The Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference on Creationism (2018)

Newton, Boyle, Faraday and Maxwell are remembered for their scientific contributions to the neglect of valuing their Christian worldview, which guided their pursuit of knowing the Creator and His creation. More well-known writings connecting science to the works of the Creator come from authors such as John Ray and William Paley. Although they did not necessarily hold to a recent creation, they developed arguments from creation to demonstrate that our universe is consistent with the volitional, creative work of an omnipotent, personal creator. The modern young earth creation movement is often linked to the publication of The Genesis Flood by Whitcomb and Morris. Although previous writings promoted evidence for flood geology, such as The New Geology by George McCready Price, The Genesis Flood provided both biblical justification from a theologian and physical justification from a civil engineer with a specialty in hydraulics. Writings by Frank Marsh were also influential in the creation community. His book Fundamental Biology coined the term baramin , a reference to the created kinds. In 1963 the Creation ResearchAdvisory Committee was organized and became the predecessor to the Creation Research Society (CRS). In the early years, articles in the CRS Quarterly addressed a variety of issues. Of those that involve numerical data and modeling, topics include radioactive dating, decay of the earth’s magnetic field, speed of light, classical electrodynamics, thermodynamics of the vapor canopy, a rapid post-flood ice age, sea floor sediments, ice cores, cosmology models and the improbability of biochemical evolution. Today, some of these topics continue to reverberate through creationist journals such as Answers in Genesis’ (AIG) Answers Research Journal and Creation Ministries International’s (CMI) Journal of Creation . During the 1980’s the Institute for Creation Research (ICR) explored the validity of a collapsing vapor canopy supplying the precipitation necessary for 40 days and nights of rain at the beginning of the flood. Vardiman and Bousselot (1998) concluded that water vapor providing more than one meter of precipitable water would result in temperatures at the earth’s surface that are unsuitable for life unless the earth’s albedo were modified. At the same time creationists were considering the breakup of the fountains of the deep as the primary source of flood waters. Catastrophic Plate Tectonics (CPT) became a dominant model by proposing runaway plate subduction at the beginning of the flood (Wise et al. 1994). This model had broad appeal because it unified explanations for geological features, torrential precipitation at the beginning of the flood due to an enhanced hydrologic cycle and oscillating geomagnetic fields as plate subduction impinged on the earth’s outer core (Humphreys, 1990). CPT moved from a conceptual model to an operational hypothesis as Baumgardner employed a computational geo-fluid model to simulate this scenario (Baumgardner, 1994). Advancements in this model continue today as better validated material properties of the mantel are incorporated into the geo-fluid model (Sherburn, Jesse, John Baumgardner and Mark Horstemeyer, 2013). Another area of creation research that makes extensive use of physical models and analysis of numerical data is the development of the ice age after the Genesis flood. Although some still look to the Flood to explain the existence of erratic boulders, fjords, moraines and rock striations; many creationists believe a post- flood ice age best explains this evidence (Oard, 1990). Oard (1979) proposed a single rapid ice age after the Flood and used calculations to propose the need for ocean temperatures in the range of 30 ˚C. Spelman (1996) and Vardiman (1998) explored the validity of this scenario using the National Center for Atmospheric Research’s (NCAR) Community Climate Model 1 (CCM1). Additional work in this area was done by Gollmer (2013) using a global atmospheric circulation model with dynamic warm oceans. Vardiman (2003) and Vardiman and Brewer (2010a, b, c) moved from a global model to a regional atmospheric model to study the effects of warm oceans on hurricane intensification. In tandem with climate model simulations, numerical work related to the ice age continues in several forms. If the Quarternary ice ages are post-flood phenomena, there is a need to evaluate data collected from ice sheets and sea floor sediments. Vardiman (1993) and Vardiman (1996) addressed ice cores and sea floor sediments respectively by assuming non-uniform deposition rates rather than rates based on current measurements, which are much smaller than those expected immediately after the flood. Critiques of Vardiman’s work come predominantly from those who believe that ice age cycles are driven by the earth’s orbital distance from the sun as proposed by J.A. Adhemar and James Croll, and refined by Milankovitch (Hays, Imbrie and Shackleton, 1976). Evaluating the seminal work on the validation of Milankovitch cycles, Hebert (2016a, 2016b, 2016c) performs a reanalysis of the ice cores to demonstrate that the presence of these cycles are not statistically significant. Horstemeyer and Gullett (2003) studied the mechanical issues related to a rapid ice age using finite element analysis (FEA). A follow up study by Sherburn, Horstemeyer and Solanki (2018) modeled glacial surging. In 1997 an eight year project was initiated to evaluate dating using radiometric techniques. The Radioisotopes and the Age of The Earth (RATE) project, sponsored by the ICR and CRS, resulted in two extensive volumes (Vardiman et al, 2000, 2005). A limited executive summary of the work is as follows: 1) there is evidence for large amounts of radioactive decay, 2) discordance exists in dating techniques, 3) measureable anomalous carbon-14 in diamond and coal should not exist if vast ages are assumed and 4) helium in zircon’s are at a concentration consistent with a young earth. Therefore, there must have been accelerated radioactive decay in the past. This summary obscures the amount of work invested in this research and the role that assumptions and models had on the interpretation of the data. Given the success of RATE Vardiman (2005) discussed “What Comes After RATE?” Of the projects listed many had a computational component to the research. GENE studied genetic information with regard to its origin and its maintenance. Part of this research resulted in a population genetics model called Mendel’s Accountant, which concluded that “genetic deterioration is an inevitable outcome of the processes of mutation and natural selection” (Baumgardner et al, 2008, p. 98). FAST explored sedimentary layers and the possibility of building them up through rapid processes. Prabhu, Horstemeyer and Brewer (2008) and Baumgardner (2013) modeled ocean circulation velocities during the flood and considered erosional and deposition effects to account Gollmer ◀ Man, machine and creation science ▶ 2018 ICC 105