Creationists and science - they do it wrong, sometimes dishonestly so

Creationists and evolutionists use the same evidence,

but evolutionists use all the evidence.

From Boingboing, of all places, comes a tale of an encounter with a creationist at the American Geophysical Union conference.  The author meet a man at the poster section.

A name badge declaring him to be Hugh Miller, the first author on the poster.He asked if I had any questions. I asked if he could just give me a quick summary of the work. He talked about performing mass spectrometry on samples of various dinosaur bones that produced age estimates ranging from 15,000 to 50,000 years. My spidey-sense tingled. I peered over his shoulder, searching for bullet points to figure out what was going on here.
That's when I read it: "humans, neanderthals, and dinosaurs existed together."

The author continues:

Now, here's the thing about Carbon-14 dating. This isotope has a very short half-life (the time necessary for the element to reduce in mass by half) of only 5730 years. Since it decays so quickly, it is useless for dating objects more than about 40-50,000 years old. The background levels of C-14 radiation in the laboratory have to be compensated for. 

The author points out

...often a technique called "bracketing" is used where the igneous rock on either side of the fossil is dated with radioactive isotopes that have half-lives on the order of millions of years. This give scientists a range of time in which the animal could have lived. The poster authors, Hugh included, were basing their attack on one technique in the geological toolkit, and disregarding all other evidence that would have undermined their conclusions.

Indeed, Ken Ham did the same thing in his televised debate with Bill Nye, saying:

In Australia there were engineers that were trying to search out about a coal mine, so they drilled down and they found a basalt layer, or lava flow that had woody material in it, branches and twigs and so on, and when Dr. Andrew Snelling, our PhD geologist sent that to a lab in Massachusetts in 1994, they used the potassium-argon dating method and dated it at 45 million years old. Well, we also sent the wood to the radiocarbon section of the same lab, and they dated it at 45,000 years old. 45,000 year old wood in 45 million year old rock. The point is, there is a problem.

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Jason Rosenhouse looks at how creationists abuse math in defense of their claims.

Sewell also argued that Darwinism runs afoul of the laws of thermodynamics. Evolution requires a decrease in entropy over time, whereas a cherished principle of physics says that is impossible. Since Sewell recognizes that the second law applies only to closed systems (which the Earth is not), it is unclear what the problem is. His claim that “natural forces do not cause extremely improbable things to happen” is pure gibberish. Does Sewell invoke spuernatural forces to explain the winning numbers in last night’s lottery?The fact is that natural forces routinely lead to local decreases in entropy. Water freezes into ice and fertilized eggs turn into babies. Plants use sunlight to convert carbon dioxide and water into sugar and oxygen, but Sewell does not invoke divine intervention to explain the process.

Historic and Observational Science

From AIG:

[I]t is useful to divide science into two different areas: operational science and historical (origins) science. Operational science deals with testing and verifying ideas in the present and leads to the production of useful products like computers, cars, and satellites. Historical (origins) science involves interpreting evidence from the past and includes the models of evolution and special creation. Recognizing that everyone has presuppositions that shape the way they interpret the evidence is an important step in realizing that historical science is not equal to operational science. Because no one was there to witness the past (except God), we must interpret it based on a set of starting assumptions. Creationists and evolutionists have the same evidence; they just interpret it within a different framework. Evolution denies the role of God in the universe, and creation accepts His eyewitness account—the Bible—as the foundation for arriving at a correct understanding of the universe.

and:

IF AN IDEA IS NOT TESTABLE, REPEATABLE, OBSERVABLE, AND FALSIFIABLE, IT IS NOT CONSIDERED SCIENTIFIC.

and:

 The denial of supernatural events limits the depth of understanding that science can have and the types of questions science can ask. We may define naturalism and materialism as:
Naturalism: a belief denying that an event or object has a supernatural significance; specifically, the doctrine that scientific laws are adequate to account for all phenomena.
Materialism: a belief claiming that physical matter is the only or fundamental reality and that all organisms, processes, and phenomena can be explained as manifestations or interactions of matter.
The problem with the above definition of science is that, even though naturalistic science claims to be neutral and unbiased, it starts with a bias. The quote from Dr. Todd on page 19 demonstrates that bias: only matter and energy exist and all explanations and causes must be directly related to the laws that matter and energy follow. Even if the amazingly intricate structure of flagella in bacteria appears so complex that it must have a designer, naturalistic science cannot accept that idea because this idea falls outside the realm of naturalism/materialism. Many scientists have claimed that allowing supernatural explanations into our understanding of the universe would cause us to stop looking for answers and just declare, “God wanted to do it that way.” This is, of course, false.

The ability to study the world around us is only reasonable because there is a Lawgiver who established the laws of nature. Most people do not realize that modern science was founded by men who believed that nature can be studied because it follows the laws given to it by the Lawgiver. Johannes Kepler, one of the founders of astronomy, said that science was “thinking God’s thoughts after Him.” Many founders of scientific disciplines, such as Bacon, Newton, Kepler, Galileo, Pascal, Boyle, Dalton, Linnaeus, Mendel, Maxwell, and Kelvin were Bible-believing Christians.  

... In a biblical worldview, scientific observations are interpreted in light of the truth that is found in the Bible. If conclusions contradict the truth revealed in Scripture, the conclusions are rejected. The same thing happens in naturalistic science. Any conclusion that does not have a naturalistic explanation is rejected.

...Making a distinction between two types of scientific study helps us to understand the limitations of naturalistic presuppositions in science:Operational (Observational) Science: a systematic approach to understanding that uses observable, testable, repeatable, and falsifiable experimentation to understand how nature commonly behaves.
Operational science is the type of science that allows us to understand how DNA codes for proteins in cells. It is the type of science that has allowed us to cure and treat diseases, put a man on the moon, build satellites and telescopes, and make products that are useful to humans. Biblical creationists believe that God has created a universe that uses a set of natural laws that operate consistently in the universe. Understanding how those laws operate is the basis for scientific thinking.
Some events defy natural laws. Christians refer to these things as miracles, but naturalistic science must find a way to explain these occurrences naturally. This approach rejects miracles in the Bible because they cannot be explained using natural laws. Such scientists occasionally try to explain the miracles in the Bible as natural phenomena, but this ultimately undermines the authority of God and His Word.
Historical (Origins) Science: interpreting evidence from past events based on a presupposed philosophical point of view.
The past is not directly observable, testable, repeatable, or falsifiable; so interpretations of past events present greater challenges than interpretations involving operational science. Neither creation nor evolution is directly observable, testable, repeatable, or falsifiable. Each is based on certain philosophical assumptions about how the earth began. Naturalistic evolution assumes that there was no God, and biblical creation assumes that there was a God who created everything in the universe. Starting from two opposite presuppositions and looking at the same evidence, the explanations of the history of the universe are very different. The argument is not over the evidence—the evidence is the same—it is over the way the evidence should be interpreted.

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That's a long set of excerpts.  Read more -there is a lot more - at the link.

I feel there are two main themes in the post and in the excerpted above.  The (artificial) distinction between observational and historic science and the inclusion of the supernatural in science. I also want to look at the claim that natural laws require a lawgiver.

This all-in-caps quote demonstrates the perceived difference between observational and historic science."IF AN IDEA IS NOT TESTABLE, REPEATABLE, OBSERVABLE, AND FALSIFIABLE, IT IS NOT CONSIDERED SCIENTIFIC."

I agree with this wholeheartedly.  If only I could find an example of so-called historic science that failed these criteria.
Let's look at the Greenland Ice Cores.  Superficially, looking at the long, thin cylinders and counting backwards through the layers is problematic.  We have not seen the snow fall on that location for more than a few decades and as the layer pile up and squeeze those below, there might be changes in the way those layers look, confusing the observer.
However, there are ways to repeat the tests and falsify them.  Let's look at falsification first.  The original creationist argument mentions "isotopes" once in one sentence and never again.  The method of looking for differences in the isotope ratios is not explored and yet it is a way to test the results.  The article also leaves out the presence of identifiable volcanic dust and ash.  When researchers find dust at 200 years-before-present, they can look for records of volcanic eruptions and compare the dates.  This is the definition of falsification.

Is it repeatable?  Yes.  There is lots of ice out there and researchers can drill more than one core and compare the results of one to another.

The same thing happens when we look at the insertion of viral DNA and how if an this happened to an ancestor all the descendants should have the inserted DNA in the appropriate place.  Researchers in a variety of locations and labs can look at viral DNA and compare that to the DNA in humans and other apes and confirm to deny that the DNA is the same.  Exceptions can be looked for.  No such exceptions have been found.

The Sensuous Curmudgeon covered similar ground in 2012.

Now for whether the supernatural can tested in a scientific way.  No, it can't.  When I teach ESL to young children, I sometimes amuse them by appearing to push a piece of chalk into one ear and pulling it out the other.  If you accept the supernatural, then even if you see that the chalk is hidden in my hand in one performance, you have to accept that the next time I do the trick, real magic occurred.

In my opinion, the best response to the science-testing-the-supernatural claim comes from Richard Hoppe and his look at Behe's suggested bacterial flagellum experiment.  Behe had suggested that bacteria lacking a flagellum be exposed to condition that would favor the evolution of a flagellum to see if one actually evolved.

Hoppe thought about the results of such an experiment.  

But then Hoppe notes that Behe states we can know nothing about the Designer and Its abilities.  He then imagines the experiment runs its course and bacteria flagellum appear...

. Does that mean that evolution works and ID is “disproven”? Not at all. After all, since we know nothing about the skill set and intentions of the putative designer(s), it’s possible that the designer(s) somehow ‘watched’ our culture, and sometime during the course of the generations ‘reached’ in and poofed a flagellum into existence on one of the bacteria.

If a flagellum appears, it means that evolution occurred the bacteria gained the flagellum through evolutionary processes or that The Designer chose to give them a flagellum.  If no flagellum appears, it means evolution did not occur or that it did occur and the bacteria were about to sprout flagella but The Designer chose to remove it. 

 Adding the supernatural to the mix means nothing can be scientifically determined. The argument turns into the brain-in-a-jar-on-a-desk-in-a-lab hypothesis.  If the supernatural is accepted, then nothing is settled.  We see what The Designer wants us to see and nothing else.  I try to keep this a religion-neutral blog but the only rebuttal that I can see Christians make to this point is that the Christian God is always honest and never deceptive.  If that is the case, then we can accept what our senses inform us of and the supernatural is not relevant.

"The ability to study the world around us is only reasonable because there is a Lawgiver who established the laws of nature."
The laws are what is observed, not required.  The quote above makes the same conflation that allows the joke about the judge outlawing gravity to be funny.  The law of universal gravitation has nothing in common with the laws of your country against murder.  The former is a fact of the universe and the latter is a arbitrary rule made by humans.
Further, Ham et al require the 'lawgiver' to mess around with the laws of nature.  In addition to claiming that any change to the laws of nature would destroy us all, they need the speed of light to change so light from distant stars can reach the Earth in six thousand years or less.  They need ice layers in Greenland to pile up so they appear to show one hundred thousand years  after only four thousand years passed.
They simultaneously state that the laws of nature are unchanging and they may have been different in the past.
Henry Morris made this claim - link is to Talk Origins:

Radiometric dating assumes that radioisotope decay rates are constant, but this assumption is not supported. All processes in nature vary according to different factors, and we should not expect radioactivity to be different.Source:
Morris, Henry M. 1985. Scientific Creationism. Green Forest, AR: Master Books, p. 139.

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In his debate with Bill Nye, Ham stated that the current diversity of life evolved from the far-fewer animals on the ark, simultaneously arguing against evolution and requiring evolution to occur at far faster rates than ever observed.

Nye argued that there are some 16,000,000 species on the planet today, and that if there was a Flood only 4,000 years ago, and only 7,000 representative species on the Ark to start with, there would have to have been 11 new species evolving every day over the last 4,000 years since the Flood.

Bill Nye discusses his debate with Ken Ham

From CSICOP

I slowly realized that this was a high-pressure situation. Many of you, by that I mean many of my skeptic and humanist colleagues, expressed deep concern and anger that I would be so foolish as to accept a debate with a creationist, as this would promote him and them more than it would promote me and us. As I often say and sincerely believe, “You may be right.” But, I held strongly to the view that it was an opportunity to expose the well-intending Ken Ham and the support he receives from his followers as being bad for Kentucky, bad for science education, bad for the U.S., and thereby bad for humankind—I do not feel I’m exaggerating when I express it this strongly.

reactions from the Nye/Ham debate (split from previous post)

In a recent previous post I had posted my reactions to the debate and reactions from the internet.  The post was becoming too long so I have snipped reactions from other sites and posted them here.  The first half of the post, my own live reactions, are here.

In addition to dividing the post in two, I have added further details to this one.

From Zachary Blount at Dr Lenski's blog.

There is a very interesting consequence of how the rnk-citT module originated. While Ham did not make this argument, other creationists have asserted that Cit+ arose simply by a loss of gene regulation, because they have the notion that evolution can only break things.  However, the duplication that gave rise to thernk-citT module caused no such thing.  There is still a copy of citT that is linked to the same adjacent DNA sequence as before, and there is still a copy of rnk that is under the control of its own promoter.  In other words, the cell got something new without losing anything old.When they actually bother to explain all of that, creationists still dismiss Cit+ as being an instance of evolutionary innovation because it involved the rearrangement of existing components.  True, the duplication responsible for Cit+ did rearrange components that were already there, but that rearrangement generated a new association between components that did not previously exist, and it produced a new function that also did not previously exist.  To argue that rearrangements cannot produce innovation is akin to arguing that a novelist has done nothing creative in writing her novels because she only used words that already existed.Ham also made a demand that is common among creationists that betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of evolutionary theory. In the later debate segment [starting at ~2:30], Ham says, “What Bill Nye needs to do for me is to show me example of something…uh, some new function that arose that was not previously possible from the genetic information that was there. And I would claim and challenge you that there is no such example that you can give...

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The daily Beast felt Nye did not do so well.

"Last night, it was easy to pick out the smarter man on the stage. Oddly, it was the same man who was arguing that the earth is 6,000 years old. ""Ham had nothing to lose. When you exist on the cultural fringe and make your living by antagonizing established authority, there’s no form of media attention you don’t love. All Ham had to do was sit still for two-and-a-half hours, sound vaguely professional, and pander occasionally to his base. Sure, if you listened closely, what Ham was saying made absolutely no scientific sense. But debate is a format of impressions, not facts. Ham soundedlike a reasonable human being, loosely speaking, and that’s what mattered.""There are those who will claim a victory for Nye. He did have his moments. Near the end of the debate, Nye found his footing, speaking passionately about the joys of scientific discovery. Doing so, he highlighted the degree to which creationism is a decidedly incurious, insular worldview. Ham was at a loss for words only once during the whole debate, when an audience member asked what it would take for him to change his mind. By contrast, Nye seemed most alive when talking about all the things that he couldn’t explain."

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Paul Fidalgo felt otherwise.

I think the Bill Nye-Ken Ham debate (liveblogged by me and Hemant) turned out to be a net-win for science and reason. I know that many of us in the skepto-atheosphere disagree; that the debate put reality on the same plane as nonsense, or thought that Nye wasn’t up to the task of fully enlightening Ham or his audience. I understand and respect those criticisms, but I think they overlook what Nye really did accomplish.

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AIG feels the media is split on who won.
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Via Kottke, Phil Plait answers some questions brought up by creationists at the debate.

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Nye Vs Ham or (Nye v Sham) on Twitter.
And the Top 10 Tweets from the debate.
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They seem kinda cranky - although right- at the happy place.
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Livebloggers:
Pharyngula on the debate.
The Friendly Atheist.
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Buzzfeed on the debate from a reporter who was there.
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Pat Robertson on the debate.
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The following two links have (thankfully low volume) autoplay video ads on their sites.
Christian Today's poll says Nye won by a landslide. And Christian Post offers five arguments from the debate.
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Business Insider calls the debate for Nye.
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22 hand written and photographed questions by creationists at the debate for Nye were answered by Ethan Siegel.
...and by Phil Plait.
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World Net Daily has reviewed the debate.  And Dispatches from the culture wars has torn that review apart.
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Don Prothero was Nye's coach.
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Not from the debate, but interesting: The Bible is wrong, there were no camels in Egypt during the era described in the Bible but they were there when it was written.

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Added Feb 15 but from an email sent on Feb 8:

I find it interesting that Ham is proud of "There is a book" while Nye supporters find it the exemplar of his problems.

Ham's youtube channel.

 #thereisabook hashtag at Twitter: