. One can't go without the other. (MB) Again, this is not true. If you understand anything about quantum mechanics, you will understand this basic fact. If there was no such thing as uncaused effects, there would be no such thing as radioactive decay and the Sun would not be able to shine. (R) But your belief doesn't work with this law either, does it? You believe there was an effect before a cause. I can't stress enough what an impossibility this is. (MB) This only proves that you don't properly understand basic physics or quantum mechanics. BTW, doesn't the proposed existence of God violate your belief that causes must precede effects? (R) That's three. (MB) Yep. Three swings, three misses, and Creationism strikes out yet again. (R) Can you really believe what you believe is true if it contradicts at least three scientific laws? (MB) No, I couldn't. But, since what I believe contradicts no laws of science, I have no problems with which to contend. On the contrary, it is Creationism that has some serious issues to resolve in respect to the operation of these laws and to everything else that you have brought up in the course of your arguments so far. Tell us how Creationism can possibly be true if the laws of science are to be respected.
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