Closure

Reviews of scientific papers by competent scientists are of inestimable value in probing weaknesses and inconsistencies of a another scientists work, and thus are essential in the determination of scientific truth. By their very nature, reviews must be critical, even to the point of being highly critical, so that the scientific community will not be left in doubt concerning possible flaws in the work being reviewed. As many scientists can testify, the referee process required by scientific journals has saved many a reputation by exposing errors in technical papers prior to publication. At other times, however, that same process has also acted to prevent unpopular scientific truth from being published.

Indeed, even these ICC Proceedings may contain things which would not pass muster in the open literature, and it might be said that in many cases the reason would be prejudice against the creation perspective. On the other hand, there is the possibility that some papers may have genuine flaws which need to be identified. This is all the more reason why creation scientists need to have their work examined and scrutinized by their peers. The history of Christianity has amply demonstrated that much done in the name of God bears little or no resemblance to the teachings of the Bible, or to the progress of truth.

With this in mind I must—if I am really interested in the scientific truth as it relates to creation and evolution—have my findings, discoveries, and conclusions reviewed by those scientists who would be most critical of my work. This I have endeavored to do over the past twenty years as I have submitted my results to the secular scientific community for review and publication. The results of those endeavors have been recounted in detail in my recent book Creation's Tiny Mystery. There I attempted to provide a basis for laymen and scientists to arrive at an intelligent decision about the scientific validity of my discoveries of evidence for creation and a young age of the earth.

As necessary as it has been for my work to go through the referee procedures mandated by the secular scientific community, I consider it just as necessary for it to be scrutinized by the reviewers chosen by the organizing committee of the ICC. The article I submitted for these ICC Proceedings is part of a paper originally published in 1984 in the Proceedings of the Sixty-Third Annual Meeting of the Pacific Division of the AAAS. At that time I requested a vigorous response to the evidences for creation and a young age of the earth summarized therein. None was forthcoming; so I am pleased that critical reviews have now been given by three respected scientists and even more pleased that one is an evolutionist. My intent in responding to those reviews is again to provide a basis for laymen and scientists to evaluate the scientific validity of my discoveries of evidence for creation and a several-thousand-year age of the earth.

At the outset I wish to emphasize my personal esteem for all the reviewers. This is needful because in order to clarify matters it has been necessary to take strong exception to parts of some reviews. In certain instances, ideas and assumptions are introduced which differ considerably from my views and my creation model, and then these ideas are used to raise questions about the scientific implications of my research for creation. Some background information on halos is given below so that the reader can intelligently evaluate ny responses to these ideas.

[p. 314]

Experimental results published over the last 20 years show that polonium halos exist in Precambrian granites independently of any other type of radioactivity; thus I have said they are evidence of primordial polonium—meaning polonium that was created independent of, and separate from, any decay products in the uranium decay chain. The existence of primordial polonium halos in Precambrian granites identifies these rocks as part of the primordial Genesis rocks of our planet. In other words, primordial radioactivity and primordial rocks were created simultaneously when God called the earth into existence during creation week. In contrast, the evolutionary theory of the origin of the Precambrian granites supposes that these rocks crystallized from a slowly cooling magma over eons of geological time. Fortunately, there is an experimental test by which the origin of the granites can be settled. It is also a test which has devastating consequences for the theory of evolution.

The basic premise of the entire theory of evolution is the uniformitarian principle, which is the assumption that the cosmos, including the earth, came to its current state solely through the action of known and unchanging physical laws. (Some readers may be more familiar with the term principle of naturalism.) The practical application of the uniformitarian principle to evolutionary geology implies that the Precambrian granites repeatedly formed naturally throughout billions of years of geologic time—and by naturally I mean with nothing more than known physical laws to govern their crystallization. But if this theory of granite origin is actually true, then it should be possible to reproduce this type of rock today by melting a piece of granite and allowing it to cool under suitable laboratory conditions. The end product should be another piece of granite similar to the original. If this could be done, evolutionists would be able to claim that the basic premise of their theory has some basis in fact, and I would withdraw my claim that the Precambrian granites were the Genesis rocks of our planet. In addition, if polonium halos could then be produced in that synthesized granite, I would also withdraw my claim that polonium halos in granites are primordial.

After waiting almost eight years for the scientific community to respond to this falsification test, there still has been no demonstration of granite synthesis. It is certain that evolutionists would have performed this critical test long ago if it were possible for them to have done so. This impossibility can be traced to the fact that the fundamental premise of their theory—the uniformitarian principle—is not now, nor has it ever been, a sufficient basis for the Precambrian granites to form. In other words, both the Precambrian granites and the enclosed primordial halos required supernatural power to bring them into existence. Thus, irrespective of how many pieces seem to fit into the evolutionary scenario, the truth is that the uniformitarian principle is a false, hypothetical assumption. This background information is essential because parts of the reviews of Brown and Dutch rely heavily, either directly or indirectly, on this erroneous principle.

For example, paragraph 1 of Brown's review implicitly utilizes the uniformitarian principle in an attempt to support a secondary origin of polonium halos in earth rocks. Before discussing how this is done, I note first that the mention of cosmic ray tracks in this paragraph is irrelevant to the topic under discussion, because cosmic ray tracks have no connection whatsoever with halos. Second, Brown omits some pertinent information when he refers to the absence of halos in meteorites and lunar rocks. For the benefit of the non-scientist who may not understand what this is all about, I should explain that in referring to meteorites and lunar rocks Brown is attempting to correlate the absence of halos with the absence of water. True, as far as we know, meteorites and the lunar rocks returned to earth do not contain water. What Brown does not say, however, is that most of these lunar rocks are not primary rocks, but surface rocks which recrystallized from molten material produced by meteorite impact. The absence of halos in lunar surface rocks is expected because any halos that might have existed in the original (pre-impact) lunar rock would have been destroyed by melting. Likewise, because of the vacuum on the moon, any water which might have existed in original lunar rock specimens would certainly have been lost during the high temperature phase of the impact process. Thus the general absence of halos in recrystallized lunar rocks is a natural consequence of the mode of formation of those rocks, and only incidentally related to the absence of water.

In this context I should add that there is reason to continue the search for halos in lunar rocks. I think it is conceivable that halos may still exist in tiny, unmelted fragments of certain primary minerals contained within those rocks. Whether such fragments do exist in the lunar rocks now on earth will not be known until all those rocks are sectioned and carefully examined.