An Evening with Rate

A couple of things to note this past week. The first is that Dr. Todd Feeley (U. Montana) attended a RATE (Radioisotopes and the Age of the Earth) conference. RATE is a creationist group aimed at showing the earth could not possibly be as old as current science says it is. I've blogged about this meeting several times (here and here), but Todd sent his report to me yesterday. Here it is unedited:

Hi Joe,

Thought I’d give you a update on the Bozeman, Montana, RATE
conference held this past weekend. The ‘science’ talks by Russell
Humphreys, Andrew Snelling, and John Baumgardner contained
the standard RATE mantras on He diffusion, Po radiohaloes, and
14C. There was nothing new and which has not already been
debunked in your numerous essays, TalkOrigins.com, etc. I did
have an interesting conversation saturday morning with RATE
coordinator, Larry Vardiman, who seems like a pretty decent guy.
I asked why no recognized experts on radiometric dating were
invited to participate in the conference, given that none of the
speakers had any training or experience in experimental
geochronology. He was candid enough to admit that they would
have liked to included one on the team, but there are no young-
earth geochronologists in the world. He also agreed that the
mechanism for accelerating radioactivity by nearly a billion-fold
during a single year (the flood year) was a major problem for the
group that in the end will probably only be resolved by invoking a
“cosmic-scale event” or miracle. He further conceded that at
this point they have no physical evidence for this miracle.
Apparently, dissipation of the heat produced during the event is,
in the end, going to require yet an additional miracle.

Perhaps the most interesting part of the conference (for myself)
was saturday evening. Humphreys gave the same talk on He
diffusion, nearly verbatim, that he did in the morning. Following,
I asked the panel (Humphreys, Snelling, Baumgardner) a slight
variation of the question you suggested: Why did John
Baumgardner and the RATE group accept $2.5 million dollars
in private donations to conduct young-earth research at the
same time Baumgardner was publishing old-earth and old-moon
papers in mainstream scientific journals? I thought this was a
particularly relevant question because Baumgardner’s first slide
in his morning talk read: “News Flash: paradigm overturned;
textbooks need to be rewritten, earth is young, etc.” The crowd
went wild. Of course, they had no idea Baumgardner was at the
same time personally contributing to the mountain of evidence
that the earth and moon are old. Baumgardner stumbled and
bumbled with his response, saying things such as his coauthors
input faulty assumptions into his Terra code and that the
interpretations were therefore incorrect, but that the physics
(his contribution) was correct. He then went into a ten minute
soul-searching monologue about his faith in scripture, which is
fine, but hardly seemed relevant. I pressed further and asked if
he would write letters to Nature and JGR clarifying his position
and the errors in the assumptions and interpretations made by
his coauthors. He would not agree to do this and surprisingly
revealed that at least one more old earth paper is coming out in
the near future with his name on it.

Well, after the Q & A session Humphreys called me “evil” for
asking such a question (I thought it was a valid question, but
Humphreys apparently didn’t and I don’t think he is a very nice
man). I also told him that he had a problem because the core
sample he showed in his talk from where his zircons were
separated was clearly a gneiss and not a granodiorite (‘with
schist veins through it’), as he claimed. I could see this from the
back row, as could the undergraduate geology students in
attendance. At this point he called me “dumb” and asked if I had
the guts to tell Baumgardner (who selected the core) that the
sample was a metamorphic rock and not an igneous rock. Sure,
I’d tell him. As we walked over to speak with Baumgardner, a
young woman who identified herself as a Christian, scolded
Humphreys for being mean and not behaving in a Christian-like
manner by calling me evil and dumb. She didn’t think he was a
very nice man either. To get back to the point, Baumgardner
conceded that the core sample was indeed a gneiss and not a
granodiorite. To his credit, Humphreys did begrudgingly
apologize. Personally, I didn’t care about the apology, which
wasn’t sincere anyway. I was more concerned that this guy was
conducting expensive research on the age of the earth, yet
couldn’t even tell the difference between a metamorphic rock
and an igneous rock. Oh yeah, I forgot, he’s a creationist
physicist and not a geologist.

The RATE conference is over now and the group has moved on
to a different town. Let’s hope there are people in future
audiences who do a bit of research and learn more about what
these guys are really up to. People that take the time to do a
background check just might come to realize that those who act
as if they are holier than thou might not be as sincere as they
claim or have the appropriate scientific backgrounds to conduct
the research discussed.

Best regards,

Todd

Interesting account. In my opinion, this 'double life' has to be embarrassing to the young earther's and we should emphasize this every chance we get. By the way, Humphreys is not reluctant to invent data when needed.

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In other news, this months Geology contains an article about a fossil forest found in a coal mine. The Carboniferous age forest is richly preserved in a coal mine. The authors conclude that the preservation was enhanced because the region sunk below flood level quickly following an earthquake. No doubt that creationists will soon cite this as evidence of Noah's flood. Then again, that pins down part of the flood to the Carboniferous and creationists don't want to be pinned down.

Cheers

Joe Meert