Stellar Evolution, Grand Canyon, Loch Ness Monster and Humans and Dinosaurs in Bible?

Latest info on stellar evolution:

An amateur astronomer witnessed the birth of a new star. The new object had appeared alongside the well-known gas cloud known as Messier 78. The star came out of its enclosing cocoon over the past few weeks. An urgent appeal has gone out to astronomers to monitor the object which is now known as McNeilʼs nebula. Here is the story at BBC News Last Updated, Thursday, 12 February, 2004

Speaking of evolution, I like to start with the stars. Stellar evolution is about as close to undeniable evidence as you can get. I recently wrote a young creationist named Anna, who asked me some basic creationist questions that she thought were unanswerable and told her to read Astronomy and Sky and Telescope magazine. Star formation is being observed and measured right now, via satellite telescopes that are able to record radiation at different levels of the electro-magnetic spectrum, like x-ray radiation, and other types (visible light can be seen by the human eye but visible light is only a tiny portion of the entire range of radiation lying along the electro-magnetic spectrum). Such satellite measurements include measuring the speed of gasses rushing together toward a central point of gravitational collapse. Fu Orionus, a new star, was observed brightening the sky for the first time decades ago. There is a lot of data on star formation at present, and more is being gathered all the time. Stars form in cloudy nebulas (regions of high gas concentration). And the ages of the stars in those nebulas is youthful, the ages of such nebulas also fall along a particular spectrum of ages as expected by the current theories of star formation. Nothing unexpected there. In fact even creationist astronomers have remarked how good the evidence for stellar evolution is. See these quotations from Creationists:

Stellar Evolution

• “…the theory of stellar structure appears to be founded on a good physical basis and…stellar evolution is intimately related to stellar structure…
• “If creationists wish to scrap stellar evolution completely, then it is incumbent on us to rework stellar structure and/or physics in a convincing fashion…
• “The standard observational tool used in studying stellar structure and evolution is the Hertzsprung-Russell (H-R) diagram… It consists of a plot of stellar luminosity increasing upward and temperature increasing to the left…Most stars are found on a roughly diagonal band called the main sequence (MS)…
• “This agreement is quite impressive and the physical assumptions that go into it are so well founded it is doubtful that many creationists would have much to argue with in main sequence (MS) stellar structure. However, what is generally called post MS evolution is not far removed from the brief outline of stellar structure given above.
• “The most massive stars may pass through successive steps of fusing helium nuclei with increasingly more massive nuclei up to iron…Note that these transitions have not actually been observed. However, they are based on physics principles and will naturally occur…
• “The upshot is that the most massive stars have MS lifetimes of only a few hundred thousand years (of course, still much longer than young-age creationists would allow), while the lowest mass stars have MS lifetimes approaching 100 billion years…
• “And evolutionary assumption concludes that the stars in a star cluster should form from a single cloud so that the members represent…a homogenous group. Different clusters should have different ages, and though they technically have different compositions, even large differences in composition do not seriously affect the overall appearance of an H-R diagram…
• “The agreement of the theory [of stellar evolution] is quite impressive…
• “[The expected evolutionary] trend between globular and open clusters is observed…
• “Evidence [exists] that the formation of planetary nebulae and the evolution of white dwarfs are related…These two ages have a very good correlation…
• “A similar relationship holds for neutron stars and supernova remnants. As with planetary nebulae, the expansion velocity and observed size of the remnant can be used to estimate the time since the explosion…Where a pulsar can be identified in a supernova remnant, the ages of the remnant and the pulsar are well correlated.
• “Very brief discussions of stellar structure and evolution have been presented. Though it would seem that creationists would not have much with which to quarrel in the former, most would largely dismiss the latter. However, the two are intimately related, and one cannot be rejected without seriously calling into question the other. We are appealing to readers to give much attention to the study of stellar evolution…”

— Danny R. Faulkner & Don B. De Young [young-universe creationists], “Toward a Creationist Astronomy,” Creation Research Society Quarterly, Vol. 28, Dec. 1991, pp. 87-91

“Perhaps the most important remaining question [in astronomy] for [young- universe] creationists is the origin of the turnoff points in the H-R diagrams of different clusters. The stars are real physical objects and presumably follow physical laws; we would rather not take the easy way out by saying simply that ‘God made them that way.’ But if creationists take the position of rejecting stellar evolution, they should provide a feasible alternative.”
— Paul Steidl [young-universe creationist], The Earth, the Stars, and the Bible (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1979), p. 153—as quoted by Howard J. Van Till in The Fourth Day: What the Bible and the Heavens Are Telling Us about the Creation (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1986), p. 239

Also google the Ph.D. astronomers “Hugh Ross” (at Reasons to Believe) and “Robert Newman” (as The Interdisciplinary Biblical Research Institute) on the internet because they are creationist Christians who both agree that the evidence for stellar evolution is overwhelming, and they have even debated their young-earth creationist brethren on that point.

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The creationist I mentioned above, named Anna, was persistent, however, and continued asking me more questions, that I replied to…

Anna: Ok, so every about what 20 years we have a star expolde, right?

Edward: Hello again Anna. I donʼt know what the average number of stellar explosions is in the cosmos, and I sincerely doubt that astronomers know either. It would be impossible to keep track of every exploding star in the visible cosmos. First of all, do you know what a “galaxy” is? It is a conglomeration of about a billion stars. We live in a spiral-shaped galaxy called the Milky Way and our planet is found circling only one star that is found on one of the spiral arms, closer to the outward tip of the arm than toward the center of the galaxy as a whole. In the beginning of the last century, telescopes could only see the stars in our galaxy. In fact, with the visible eye, that is all you see when you look up into the sky, just the stars of the Milky Way Galaxy, and of those, you can only distinguish about 8000 stars at most with the unaided eye on a clear night. But there are about a billion stars in our galaxy alone, most of which we canʼt see with the unaided eye, and beyond those stars in our galaxy there lay even fainter white dots in the sky that only telescopes can see. Each of those faint white dots, upon closer examination, turns out to be other galaxies. But at the beginning of the last century, astronomers thought those faint white dots were just cloudy nebulas of hot gas. Better telescopes were invented and those blurry nebulas were found to be a multitude of spiral shaped galaxies like our own. Then even better telescopes were invented, telescopes that circle the earth, like the Hubble scope, and we found out that there were about 50 billion galaxies out there, and today, with the latest satellite telescopes we know there are over 100 billion galaxies out there. In other words, if you raise your fist to the nighttime sky, the area of the sky that your fist covers, contains about a 100 million galaxies in the depths of space and time. But you canʼt see them. So I doubt that astronomers are able to keep track of all the stars in a 100 billion galaxies or how often a star in each of those galaxies explodes. Or course if you were just looking at our own galaxy, the Milky Way Galaxy, Iʼm sure they have some rough idea of how often such explosions occur just in our galaxy, and even where they occur most often. Recently, astronomers defined within our own galaxy, a “Galactic Habitable Zone” that has fewer cases of stars going nova than in other regions.

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Anna: So why is there evidence that only about three hundred of them exploded?

Edward: I do not know where you got that number from, as I said, the cosmos is far too vast for astronomers to keep track of every exploding star. But there is one exploding star in particular that you should learn more about, since it provided some strong evidence in favor of an old-cosmos.

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Anna: If the earth was indeed millions of years old woulnd there be more evidence of novas / super novas?

Edward: There is evidence of galaxies colliding in the present as well as in the past, there is evidence of stars still being born, and of stars exploding, and there are also some huge rings of matter that keep expanding from stellar explosions that took place in the distant past. Judging by the present measured speeds of the expansion of such huge rings of matter, their initial explosions had to have taken place long before the time when young-earth creationists say the world was created.

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Anna: what are your thoughts on the Grand Canyon?

Edward: Are you asking whether I believe the Grand Canyon was formed by a single world-wide Flood? My answer would be no. And why is there only one Grand Canyon on the entire face of the earth? And why does it lay so far inland? Surely waters rushing off the continent during the months when the Flood subsided would have created canyons galore all along the ridges of the continents.

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Anna: How do you belive it was created? Not by the river that runs through the bottom, i hope. It was made during the flood and all those layes of coal were to.

Edward: Steve Austinʼs Grand Canyon Erosion Argument: A Mathematical Sleight of Hand

A geologist reviews a creationist book on the Grand Canyon

Creation Walk Through the Grand Canyon

The Grand Canyonʼs geology, starting with the Cambrian, and going through several websites to a final conclusion, written by a geologist

The Entire Geological Column in North Dakota

A geologist (who is also a former young-earth creationist) reviews Answers In Genesisʼ attempt to defend Flood Geology

Assorted articles on Flood Geology, including a few on the Grand Canyon and one by me at the near end of the list.

Why Geology Shows Sedimentation to Be too Slow for a Global Flood, written by a former young-earther who is now a professional geologist

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Anna: What are your theories on the Loch Ness Monster? Do you belive that its a living dinosoar?

Edward: The photograph that kicked off the craze for the supposed monster in Loch Ness, Scotland was taken in 1934. In 1994, one of the people involved in taking the original picture admitted it was a trick. The “monster” was created by attaching an artificial head to a toy submarine which was just over a foot long. Other evidence collected by scientists and skeptics over the years have exposed other photos as faked or misread. The claims that a huge monster exists in Loch Ness have also been debunked by research showing that such a creature could not survive on the food available in the loch; even less could a substantial colony of such creatures - necessary for the survival of individual creatures over the centuries - be supported. Furthermore, the lack of any credible physical evidence of a creature or a colony of creatures after six decades of intensive searching by numerous expeditions would seem to make Nessieʼs existence unlikely.

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Anna: There has been proof of dinosoars living with humans and the bible talks about it to.

Edward: No it doesnʼt. The Bible in Job only speaks about Behemoth and Leviathan, two beasts of mythical proportions, perhaps modeled on some large animals, but mythically exaggerated. People in Jobʼs day didnʼt know what beasts existed in the world, all sorts of strange mythical beasts were invented, especially to live in the lands beyond the edges of the then known world. One of Jobʼs beasts even breathes fire. Why it didnʼt singe its own mouth, lips or nostrils is a good question. Why it didnʼt risk inhaling any of the fire into its lungs is another question since itʼs mouth and nostrils were filled with fire and smoke, and how it lit chemicals to produce flames is another question. No animal on earth produces flames (the bombardier beetle produces only hot liquid).

If you want to learn more about ancient mythical beasts in the ancient Near East and how the Bible came to also employ such stories in the book of Job, read, Slaying the Dragon: Mythmaking in the Biblical Tradition by Bernard F. Batto (Paperback - November 1992)

Related Links

Geology

The Paluxy Mantracks Story

The creationist book that jumpstarted the young-earth movement as Henry Morrisʼ, The Genesis Flood, published in the early 1960s. In that book he featured photographs of individual slabs of limestone that contained what looked like a giant human footprint in the middle of each slab. The slabs were allegedly dug up near the Paluxy river in Texas. The Paluxy river region soon became a Mecca (or holy pilgrimage site) for young-earth creationists (though some young-earthers like those at Loma Linda University, had cross-sectioned some of the original limestone slabs and wrote a report early on that said they were just carvings, not genuine human prints). By the mid-1980s the existence of “man tracks” in Paluxy was being questioned even by the two largest and most influential young-earth institutions, The Institute for Creation Research or ICR (that Henry Morris himself had founded), and Answers in Genesis or AiG. Recently, I digitized the color slides of Glen Kuban, who played a major role in convincing ICR that the Paluxy “mantracks” were not human. Glenʼs slides will soon be on the web.

John Morris Of ICR Speaking In 1986 On The Paluxy Data:

“It would now be improper for creationists to continue to use the Paluxy data as evidence against evolution, in the light of these questions, there is still much that is not known about the tracks and continued research is in order.” (Jan. 1986)

AiGʼs Recent Comments On The Paluxy “Man Prints”:

“Some prominent creationist promoters of these tracks have long since withdrawn their support. Some of the allegedly human tracks may be artefacts of erosion of dinosaur tracks obscuring the claw marks. There is a need for properly documented research on the tracks before we would use them to argue the coexistence of humans and dinosaurs.”

Snelling Of Aig Tried To Keep The Paluxy Data Alive Back In 1986:

“In order to discredit creationists, not long ago the evolutionists argued that many so-called human-like footprints were nothing but erosion marks, carvings, and “midnight chisel marks”. Ironically, these SAME footprints will probably now be claimed to be the footprints of an unknown dinosaur because of some perplexing stains! All of which is a sober reminder — none of us have ever seen dinosaurs make footprints.” (Creation (Ex Nihilo), Andrew Snelling, March, 1986, Vol. 8, No.2, p. 37)

E.T.B.ʼs Comment On Snellingʼs 1986 Remarks:

The “mantrack” discoveries were not all made at once. First, the well-defined carvings were found (being sold during the depression), one print per limestone slab, right in the middle of the slab. Thousands of loose limestone slabs of different sizes line the shores of the Paluxy. Anyone can one pick up and take it home to “work on.” Carl Baugh or Henry Morris or Burdick quoted an old-timer who said they “saw the print right in the rock,” but did they mean they saw such such prints in situ? A later interviewer went back to the same old-timer and asked them where they saw the rock, and the old-timer answered, “It was on the back of so-and-soʼs truck.” There are also confessions by carvers and their kin, how they used a loose limestone slab, a hammer and chisel, and acid on rags, to smooth out the carved human prints they created. The carvings were what the earliest tales of “man tracks” at Paluxy were based on, they also featured the most well-defined “prints” (though featuring amateurish anatomical errors). Several such limestone slabs featuring alleged human prints were purchased by Loma Linda (creationist 7th Day Adventist) University and cross-sectioned and declared to be nothing but carvings by YECs at Loma Linda who wrote a report on their findings and doubts.

But the carvings initiated more YEC interest, and soon some YECʼs visited Paluxy and made the film, “Footprints in Stone,” but for all of their searching and filming they never found any in situ man prints that resembled the carvings, they only found trails of indistinct oblong impressions that they claimed were made by humans and/or giant humans. (They also found isolated wearings in the rocks that were not part of any trail but that they claimed could be viewed as a “print” of a “human” sort.)

Glen Kuban pointed out in Origins Research (a creationist publication begun with ICR seed money), that there were nearby trackways in Paluxy that showed indistinct oblong track impressions, and in those trackways the oblong impressions were mixed with tridactyl impressions, and vice versa, as you followed the trackways along their full length. So, evolutionists have no trouble identifying the indistinct oblong trackways as dinosaurian in origin.

There are also many erosion features, shallow oblong holes, along both banks of the Paluxy river — these miniature potholes were carved out by water streaming in one direction down the river. They are of an extremely wide variety of sizes and shapes.

In some cases like the famous “Von Daniken print” (a single “human-foot shaped” feature in Paluxy that was featured in Von Danikenʼs film, “Chariots of the Gods,” and in creationist publications, including Weston-Smithʼs book, Manʼs Origin and Manʼs Destiny), both Von Daniken and later creationists left the gravel on one side of the feature, and even wetted it in, to make it look like the printʼs right side was as well defined as its left side, but in fact the “printʼs” right side does not exist at all, but is flush with the rock, and it only exists when you leave gravel there or “wet the print” to create a “right side of the foot” in your mindʼs imagination. (You can see how this works when you view photos taken from different angles with the print clean of gravel and not wetted.) Even John Morris noted his own doubts concerning the Von Daniken print. Morris admitted when it was first photographed it had only four “toes” (the first two being equal-sized in an anatomically abnormal fashion), but years later a fifth “toe” began appearing in photos, and even Morris suggests that the “fifth toe” was not originally in evidence, but probably resulted from later tampering.

The story of the Paluxy “manprints” debacle appeared in Creation/Evolution Journal in which Ronnie Hastingʼs published his daily journal of interactions with ICR researchers who came to look at what Kuban had found, and their reactions, at first, dismissal, then taking their own more careful second and third looks, and finally admitting they couldnʼt really see the “human-ness” of the trackways any more than Kuban could:

• Tracking Those Incredible Creationists
  by R.J. Hastings

• Tracking Those Incredible Creationists- The Trail Continues
  by Ronnie J. Hastings

• Tracking Those Incredible Creationists-The Trail Goes On
  by Ronnie J. Hastings

• Tracking Those Incredible Creationists
  by William Thwaites

Kubanʼs photos and detailed site diagrams were also published in black and white in Origins Research, a creationist journal that originated with seed money from ICR. Copies of past issues of Origins Research are still available at the ARN website, for a price:

Origins Research Volume 9, Number 1 - Spring/Summer 1986
The Taylor Site “Man Tracks” Glen J Kuban
A Review of ICR Impact Article 151 Glen J Kuban
A Follow up on the Paluxy Mystery John Morris
A Footprints in Stone: The Current Situation Films for Christ Assoc.

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Snellingʼs 1986 remarks on the “strange red-brown stains on the rocks”

“The unknown significance of hithertofore unexposed strange red-brown stains on the rocks in and around the footprints renders the need for caution until further research explains this occurrence.” (Creation (Ex Nihilo), Andrew Snelling, March, 1986, Vol. 8, No.2, p. 37)

E.T.B.ʼs Comment: The reddish “stain” revealing the tridactyl nature of the alleged “man tracks” can be seen even in the early YEC film, “Footprints in Stone,” long before Kuban ever arrived on the scene. Also, the “stains” are not superficial: Drill core samples taken at the edges of the stained surface showed that the reddish sediments curved with the impression of the dinosaurʼs foot beneath the surface, as Kuban showed via his drill core samples that he photographed.

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AiGʼs Latest Claim: “Human and Dino Prints” Found Together in Russia

E.T.Bʼs Comment: AiG admits that it is best to remain skeptical of “magic bullet” stories that can allegedly overthrow an old-earth or evolution in one shot, especially if such stories are not thoroughly researched.

AiGʼs latest report of “human and dino prints” found together in Russia has not been researched, no photos, just a newspaper article. So by their own definition they ought to be skeptical about this new evidence, no?

Snelling at AiG has admitted that perhaps there will never be found any indisputably genuine pre-flood human fossils or pre-flood human artifacts or evidence of pre-flood dwellings (such as a series of small walls found in Cretaceous or earlier strata). Instead, Snelling has suggested that perhaps no evidence of pre-Flood human beings may ever be found: “When God pronounced judgment on the world, He said, ‘I will destroy [blot out] man whom I have created from the face of the earth’ (Gen. 6:7). Perhaps the lack of pre-flood human fossils is part of the fulfillment of this judgment?”

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Answers in Genesisʼ Recent Comments on Carl Baughʼs Research

(Carl Baugh, Kent Hovind, and Ron Wyatt (deceased) are among the last remaining supporters of the Paluxy “manprints”):
“[We suggest creationists do not use…] many of Carl Baughʼs creation ‘evidences.’ Sorry to say, AiG thinks that heʼs well meaning but that he unfortunately uses a lot of material that is not sound scientifically. So we advise against relying on any ‘evidence’ he provides, unless supported by creationist organisations with reputations for Biblical and scientific rigor. Unfortunately, there are talented creationist speakers with reasonably orthodox understandings of Genesis (e.g. Kent Hovind) who continue to promote some of the Wyatt and Baugh ‘evidences’ despite being approached on the matter (Ed. note: see our Maintaining Creationist Integrity, our response to Hovindʼs reply to this article).”