heller@shell.UUCP (Don Heller) (12/14/84)
[Let's start from the beginning, shall we?] Ray Miller's pamphlet #3, The Geologic Column, is so full of incorrect statements and misrepresentations that it boggles the mind. Let's take it one step at a time. > The history of the earth can be found in its rocks. Not so. *Some* of the history of the earth can be found in its rocks. There are gaps in the record, from erosion and long periods of non- deposition primarily. Even when there is a record, it may not be what it appears. That is, history is as much an interpretation of the facts as the facts themselves. Take petroleum for example, a subject dear to our hearts in the oil industry. Suppose I give you a rock sample that contains petroleum. If you want to understand that rock (i.e, find much more of it) you must determine where the petroleum came from, how it got to where it was found, where the rest of it went, and how much it stands in relation to other similar rocks. There is a lot of room for interpretation, because we don't know all the facts. As more facts become available, a good interpreter, historian or scientist must be prepared to change the interpretation of the facts. There is no one single history of the earth, there are many, and we use the one which best fits the facts. There is general agreement among geologists con- cerning that history; there *is* disagreement about the details and the relative importance of processes. That general agreement is that the earth is old, its surface moves and changes shape, the internal heat and forces of the earth drive the movement, the external heat of the sun, atmosphere and oceans affect life on the surface, and that life affects and is recorded in the surface. > Lying upon the primeval crystalline foundation, the local geologic > columns are comprised mainly of water deposited sedimentary rocks. Not so. I think Miller wants to imply that water deposition was the only process that affected the rocks. It's not that easy. Water deposition could be a river, lagoon or lake, shallow ocean, deep ocean. Wind, faulting (earthquakes) and volcanos all are driving forces of sedimentary material. > What do these rocks reveal about the subject of origins? Nothing. After all, sedimentary rocks are not original. The material had to come from somewhere else. What the rocks suggest is their history since deposition. Unlike religion, nothing in science is revealed. > With a few exceptions on both sides, most evolutionists believe > in the concept of uniformitarianism, while most creationists believe > in the concept of catastrophism. Not so, at least not as a blanket unqualified statement with no definition of uniformitarianism. There has been a big change in that definition since the concept was first proposed. Uniformitarianism works on several levels. First, the physical laws in force today are taken to have been in force in the past. Second, the environment of today *was* taken to be that of the past; this is now a discarded theory. The earth's surface environment has been changed by life on the surface, among other processes. In addition, the relative importance of local catastrophic events is now recognized. Please note the word local. Not universal. Here's a quote from *The Nature of the Stratigraphical Record*, by Derek Ager, so ably misinterpreted by Miller in #3. Several very eminent living palaeontologists frequently emphasize the abruptness of some of the major changes that have occured, and seek for an external cause. This is a heady wine and has intox- icated palaeontologists since the days when they could blame it all on Noah's flood. In fact, books are still being published by the lunatic fringe with the same explanation. In case this book should be read by some fundamentalist searching for straws to prop up his prejudices, let me state categorically that all my experience (such as it is) has led me to an unqualified acceptance of evolution by natural selection as a sufficient explanation for what I have seen in the fossil record. I find divine creation, or several such crea- tions, a completely unnecessary hypothesis. Nevertheless this is not to deny there are some very curious features about the fossil record. (p. 20). Later on, Ager discusses a chalk formation in southern England. Within the [chalk] sludge there is a clear black horizon, only an inch or so thick, which has now been recognized all over southern Britain. The black coloration is due to charcoal fragments from burnt wood. In fact, at one stage in this study our thoughts ran on catastrophies of a biblical kind and we pictured half-seriously a universal conflagration to account for the black band. [footnote: This remark in the first edition involved me in a long correspondence with Californian fundamentalists, who welcomed a universal conflagration. I sometimes wish that people wouldn't take me so seriously!] (p. 41). Well, the point of all this is that both uniformitarianism and catastrophism have their place in interpretation. Now, on to > CIRCULAR REASONING and the quote from Ager. > This principle of superposition, where rocks from different regions > are arranged according to the presumed evolutionary sequence, is used > to construct the geologic table found in most evolutionary textbooks. > But it is this same table, based upon the assumption of evolution, > which is used as proof for evolution! Derek Ager, past president of > the British Geological Association, wrote: ``It is a problem not easily > solved by the classic methods of stratigraphical paleontology, as > obviously we will land ourselves immediately in an impossible circular > argument if we say, firstly that a particular lithology is synchronous > on the evidence of its fossils, and secondly that the fossils are > synchronous on the evidence of the lithology'' [3]. It has already been pointed out that this quote does *not* reflect an admission of circular reasoning. The chapter in which it appears is entitled Marxist Stratigraphy and The Golden Spike. Again from Ager, It may be asked how the great bearded father figure [Marx] comes into the matter. The answer is that it depends whether or not you think that the history of the earth is divisible into units by means of natural events (or revolutions) detectable by man. The alternative is a record without natural breaks, only divisible by arbitrary man-made decisions. It is, if you like, dogmatism versus pragmatism. (p. 67). Well, let's end with this thought. Creationism has more in common with Marxism than with science. ----- Don Heller Physics and Computer Science Dept. Shell Development Company Houston, Texas {ihnp4, pur-ee, ut-sally}!shell!heller