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MATSON v HOVIND |
We will now look at several arguments which, though not on the above lists, enjoy a wide circulation among "scientific" creationists. I will also present a couple of arguments indicating that the earth is much older than a few thousand years.
A1. Woodmorappe's Collection of Bad Dates
Eat one of those and your tummy will curl right up! Seriously speaking, a favorite attack on radiometric dating involves dangling "horror stories" about gross errors before the reader, thus giving the impression that radiometric dating is totally unreliable. Woodmorappe (1979), with his collection of some 350 bad radiometric dates, must surely be the master of that technique.
Upon being presented with claims that radiometric dating is totally erroneous, a question naturally arises:
If radiometric geochronology is half as bad as Woodmorappe's list suggests, then how in the world did geologists ever arrive at a tight consensus for the official dates? Look at the various radiometric tables in use over the last 20 years or so and you will find, at least for the fossil-bearing strata, a remarkably tight agreement. ... Did the geochronologists throw darts to determine the accepted dates? (Matson, 1993, p.1)
Either we have a worldwide conspiracy among geologists, which no sane person believes, or else the numerous radiometric dates were consistent enough to allow that kind of close agreement. In fact, Dr. Dalrymple, an expert in radiometric dating with lots of hands-on experience, puts the percentage of bad dates at only 5-10 percent.
Thus, we clear away the first illusion spun by creationism, namely that most of the dates are bad, that the radiometric picture is totally chaotic. In fact, it is not at all unusual for several different radiometric methods to agree within a few percentage points on a date. When you consider that each radiometric method is subject to different types of error, that the different "clocks" run at different speeds, such an agreement would be extremely rare on the basis of pure chance. In a number of instances, more than one might imagine, dates are further corroborated by methods which have nothing to do with radioactivity. Thus, the big, statistical picture painted by radiometric dating is excellent. Today, we have some 100,000 radiometric dates, the vast majority contributing sensibly to the overall picture.
Woodmorappe's main theme, minus the diplomatic wording, is that geologists are cheating like so many schoolboys to make their dates come out right. But even schoolboys need to know what the right answers are in order to cheat, and there was no absolute age list when radiometric dating was first applied to the strata.
Anyone can make up a list of bad cars, bad people, bad neighborhoods, or bad radiometric dates. What does that prove? Is it unsafe for you to drive a car, to meet new people, or to live in a neighborhood? Of course not!
The thing that is lacking in Woodmorappe's argument is statistical balance. He is very good at showing the many ways that things can go wrong; he has not shown that things normally go wrong.
To be sure, Woodmorappe isn't claiming that his table is a normal sample of radiometric dates. His is a table of discordant dates. However, in order to make his case against radiometric dating he must, at the very least, show a high percentage of bad dates among the credible radiometric candidates. This cannot be done by merely citing the numerous ways in which one can get a bad date; nor is it achieved by concentrating on a typical cases. Such information is certainly interesting, a healthy reminder of what can go wrong, but it is no threat to the radiometric dating methods which, after all, measure their successes on a statistical basis. (Matson, 1993, p.2)
Thus, Woodmorappe is acting more like a mechanic who informs a car owner of the many ways that her car can break down, who quotes numerous horror stories to illustrate his points. Even if those horror stories were true, the mechanic has failed to prove that the lady's car needs repair, let alone junking.
How different it would be if the mechanic pulled out a statistical study done by a consumer magazine to show that the particular make and year for the lady's car was unreliable, due to certain parts, after so many miles. That kind of balanced statistical study is the very thing Woodmorappe's paper lacks.
An eye-opener awaits anyone who closely examines Woodmorappe's list of bad dates. Some of the dates involved minerals that even Woodmorappe admits are unreliable. No geologist would normally use such minerals.
Some of the dates were experimental! Since when do we count experimental work? The idea of experimental dating is to see if a given radiometric method can be used on certain materials or under certain conditions.
A great many dates, perhaps most, were rejects. That is, they were rejected because of internal indicators (such as a bad isochron) rather than on the basis of the final date produced. If the radiometric method is to be indicted, it must be indicted by dates which were counted as good but shown, by other means, to be bad. Rejects don't fall into that category. They can't be used against the radiometric method.
The dates all lacked the investigator's personal, detailed interpretation. That's no way to make a case for a bad date! Again, one must demonstrate that each bad date would have been counted as good had no contradiction by outside data occurred. Given a proper interpretation, a number of gross "errors" listed in Woodmorappe's table turn out to be no errors at all! A spectacular example showcased by Woodmorappe, though not actually listed in his table, dealt with an example from California.
The Pharump diabase from the Precambrian of California yielded an Rb-Sr isochron of no less than 34 b.y., which is not only 7 times the age of the earth but also greater than some uniformitarian estimates of the age of the universe. This super-anomaly was explained away by claiming some strange metamorphic effect on the Sr. (Woodmorappe, 1979, p.122)
Sounds pretty grim, huh? The unsuspecting reader would assume that here is a real disaster which geochronologists were trying to cover up with some phoney explanation! In fact, the 34-billion-year figure is the result of an incompetent reading of the data, an attempt to see an isochron where none exists!
The data do not fall on any straight line and do not, therefore, form an isochron. The original data are from a report by Wasserburg and others [1964], who plotted the data as shown but did not draw a 34-billion-year isochron on the diagram. The "isochrons" lines were drawn by Faure and Powell [1972] as "reference isochrons" solely for the purpose of showing the magnitude of the scatter in the data. ... The scatter of the data in Figure 6 shows clearly that the sample has been an open system to Sr-87 (and perhaps to other isotopes as well) and that no meaningful Rb-Sr age can be calculated from these data. This conclusion was clearly stated by both Wasserburg and others [1964] and by Faure and Powell [1972]. The interpretation that the data represent a 34-billion year isochron is solely Woodmorappe's [1979] and is patently wrong. (Dalrymple, 1984, pp.78-79)
Whatever the reasons may be for the scatter, the fact remains that these data were clearly a "discard" case. Thus, this example cannot be used against the Rb-Sr method. That Woodmorappe would see an isochron where none could possibly exist, by misinterpreting one of the lines Faure and Powell had drawn, this in spite of the fact that those authors stated that the data cannot be used, strongly suggests that Woodmorappe's search for discordant dates is superficial. One wonders how many other obvious discards are hiding in his table. (Matson, 1993, p.7)
Perhaps, by now, you can understand why long lists of bad dates do not, in themselves, impress scientists. The success of such an attack on radiometric dating hangs on a detailed, case by case analysis as well as a clear demonstration that the sample is representative of the whole to some meaningful degree. In my paper (1993) I listed about 10 conditions which must be examined in any meaningful study of bad dates.
A2. Water and Vapor and Noah's Flood
Attempting to supply the water for Noah's flood is a much greater problem than one might realize. True, one can simply say that God did it and leave it at that. However, that argument will support the cosmological views of any and every religion, and they all can't be right! How easy it is for religious man to invoke the infallible name of God to vouchsafe his own ignorance! How many times have Christians done that very thing down through the centuries? Biblical infallibility was cited in defense of a flat earth as late as 1935 in Zion, Illinois, by Christian radio evangelist Wilbur Glenn Voliva who advocated the biblical view of the world's flatness in contrast to "modern astronomy." Some evangelical Christians continue to defend the belief that the sun moves around the earth, which they base on the "plain words of Scripture." Indeed, they have formed The Tychonian Society in order to defend their view "scientifically." Science confers a number of benefits, not the least of which is the fact that it can be taught in the classroom. Thus, the quest to find the source of water for Noah's flood, to do it scientifically.
Since our atmosphere only holds enough moisture to account for about an inch of water worldwide, creationists have found it necessary to seek out other sources. A massive vapor canopy is the favorite choice of many creationists. The concept, unfortunately, is a mass of scientific and biblical contradictions.
A vapor (or water) canopy, if of any significant thickness, would block out the sun and stars with a massively overcast sky! Didn't the Bible say something about the stars and moon being created to give man a clock for the seasons? Some clock, if much of the human race couldn't see it!
The increased atmospheric pressure, which would be greatly increased by a massive vapor canopy, would also cause nitrogen narcosis. Adam and Eve, and the antediluvian generations, would be in a perpetual narcotic stupor!
Here is what a renown physicist, a Bible-believing Christian, had to say about the vapor canopy. He is referring to the model which was made popular by Whitcomb and Morris in their classic, The Genesis Flood.
They assert that the canopy's sudden collapse would have increased the volume of the ocean by 30 per cent (p.326). This would mean that 30/100 of the original ocean volume, or something like 30/130 of the present ocean volume, came from the canopy. That amounts to about 75 million cubic miles. That quantity of water in the form of a vapour canopy would raise the pressure of our atmosphere from its usual 15 pounds per square inch to a crushing 970 pounds per square inch, which would create all sorts of problems for living things.
Worst of all, the pressure in the base of the canopy would be so high that it would need to have a temperature of over 500 degrees Fahrenheit. (Any cooler, and it would collapse into rain.) (Hayward, 1985, p.151)
Therefore, since antediluvian life was not pressure-cooked, any substantial vapor canopy in contact with our atmosphere is a scientific impossibility. Even a token vapor canopy depositing 40 feet of rain, as suggested by at least one creationist, does not get around all the problems. Dr. Hayward pointed out, on page 152, that winds in the upper atmosphere would soon dissipate such a structure, causing it to mix with the atmosphere and mostly rain out. Dr. Alan Hayward's final conclusion is this:
The supposed vapour canopy has been much talked about in recent-creationist circles, but very seldom thought about. A little thought soon shows there could never have been such a canopy, unless it was sustained by one long, continuing miracle. And that, of course, would be contrary to the teaching of 'Flood geologists', since they invented the canopy in the first place to explain how the Flood could have occurred by 'purely natural processes'.(Hayward, 1985, p.152)
Obviously, you can't get more than a tiny fraction of the flood waters from the atmosphere without running into a host of difficulties, and that includes the latent heat of vaporization. It takes a fair amount of heat to convert a quart of water into vapor. Even if that quart of water dries up of its own accord, it still takes the same amount of heat to turn it into vapor. In that case, the heat is gradually drawn from the surrounding environment. Step in front of a fan after getting out of the shower and you will soon appreciate just how much heat water takes with it when it turns into vapor! Well, the reverse is also true. When vapor condenses into water, it releases the same amount of heat which originally turned it into vapor. If that were not true we would be losing energy in the cycle, and the first law of thermodynamics prohibits that.
The point is that in order to condense that vapor canopy to rain it would have to release enough heat to raise the temperature of our atmosphere to 6000 degrees! That's a straightforward calculation of the latent heat of vaporization. That is to say, there is no way to convert the vapor canopy into rain in time for Noah's flood without burning up the Earth!
Thus, we can forget about the vapor canopy as a means for supplying any significant amounts of water.
Nor can more than a tiny fraction of the flood water be derived from pressurized reservoirs deep within the earth. Aside from stability problems involved in packing vast quantities of free water under miles of rock, an arrangement that would have caved in from the start, there is a problem in getting the water out. After a small quantity had been released, the pressure would have dropped to zero! At that point you have to cave in the caverns to displace the remaining water with rock. However, that wouldn't drive the water much higher than the original sea level as the rocks and water would simply change places. The Bible makes it clear that the flood waters came and lifted the ark up, that the high mountains were covered, not that the ground caved in below ark and mountain!
That leaves Dr. Hovind's bizarre iceberg-from-space conjecture to make up almost all the water. Odd, that the Bible never hints at such a mechanism! The claim that huge blocks of ice, or pieces thereof, would be deflected to the North and South magnetic poles because of a super-strong magnetic field on earth is absurd. Most likely it is based on Barnes' totally discredited ideas about the earth's magnetic field (Godfrey, 1983, pp.73-77; Dalrymple, 1992, pp.16-17). It also makes assumptions about ice which are highly questionable.
Thus, with our earth sporting an ordinary magnetic field, this iceberg from space is not going to be re-routed to the North and South polar areas. It's going to crash into the earth like any other asteroid or comet. As it impacts at tens of thousands of miles per hour the conversion of potential energy to kinetic energy is going to vaporize it. And, that takes us right back to the latent heat of vaporization problem. Also, in order to supply any large quantity of water, to flood high mountains for example, and reliable translations of the Bible do mention high mountains, this asteroid would have to be huge -- huge enough to exterminate almost every living thing on earth and sea. Tell me now, does the Bible say that the flood started off with a big bang, a great fireball from heaven? Or, does it say that a lot of rain started coming down and that the deep springs started bubbling up?
The more sophisticated creationists, realizing the horrible problems involved in flooding all the high mountains, assert that the earth was originally flat and took very little water to flood. That's the position Dr. Hovind has taken. The excess water was afterwards collected into deepening basins which became our present day oceans. At the same time that the ocean basins were magically deepening the mountains were rising.
The first problem encountered is the Bible, itself. Good translations speak of the flood rising high above the earth, of covering all the high mountains (The New Oxford Annotated Bible and others). The Bible knows only of a simple flood which floods the land by special rain and by waters upwelling from the unchecked depths below the earth. (Ancient cosmology imagined a flat earth which rested on top of a primeval ocean, a world covered with a dome [the firmament] which kept vast quantities of water above the firmament from crashing down. To flood the ancient earth the deity only had to open the windows of the firmament and release the checks on the water below the earth [Babinski, 1986].) Where in this flood account do you hear of mountains rising and the surface of the earth being totally dissolved into sediment? There is not one iota of clear, unequivocal Scriptural evidence for such wild speculation! In their desperation, creationists have simply rewritten the Bible!
A second problem involves the thickness of sedimentary rock on the ocean floor as well as missing flood layers. Let us start with Dr. Hovind's assumption that the earth was relatively flat during the flood and that the excess water was drawn off into deepening ocean basins, even as the continental regions rose up. Both areas would have received approximately the same amount of sediment during a worldwide flood which reworked the earth's original outer crust to a great depth. After all, the low hills and flat lands of Dr. Hovind's antediluvian world are not going to provide more than a fraction of the sediment needed. Thus, even if that sediment were not transported, an extremely unlikely possibility given the assumed violence of the flood, the sediments would still be distributed about equally over former ocean and land areas. Right?
Such would be the condition after the sediment first settled out. The excess water, now rushing off the rising continental areas, would wash vast amounts of sediment into the new ocean basins. Thus, today's ocean basins should have a thicker layer of sedimentary rock than the continental areas. In addition, the first flood strata laid down on the new ocean floors should match the first flood strata laid down on today's continental areas, especially in areas adjoining the border between the two zones.
Why is it that the sedimentary rocks are, in fact, much thinner on the ocean floor than in continental regions? Why is it that the sedimentary rocks in the Pacific or Atlantic ocean floors are no older than the Jurassic (or thereabouts)? What happened to the Cambrian, the Ordovician, the Silurian, the Devonian, the Carboniferous, and the Permian layers? Funny, that Noah's flood should deposit all these layers on various continental areas while systematically missing the ocean basins!
A third problem lies in the fact that there is a sharp difference in the
sedimentary strata when you move from a continental area
(including the shelf) to an ocean area. According to the flood model this
boundary area was originally flat and should have collected similar sediments
before one section sank and the other rose. The sedimentary rock strata,
without change in its composition, should simply dip (or drop along a fault) as
it goes from continent to ocean. That is not what's observed!
A fourth problem lies in finding a believable mechanism to make the ocean basin sink in a few weeks(!) so as to make space for the retreating flood waters. The crust may be thin, thinner by proportion than the skin on an apple as Dr. Hovind put it, but the material under it is heavier. Light stuff (like a cork) does not sink into heavier stuff (like water). The reason the ocean basins are lower is because they are made of denser material. The reason the continents are higher is because they are made of lighter material. What forces do creationists have in mind for depressing the basins and moving trillions and trillions of tons of heavy, semi-molten rock out of the way? How are those trillions and trillions of tons of heavy, semi-molten rock to be lifted up in the first place to support a rising ocean basin? Worse, how do creationists propose to move this hot rock in a few weeks at the end of the flood since it moves only a few inches a year? At that rate it can act like a fluid; speed it up and you have material acting like solid rock. As far as I can tell, creationists haven't the foggiest clue as to how this can be done scientifically.
A fifth problem lies in the instant rising of mountains. Just what mechanism do creationists have in mind which can propel a mountain 20,000 feet up in a couple of thousand years and, then, stop on a dime? Today, after great earthquakes, mountains are observed to rise a few feet at most. That is how most non-volcanic mountains actually rise. Are we to believe that the ancient world endured one magnitude 8 earthquake after another, day and night, for centuries, so that the mountains might be lifted up in record time? Of course not. Nobody could build cities of brick under those conditions. It never happened.
A sixth problem lies in the absence of great gorges and canyons perpendicular to the coast. Rivers have cut deep gorges in places, but nothing like what we would expect for the vast quantities of water rapidly draining off continents of soft sediment. Where are these deep scars which Noah's flood would have left? We should have numerous "Grand Canyons" along all the coasts of the world by creationist reckoning. Ironically, the Grand Canyon doesn't count because it contains meandering patterns which could not have been formed by vast quantities of water quickly draining off the continent. Nor would soft sediments support high, vertical walls and pillars.
A good geologist could probably cite many more problems, but I think I've
offered enough. Six strikes and you're out! We have no choice but
to toss out the superficially attractive sinking/rising crust model as an
explanation for Noah's flood. Creationists are stuck with an old
fashioned flood which covered the high mountains, including Mt. Everest and Mt.
Ararat. And, that takes us back to the water source problems mentioned
above with a vengeance. There is no escaping the need
for miracles!
Miracles are the great equalizer. Any and every theory, from that of the native in the Amazon to the views of the ancient Greeks, are equally good as long as they can use miracles. Thus, in the final analysis, the biblical flood story is no better than the tales of Zeus and of the gods of Olympus. We can't teach that in our science classes.
A3. Coal and Oil
The amount of coal and oil existing today greatly exceeds what could have been produced in a few thousand years. It is naive to think that today's coal and oil come from the buried remains of Noah's antediluvian world. Most creationists simply have no idea how much raw material would have been required, especially for oil deposits.
Because coal and oil are important economic resources, geologists have
worked hard to estimate how much of these resources exist. The
creationist writer Morton cites data published by Hunt indicating that the
carbon in the coal alone is 50 times that in the entire present
biosphere!...And the carbon in all oil deposits is 666 times that in the entire
present biosphere! That in oil shales and other sedimentary rocks (which
Morton doesn't mention!) is 40,000 times that in the present biosphere.
And that doesn't count the enormous quantities of carbonates, much in the form
of fossil shells. The Livingstone Limestone in the
Canadian Rockies contains at least 10,000 cubic miles of broken crinoid
plates!(Sonleitner, 1988, file=MOVIE6B.WP) Just how thick did Dr. Hovind say
that antediluvian vegetation was?
In doing your math, be sure to allow plenty of open space for grasslands, so that the buffalo, horses, and numerous other grazers, past and present, have plenty of space for their herds. Be sure to have plenty of deserts or near-deserts for your reptiles. Most of them require a dry environment. You will also need plenty of marshy tundra pasture for your mammoths and other pre-flood, cold-adapted grazers.
A4. Mammoths: Were They Quick-Frozen?
The claim that mammoths were quick-frozen goes back at least several decades as an old Reader's Digest article will testify. It has no merit whatsoever.
To begin with, mammoths were adapted for severely cold weather as their heavy fur, complete with a thick, insulating underwool, and a thick layer of fat attest. Their four-toed feet and smaller size, compared to the European mammoths, was better for marshy tundra pasture. A little extra ice from space, assuming that it could even reach the ground without being vaporized, would hardly have bothered them! Obviously, the Arctic area was cold, though possibly a tad warmer and moist than today, before Dr. Hovind's iceberg-from-space arrived!
Take the frozen Berezovka mammoth, for instance. In its stomach were found arctic plants like conifers, tundra grasses, and sedges. Its flesh was really rather putrefied. "The excavators found the stench of the partially rotted Berezovka mammoth unbearable; even the earth in which it was buried stank." (Weber, 1980, p.15). Ancient predators had a chance to get at the carcass, which proved there was no instantaneous freezing. The unfortunate animal seems to have fallen from a river buff, possibly by getting too close to the edge and causing a slump, and broke many bones. In the muck of the floodplain below his carcass was soon frozen in (Strahler, 1987, p.381).
William R. Farrand, writing in 1961, pointed out that only 39 mammoths had been found with some of their flesh preserved. Out of those only four were found more or less intact, including the Berezovka mammoth. All of them were rotten to some extent and the evidence showed that most were somewhat mutilated by predators prior to freezing. Such things as grasses, sedges, other boreal meadow and tundra plants, a few twigs, cones, and pollen traces from high-boreal and tundra trees are typical of what was found in their stomaches. Evidence indicates that some of these mammoths had died in cave-ins or had drowned. The Mamontova mammoth was probably caught in a bog while grazing the floodplain of the ancient Mamontova River. Another apparently died on a floodplain, possibly falling through river ice, and rotted mostly away before natural burial. The upright nature of many mammoth finds suggest "that they perished when a rapid thaw melted the permafrost and turned the tundra into a huge bog." (Chorlton, 1984, p.70).
A more modern find, that of a calf dated at about 40,000 years, was retrieved whole in 1977 from a creek bed in eastern Siberia. Apparently it had fallen through a thin layer of frozen turf into a channel cut by melting water. Evidence, sorry to say, indicates that the animal starved to death. The hole was soon filled in and the mammoth was preserved for thousands of years by the cold and by a high tannic acid content from decayed vegetation. Eventually a shifting channel of a river exposed the mammoth. (Chorlton, 1984, p.71)
Getting bogged down in a marsh, falling into "riparian" gullies, getting mired in sticky mudflows, falling through the thin ice of a lake, and getting caught in river bank cave-ins of river ice are some of the hazards mammoths would face. Judging by what they were eating, it appears that the time of death was usually late summer or early fall, precisely the time when melting and solifluction would have been at a maximum and travel most dangerous. Most of their remains are associated with river valleys and fluviatile and terrestrial sediment. There is no direct evidence that any mammoth simply froze to death (Farrand, 1961).
All of this evidence points to a routine scenario of life and death.
It is interesting to note that only the mammoths and wooly rhinoceri are found frozen in Siberia (Weber, 1980, pp.15-16). If a sudden disaster overwhelmed the entire area, don't you think that we would find a whole range of preserved animals?
Dr. Hovind, I think that you have been had by that fellow on the North Slope. I doubt very much that he choked down a piece of putrid mammoth meat! It's probably a favorite tall-timber tale of the North.
A5. A Couple of Ice Age Problems
Dr. Hovind believes that there was only one ice age which began sometime after Noah's flood ended, that being around 4300 years ago by his reckoning. Thus, the world moved from a warm, tropical climate to an ice age only a few thousand years ago. There are fatal problems with that view.
First, we now know that there were at least 7 ice eras lasting on the average some 50 million years apiece. Each ice era was, itself, composed of numerous ice epochs which lasted about two or three million years. They, in turn, were composed of ice-age cycles which often lasted around 100,000 years. Thus, there have been numerous fluctuations between warm and cold climates. (Chorlton, 1984, pp.20-21). The more recent advances and retreats of the glaciers have resulted in sea level changes which, in turn, have affected the heights of coral reefs, the oxygen isotope ratios in sea floor sediments, and shorelines around the world. Several levels of terraces were carved in the world's shorelines by recent fluctuations in the ocean level, each lasting many thousands of years. I don't have the space to explore this issue, but numerous facts fit together to document the existence of many "ice ages." Regarding one ancient ice era, we have a remarkable coming together of different facts:
The theory of continental drift led to one of the most remarkable discoveries in ice age studies. During the 1960s, scientists analyzed the magnetic orientation of rocks from many parts of the world and concluded that North Africa had been located over the South Pole during the Ordovician period, about 450 million years ago. If they were correct, there should be traces of ancient glaciation in the Sahara. At about the same time, French petroleum geologists working in southern Algeria stumbled on a series of giant grooves that appeared to have been cut into the underlying sandstone by glaciers. The geologists alerted the scientific world and assembled an international team to examine the evidence. The team saw unmistakable signs of an ice age: scars created by the friction of pebbles incorporated into the base of glaciers; erratic rocks that had been transported from sources hundreds of miles distant; and formations of sand typical of glacial outwash streams.(Chorlton, 1984, p.141)
In some places in the Sahara the grooves made by glaciers can be traced for hundreds of miles (Chorlton, 1984, p.144). How do creationists explain glaciers in the Sahara?
Second, we have a problem with permafrost. Chorlton informs us that the building up of a 100-foot deep layer of permafrost takes thousands of years of freezing weather to accomplish. The bad news for creationists is this:
About 20 per cent of the world's land area remains permanently frozen -- in some cases to depths of almost a mile. (Chorlton, 1984, p.30)
Thus, we have direct evidence that the frozen parts of our world have been frozen a lot longer than a few thousand years! Try a few million years! (Forget about super-cold snowballs crashing into the Earth and instantly freezing thousands of feet of earth. They would have vaporized upon impact.)
A6. The Distance to Supernova SN1987A and the Speed of Light
When supernova SN1987A exploded, its light soon struck a ring of gas some distance from the star and illuminated it. As viewed from Earth, the ring appeared around the supernova about a year after it exploded. Its angular size combined with the time it took for the ring to be illuminated after SN1987A was first observed allows a direct, trigonometric calculation of the distance to that supernova with an error of less than 5%.
Oddly enough, if we use the older Newtonian physics (which most creationists favor because it allows them to play around with the speed of light) we find that a change in the speed of light does not affect our calculations of the distance to SN1987A! Gordon Davisson pointed out that interesting tidbit.
[Unreproducable diagram removed]
The distance is based on triangulation. The line from Earth to the supernova is one side of the triangle and the line from Earth to the edge of the ring is another leg. The third leg of this right triangle is the relatively short distance from the supernova to the edge of its ring. Since the ring lit up about a year after the supernova exploded, that means that a beam of light coming directly from the supernova reached us a year before the beam of light which was detoured via the ring. Let us assume that the distance of the ring from the supernova is really 1 unit and that light presently travels 1 unit per year. If there were no change in the speed of light then the third leg of the triangle would be 1 unit in length, thus allowing the calculation of the distance by pure trigonometry. On the other hand, if the two light beams were originally traveling, say, three units per year, the second beam would initially lag 1/3 of a year behind the first as that's how long it would take to do the ring detour. However, the distance that the second beam lags behind the first beam is the same as before. As both beams were traveling the same speed, the second beam fell behind the first by the length of the detour. Thus, by measuring the distance that the second beam lags behind the first, a distance which will not change when both light beams slow down together, we get the true distance from the supernova to its ring. We get the same distance no matter what we use for the initial and final speeds of the light beams.
Thus, supernova SN1987A is about 170,000 light-years from us (i.e. 997,800,000,000,000,000 miles) whether or not the speed of light has slowed down.
Still, the creationist has one ace remaining. Had the speed of light slowed down, as often imagined by creationists who have not advanced beyond Newtonian physics, the distance of SN1987A would still be 170,000 light-years as indicated above. However, the time that it would take for the light to reach us need not be anywhere near 170,000 years. One might urge that if the speed of light changed then so would the decay rates of cobalt-56 and cobalt-57, and since their decay rates have been observed in SN1987A and appear normal that should settle it. Light hasn't slowed down. Unfortunately, that argument is based on the assumption that we are observing the correct decay rates. In fact, if the speed of light had slowed down we would be seeing a slow motion replay of reality. The farther away objects are the greater the effect. The actual decay rates of the cobalt from SN1987A would be much faster than what we observed.
To this one might say, "Get an education!" Relativity is central to modern science and the speed of light is a fundamental constant. Light can't go faster than about 186,000 miles a second and that's that. One could then recite volumes of laboratory studies, experiments, and observations to impress the reader with the power and reliability of special relativity. However, that approach might seem rather dogmatic to someone lacking a good education in the sciences. Thus, I will pretend that light once traveled much faster than today (as might be imagined in Newtonian physics) and show that it still won't work.
Our first argument is based on a straightforward observation of pulsars. Pulsars put out flashes at such precise intervals and clarity that only the rotation of a small body can account for it (Chaisson and McMillan, 1993, p.498). Indeed, the more precise pulsars keep much better time than even the atomic clocks on Earth! In the mid-1980s a new class of pulsars, called millisecond pulsars, were discovered which were rotating hundreds of times each second! When a pulsar, which is a neutron star smaller than Manhattan Island with a weight problem (about as heavy as our sun), spins that fast it is pretty close to flying apart. Thus, in observing these millisecond pulsars, we are not seeing a slow motion replay as that would imply an actual spin rate which would have destroyed those pulsars. We couldn't observe them spinning that fast if light was slowing down. Consequently, we can dispense with the claim that the light coming from SN1987A might have slowed down. Therefore, the decay rates observed for cobalt-56 and cobalt-57 were the actual decay rates.
A more quantitative argument can also be advanced. Suppose that light is slowing down according to some exponential decay curve. An exponential decay curve is one of Mother Nature's favorites. It describes radioactive decay and a host of other observations. If the speed of light were really slowing down then an exponential decay curve would be a reasonable place to start our investigation. Later, we will be able to draw some general conclusions which apply to almost any curve, including those favored by creationist Barry Setterfield.
We want the light in our model to start fast enough so that the most distant
objects in the universe, say 10 billion light-years away, will be visible
today. That is, the light must travel 10 billion light-years in the 6000 years
which creationists allow for the Earth's age. (A light-year is the
distance a beam of light, traveling at 186,000 miles per second, covers in one
year.) Furthermore, the speed of light must decay at a rate which will
reduce it to its present value after 6000 years. Upon applying these
constraints to all possible exponential decay curves, and after doing a little
calculus, we wind up with two non-linear
equations in two variables. After solving those equations by computer, we
get the following functions for velocity and distance. The first function
gives the velocity of light (light-years per year) t years after creation
(t=0). The second function gives the distance (light-years) that the
first beams of light have traveled since creation (since t=0).
V(t) = V0 e-Kt
S(t) = 1010(1 - e-Kt)
V0 =
28,615,783 (The initial velocity for light)
K =
0.00286158 (the decay rate parameter)
With these equations in hand it can be shown that if light is slowing down, equal time intervals in distant space will be seen on Earth as unequal intervals of time. That's our test. But, where can we find a natural, reliable clock in distant space with which to do the test?
As it turns out, Mother Nature has supplied some of the best clocks around. They are the pulsars. Pulsars keep time like the Earth does, by rotating smoothly, only they do it much better because they are much smaller and vastly heavier. The heavier a spinning top is the less any outside forces can affect it. Many pulsars rotate hundreds of times per second! And they keep incredibly precise time. Thus, we can observe how long it takes a pulsar to make 100 rotations and compare that figure to another observation five years later. Thus, we can put the above creationist model to the test.
Let's start by considering a pulsar which is 170,000 light-years away, which would be as far away as SN1987A. Certainly, we can see pulsars at that distance easily enough. In our creationist model, due to the initial high velocity of light, the light now arriving from our pulsar (light beam A) took about 2149.7 years to reach Earth. At the time light beam A left the pulsar it was going 487.4686 times the speed of light. The next day (24 hours after light beam A left the pulsar) light beam B leaves; it leaves at 487.4648 times the speed of light. As you can see, the velocity of light has already decayed a small amount. (I shall reserve the expression "speed of light" for the true speed of light which is about 186,000 miles per second.) Allowing for the continuing decay in velocity, we can calculate that light beam A is 1.336957 light-years ahead of light beam B. That lead distance is not going to change since both light beams will slow down together as the velocity of light decays.
When light beam A reaches the Earth, and light is now going its normal speed, that lead distance translates into 1.336957 years. Thus, the one-day interval on our pulsar, the actual time between the departures of light beams A and B, wrongly appears to us as more than a year! Upon looking at our pulsar, which is 170,000 light-years away, we are not only seeing 2149.7 years into the past but are seeing things occur 488.3 times more slowly than they really are!
Exactly 5 years after light beam A left the pulsar, light beam Y departs. It is traveling at 480.5436 times the speed of light. Twenty-four hours after its departure light beam Z leaves the pulsar. It is traveling at 480.5398 times the speed of light. Making due allowances for the continual slowing down of the light, we can calculate that light beam Y has a lead in distance over light beam Z of 1.318767 light-years. Once again, when light beam Y reached Earth, when the velocity of light had become frozen at its present value, that distance translates into years. Thus, a day on the pulsar, the one defined by light beams Y and Z, appears in slow motion to us. We see things happening 481.7 times slower than the rate at which they actually occurred.
Therefore, if the above creationist model is correct, we should see a difference in time for the above two identical intervals, a difference which amounts to about 1.3%. Of course, the above calculations could be redone with much shorter intervals without affecting the 1.3% figure, being that the perceived slowdown is essentially the same for the smaller intervals within one day. As a result, an astronomer need only measure the spin of a number of pulsars over a few years to get definitive results. Pulsars keep such accurate time that a 1.3% difference would stand out like a giant redwood in a Kansas wheat field -- even after hundreds of years!
So, what are the results of this definitive test? Many pulsars have been observed which show nothing remotely close to a 1% change in their rotation rates over a five year period. Although we have technically disproved only the above model, we have, nevertheless, thrown a monkey wrench into the machinery for decaying light-speed. Every such scenario must have the slow motion effect described above. Furthermore, the slow motion effect is directly related to how fast the light is moving. If a model requires light in the past to move one hundred times faster than observed today, then, at least for some interval of time measured in that part of space, we would observe things moving one hundred times as slow.
That's the fatal point which no choice of curve can wholly remedy. The creationist model, in order to be useful, must start with a high velocity for light so that objects ten billion light-years away can be seen in a universe a mere 6000 years old. Consequently, such a universe must appear, in general, to be slowing down more and more the further we look into the depths of space. And the further we look, in general, the more dramatic the perceived slowdown should be.
It might seem that if we started out with a fantastically high speed for light which decayed precipitously we could reduce the problems. Certainly, that would produce a light curve with near-normal velocities for most of the years between t=0 and t=6000. However, the effect would be to move the departure time of light beam A (in the above model) closer to the creation time and to jack up its speed. Thus, the slow motion factor would be even worse than the model we just examined! On the her extreme, by abandoning an exponential decay curve, one can get the initial velocity down to about 1.6 million light-years per year. But alas! The speed of light beam A is now 1.6 million light-years per year! We've gone from the frying pan into the fire.
The problem, from a graphical point of view, is that we have a certain amount of obligatory area under the velocity-time curve which must be distributed in some way. That area represents the 10 billion light-years of space which our initial light beams must cross in 6000 years. No matter where you put that area, now matter how you poke or shape it, you have a problem.
The big question, then, is whether our general observations of the universe fit such models. Do we, for example, observe pulsars spinning slower and slower the further away they are? Do the rotation of galaxies, as determined from the Doppler effect, grind to a near halt in the more remote regions of space? Do dust clouds seem to collapse more slowly the farther away they are? Do the closer novas and supernovas explode, on the whole, more quickly than the more remote ones? Do galaxies appear to be traveling any slower the farther away they are? The answer is no.
The alternative, if these light-decay models are to be salvaged, is that the more distant the object the faster it is moving. Thus, we would have the illusion of seeing normal rates prevail everywhere, the slow motion factor being cancelled by objects which are moving, in truth, faster and faster the further we look into the depths of space. However, there is a limit to how fast some things can go. Millisecond pulsars are already close to flying apart. Their spin rates are no illusion! The distant galaxies, if they were really rotating millions of times faster a few thousand years ago, would have flown apart. We are led into absurdity. There is no reason, for example, for believing that the distance of a gas cloud from us dictates how fast it will collapse! We have no reason to believe that distant galaxies once traveled millions of times faster than their observed rates. Had they done so, they would surely have broken out of the great clusters of galaxies which are bound by gravity. Their distribution today would have been more or less random.
Light, itself, would have behaved differently at different speeds. The higher the speed the more blue-shifted, the more energetic it would be. Certain wavelengths of light, for example, have the power to penetrate the galactic dust, thus allowing us to see events going on in the core of our galaxy. If the wavelength of such light was merely an illusion produced by the slow motion effect, if those light waves actually existed at shorter frequencies back then, they would have been absorbed or scattered differently by the galactic dust. That is to say, astronomers would not see a logical correspondence between the wavelengths they observe and their known properties. In the above example, we might not see the galactic core at all by using the preferred wavelength for dust penetration! Needless to say, astronomers don't have that problem.
Our conclusion, then, is that any model which would drive us to such views is bankrupt. We can forget about those claims that light traveled much faster in the past.
Once it's clear that the light-speed decay models are bankrupt, not only with respect to modern science but even within Newtonian physics, then there is only one reasonable conclusion. The light coming from distant stars and galaxies have not only traveled immense distances but have spanned ages as well. In particular, the fact that supernova SN1987A is around 170,000 light-years distant means that we are seeing an event which is around 170,000 years old.
A few creationists have argued that the universe really isn't that big. In particular, Slusher, working for the Institute for Creation Research, argued in 1980 that the universe is based on a Riemannian space which allowed no point to be more than 15.71 light-years away. The great distances observed would be an illusion based on mistaking the Riemannian space for Euclidean space.
This model, however, requires that the distance to supernova SN1987A be measured at less than 15.71 light-years in contradiction to the 170,000 light-years actually measured. Unexploded versions of SN1987A would be seen at the same time, one of them being at a perceived distance of 170,000 light-years! A few decades later, the light from the explosion would circle around again, thus causing us to see SN1987A explode all over again! This is madness, not science! See Strahler (1987, pp.114-116) for a thorough debunking of this Riemannian space nonsense. (George Friedrich Bernhard Riemann, 1826-1866, was a German mathematician whose work on curved space proved helpful to Einstein, but not with the absurd radius of curvature assigned by Slusher!)
Yet another idea, advanced by Henry Morris and others, is that star light was created in situ during the Genesis creation week. However, we have now left the realm of science for theology. There is no scientific way to separate star light from its origin in a star. Not only is it theology, but it's bad theology. God creates a universe which forces him to be a deceiver! It goes beyond the need for any reasonable appearance of age as a result of functionality. There is no need, for example, to see supernovae explode before their time. An observer would ultimately see the supernova leap back together and explode all over again when the light from the real explosion finally arrived! It makes God out to be an idiot.
When the smoke blown about finally drifts away and the debate hall falls silent, the young-earth creationist finds himself back on square one. He is looking at stars many millions of light-years away, stars putting out light which takes many millions of years to reach us! Attempts to speed up the velocity of light or to shrink down the universe have come to naught. What does remain is the old age of our universe.
I will round out this work with some miscellaneous arguments which, with one
exception, are from Dr. Hovind's notebook.
Dr. Hovind (A): If the universe is not billions of years old, then we need not bother with the other arguments supporting evolution.
A. The presently accepted history of evolution on Earth would be in trouble if the universe were not billions of years old. Significant evolution, however, can occur in as little as 10 million years. Thus, even if complex life were created on Earth a mere 10 million years ago that would not, in itself, rule out significant biological evolution!
Just the other day Jeffrey Bada and Stanley Miller, both highly respected scientists, presented a new theory of the origin of life to the scientific community. It answers many of the problems plaguing earlier models. Regarding how long it might take for life to evolve, Stanley Miller had this to say:
"We have been adding up the time it might take for life to develop," Miller said. "The whole process could take place in 10 million years or less." (Los Angeles Times, February 21, 1994, A1,A16)
Forget about evolution requiring billions and billions of years to evolve life! It is now believed that life may have evolved a number of times on the early Earth, only to be wiped out by gigantic asteroid impacts.
Dr. Hovind (B): Modern textbooks, in effect, tell us that FROGS+TIME = PRINCE.
B. Wrong! FROGS + TIME does not equal people! Historically speaking, certain early amphibians gave rise to all of the higher life forms today, including man. Frogs are a modern day branch tip on the evolutionary tree, not a section of a limb.
Secondly, if the clock were rewound, humanity would not likely evolve again. Primitive life forms + time MAY equal something complex if the environment is right and if chance factors work for the best.
Dr. Hovind (C): How could many of the marvelous structures evolve by chance?
C. Things don't evolve by chance alone! Natural selection, the key to evolution, is not a random chance process. The environment applies very specific pressures. In that way, Mother Nature selects for certain characteristics. In a desert, for example, certain strategies for plant survival are favored while others are selected against. Since major environments often last a long time, their effect on evolving life is not random. In the desert, plants with better and better adaptations for reproducing despite the heat and lack of water have the edge.
Mutations may be thought of as random, but mutations are not the same thing as evolution. They merely enrich the gene pool whose diversity natural selection acts upon.
General (D): Evolution is merely a theory.
D. Evolution (descent of life with modification) is a fact of life! That is to say, it may be deduced from the facts with near certainty. The fact of evolution is debated in the scientific community about as often as the roundness of the Earth! Both issues have been settled scientifically long ago. If you don't believe me, scan the world's leading scientific journals, such as Nature or Science, and tell me how many articles in the last 24 issues challenge the fact of evolution. Legitimate scientific disagreement is not over descent with modification, but rather over how best to explain descent with modification. Such explanations constitute the theories of evolution. It is there we find the legitimate scientific debate which creationists are so fond of quoting, often out of context.
In the United States the chief opposition to the fact of evolution comes from a noisy, minority religious crusade cloaked in scientific jargon, whose ultimate goal is to enforce the teaching of fundamentalist doctrine in our schools.
Dr. Hovind (E): Evolution is a religion, not part of science.
E. Evolution does not postulate a creator. It offers no guide to moral living. It has neither a temple of worship nor a priesthood. It contains no sacred dogma. Dr. Hovind, how in the world do you turn it into a religion?
"Scientific creationism" has been proven in a court of law to be nothing more than a thinly veiled religion. U.S. District Court Judge William R. Overton in 1982 ruled unconstitutional an Arkansas law which tried to sneak Genesis into the schools under the guise of science. Let me quote Ronald Ecker to sum up a few of Judge Overton's points.
In finding for the plaintiffs, Overton, drawing heavily from the experts' courtroom testimony, gave no quarter to the creationist defense. "Evolution is the cornerstone of modern biology," he wrote, and any student deprived of instruction "as to the prevailing scientific thought" on such topics as the age of the earth, geology, and relationships among living things "will be deprived of a significant part of science education." Science, Overton said, is defined as that which is "accepted by the scientific community"; science is "what scientists do," and "creation science" as defined in Act 590 "is simply not science." ... The creationists' two-model approach is "a contrived dualism which has no scientific factual basis or legitimate educational purpose." (Ecker, 1990, pp.137-138)
Evolution meets all the criteria of a good science; scientific creationism fails as science. In the U. S. Supreme Court case of Edwards v. Aguillard a remarkable friend-of-court brief was submitted by 71 Nobel laureates, seventeen state academies of science, and seven other scientific organizations which exposed "scientific creationism" as a fraud. I know of no other document of belief supported by so many Nobel prizewinners!
Let's compare real science to "scientific" creationism.
1. Real scientists, as did Darwin, usually spend some time pointing out the possible weaknesses they see in their theories. Creationists usually minimize or ignore the weaknesses in their theories unless the cat is out of the bag.
2. Real scientists publish scientific literature, which can be very unorthodox, in refereed journals. Creationists, apparently having nothing much to say to the scientific community, write for the layman. They have found it necessary to publish their ideas in special "creationist journals" because none of the hundreds of legitimate scientific journals find their work acceptable.
3. Real scientists are quick to criticize their colleagues if they suspect an error. (Remember the cold fusion flap?) Creationists have a fortress mentality, and they are quick to circle their wagons. To admit error is considered bad form among creationists, and most of them must literally be smoked out before admitting any errors whatsoever.
4. Real scientists are quick to test promising ideas (however unorthodox) and those which don't pan out quickly disappear from the literature. Creationist arguments having serious errors, including arguments based solely on obsolete data, circulate indefinitely in the creationist literature.
5. Real scientists are often involved in meaningful laboratory and field work. Creationists spend most of their time combing through books and technical journals for quotes with which to snipe at evolution. When they're not doing that they can usually be found out on the stump drumming up support among the uneducated public.
6. Real scientists base their theories on the available evidence. Creationists take their science straight from the Bible. Many creationist leaders have publically stated, often in print, that any evidence at variance with the Bible should be rejected out of hand.
7. No self-respecting scientist would ever think of signing an oath of allegiance to Darwinism as a condition for employment. Many creationist societies actually require a "loyalty oath" which is tantamount to an admission that their minds are closed!
8. Real scientists gather facts for the purpose of testing their ideas. Creationists gather facts to prop up their preconceived ideas.
9. All good scientists admit that they might be wrong, at least in principle, that absolute certainty is not part of science. Except for trivial details, creationists cannot conceive of the possibility that they are in error as that would take down their concept of biblical inerrancy.
10. Not one of the great universities, where real science is done and advanced, takes creationism seriously. Those few "universities" where creationism is featured have either failed to get full accreditation or have done so only through the pulling of political strings. What discoveries have they made? Name their Nobel laureates!
11. Scientists build upon numerous findings accumulated over the years, and only then are great revolutionary breakthroughs achieved. Creationists fancy that they are in the process of overthrowing biology, geology, astronomy, anthropology, linguistics, paleontology, archaeology, oceanography, cosmology, physics, and numerous other branches of science. Some creationists (the flat-earth societies) would add the "grease-ball" theory of round-earth geography to that list.
Dr. Hovind (F): Let's imagine we are exploring an old gold mine. Suppose we find a Casio Databank watch half buried in the mud and, upon closer inspection, still keeping good time. Perhaps the watch is a 1000 years old. No, this particular entrance to the mine was dug 150 years ago. Maybe, then, it is 150 years old. No, the model was marketed only 12 years ago. Could it have been there 10 years? No, the batteries are only good for 5 years.
We might not be able to pin down the precise age of that watch, but each of the above arguments establishes a maximum age. Any estimates giving an older age than 5 years may be ignored as irrelevant. If we found a 30-year-old shoe near the watch that would not override our 5 year maximum estimate. The minimum date takes precedence. The same logic can be applied to finding the age of the Earth. If several factors limit the age of the Earth to within the last few thousand years, the Earth cannot be older than that! Even if a few indicators seem to show a greater age for the Earth, it only takes ONE proof of a young Earth to prove the Earth is young. Below is a list of arguments that limit the age of the universe and Earth to within the last few thousand years.
F. If you were trying to date some mountain range, then the uranium-lead age of a certain layer of rock which made up part of that mountain would yield, at most, a maximum age in accordance to the above analogy. Thus, if we found another layer of rock in that mountain which, by the potassium-argon method, yielded half the previous age, then the younger age would stand.
The watch analogy is wrong because creationists are trying to date the entire Earth, not some fixture on it! They are trying to date the mine, not the watch! Each of the figures, then, would give a minimum date. The largest reliable figure would take precedence. Therefore, we need only one good argument yielding an old age for the Earth!
Dr. Hovind (G): Each of these evidences of a young Earth is described in great detail in the books referred to at the end of each line.
G. The book's authors read like a Who's Who in the creationist world! I guess it takes a creationist to explain these things, because I sure don't know any reputable scientists who would accept these young-Earth arguments! By now you should have some inkling as to why respectable scientists reject such claims.
Dr. Hovind (H): Those who believe the earth is billions of years old will typically try to discredit one of the above arguments and then mistakenly think that they have successfully proven the entire list wrong.
H. I certainly don't know of anyone who would do that!
Dr. Hovind (I): The burden of proof is on the evolutionists if they expect all taxpayers to fund the teaching of their religion in the school system.
I. The topics of evolution (descent of life with modification) and the old age of the Earth are not scientific controversies! If you look at the last 50 issues of any of the world's leading scientific journals, such as Nature or Science, you will not find any debates in progress about the fact of evolution or the old age of the Earth! You might find a debate over the explanation of those facts, or of specific dates or rates, but never over the facts themselves. If you look into our best universities, you will not find any scientific debates in progress on those subjects. Standard reference works, such as the Encyclopaedia Britannica, treat them as facts. They are regarded as fact by knowledgeable people who are not fettered with extreme religious prejudice.
We taxpayers owe it to our children to expose them to the best that science offers. Of course, philosophical speculation should be clearly labeled as such. On that point I would agree with Dr. Hovind. Jumping from the facts of evolution to a non-theistic universe is not a proper conclusion of science. Science does not speculate on the supernatural.
The fact that some religious groups aren't living in the real world should not be allowed to dumb down our public schools. If you want to believe that the Earth is 6000 years old that's your business. If you make it your religion and teach it to your children, that's your error and their injury. If you make it your crusade to force it into the science classroom, that's your Waterloo!
Try to understand. Suppose that flat-Earthism became very popular and books appeared defending the flat-Earth hypothesis. Such parents, of course, would be very unhappy to find that the public schools were teaching that the Earth is round. Some of those parents would move their children into private schools which teach flat-Earth theory. Others would campaign against the "brainwashing" their children were getting in the public schools. Perhaps they would demand equal time for flat-Earth views. How would you handle that potato?
It would be irresponsible, of course, to include the flat-Earth view in our geography classes. Time spent on discussing the evidence for a flat-Earth is time robbed from serious learning. As it is, there are many things that should be covered in a geography class that get left out for lack of time. Nor would we want to leave the impressionable student with the idea that the flat-Earth hypothesis is a serious scientific alternative.
I think you will agree with me that the teaching of the round-Earth hypothesis should not depend on popularity polls. I think that you would also agree that the flat-Earth hypothesis should not be injected into the geography classroom under the premises that it would be fair to present all sides of the issue. The point, of course, is that the flat-Earth hypothesis is not a valid "side" of geography. We, as taxpayers, would expect our public schools to teach serious geography so as to best prepare our kids for the future. Such a decision, of course, will make the flat-Earth folks very unhappy, and they might even vote you out of office, but there is no other responsible choice.
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