Follow-Up on Saturn’s Moon Titan, its Craters, and its “Youth”

As a quick follow-up to my last blog post, a reader wrote in and their comment was published on the Creation.com website. From Mark V. of New Zealand:

You mentioned that Titan has fewer impact craters than would be expected. Does this mean that a moon or a planet which has a lot of impact craters such as earth’s moon Mercury Mars etc. is therefore old? I would suggest that the reason for the few craters is Saturn, which with its much higher gravity, would draw the various comets meteors etc away from Titan.

The CMI (Creation.com / Creation Ministries International) astronomy guy, Jonathan Sarfati, responded (links removed):

In answer to your question, no it does not. This would be committing the fallacy of denying the antecedent, as explained in Logic and Creation. The explanation for lots of craters on the moon is a brief intense swarm of meteoroids, travelling on parallel paths, probably during the Flood year. This is supported by ghost craters, evidence of rapid succession of impacts, and by the fact that 11 of the 12 maria are in one quadrant, evidence that the major impacts occurred before the moon had even moved far enough in one orbit (month) to show a different face to the swarm. See On the origin of lunar maria and A biblically-based cratering theory.

In my original blog post, I said there were two alternative ideas to cratering that would save the creationist idea behind this article:

The alternative is that the crater calibration stuff is off, and radiometric dating is wrong. So, the Moon is not 4 billion years old, it’s 6000 years old. With the crater population of Titan, that means Titan can only be, oh, around 15-150 years old. Except that it was discovered in 1655.

Or, the entire crater calibration stuff is completely wrong. Which means you can’t use it to say Titan’s surface is young, which is what he is claiming — that it is young because scientists are showing it’s young because it has few craters.

When writing that, I specifically left out the special pleading idea even though I thought that CMI would probably try to use that in responding to anyone’s question. Which they did. The special pleading is that, “Hey, we actually can’t use the Moon as a guide to cratering because its craters came in a quick, special burst!” (that some creationists attribute to Noah’s Flood because, well, ¿why not?)

I left that out because it’s really a form of my second alternative: The crater calibration techniques are bogus, you can’t use them. By Jonathan Sarfati claiming that the lunar cratering is unique and special, it means that the cratering calibration is way off because cratering chronology is BASED on the Moon. And, if it’s off, if we don’t know how to calibrate any ages with craters, then you can’t possibly use them to say Titan’s surface is young or old, which is the basis of the claim that the CMI article is based on.

So again, this doesn’t solve the problem, it introduces more problems and shows yet again that the young-Earth creation model is internally inconsistent.

You can be a young-Earth creationist and claim Titan is young (you’ll be wrong, but you can claim it). Just don’t use the crater chronology to do it. If you do, you’ll wind up going in circles as I’ve demonstrated in this and the previous post. Why? Because it’s inherently inconsistent to do so. If the consequence of a CONSISTENT crater chronology were that Titan’s surface was <6000 years old, then that would be the mainstream science thinking on the subject. It's not. Because the crater chronology doesn't show it, if you use a consistent chronology across solar system bodies.

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Under a Creationist’s Reasoning, Titan (moon of Saturn) Is Just a Few Years Old

Introduction

I’m always amazed at the penchant for young-Earth creationists (YECs) to use science for part of their argument and creationism for another part, when it relies on the science being right, but they’re arguing that the science is wrong.

If that was confusing to you, let me explain …

Crater-Age Modeling

The basic idea behind using craters to estimate the age of a surface is that, if you have an older surface, it’s been around longer and has had more time to accumulate more craters. So, more craters = older.

We can use samples from the Moon to correlate crater densities with absolute ages and get a model for how many craters of a certain size equals a certain age.

That’s the basics … if you want more, see my podcast, episodes 40 and 41: Crater Age Dating Explained, Part 1 and Crater Age Dating and Young-Earth Creationism, Part 2.

So, we have, from the moon, the idea that a heavily cratered surface equates to one that’s been around for billions of years. This REQUIRES radiometric dating to be correct and the basics of crater age-modeling to be correct.

The implication is that a surface that has just a few craters is much younger.

Titan

Titan is Saturn’s largest moon, its atmosphere is thicker than Earth’s, and the Cassini and Huygens probes have shown that its surface is geologically active. It also has very few impact craters.

YEC

Enter David Coppedge, a man I’ve talked about on this blog quite a bit. His latest writing was published by Creation Ministries International, “Saving the ‘Billions of Years’ Age of Titan.”

In his article, he is keying in on a recent popular article that explains that Titan’s surface looks young, and there are a few ways that it can still be geologically active (as in have a young surface, like Earth) and still have formed over 4 billion years ago.

The problem is that, for us to say it looks young, that’s because of the few impact craters. Versus old, that’s because of radiometric dating and then the calibration to lots of impact craters on the Moon. For Coppedge to say (effectively) “Yes, scientists are right, Titan’s surface looks young because it has few impact craters,” then he is REQUIRED to accept the basics of the crater chronology system, which he clearly doesn’t. Because, if Titan is young because it has few craters as he is agreeing with, then the Moon and other bodies must be much older under that same crater chronology system.

Yes, confusing. To get to point B, he must accept A. He thinks B is true, but he does not think A is true. Hence the confusing cognitive dissonance he just ignores.

Alternative

The alternative is that the crater calibration stuff is off, and radiometric dating is wrong. So, the Moon is not 4 billion years old, it’s 6000 years old. With the crater population of Titan, that means Titan can only be, oh, around 15-150 years old. Except that it was discovered in 1655.

Or, the entire crater calibration stuff is completely wrong. Which means you can’t use it to say Titan’s surface is young, which is what he is claiming — that it is young because scientists are showing it’s young because it has few craters.

Final Thoughts

Does anyone have a headache now? I think I gave myself one.

Podcast #75: Young-Earth Creationist, David Coppedge, Sues NASA for Discrimination, and He Loses

You’re just a jerk. Don’t
Sue NASA for religious
Discrimination.”

I’ve been wanting to do this episode for three years now, and I finally get to: The case of David Coppedge, who sued NASA for religious discrimination (he was an employee), a case that was trumpeted by the Discovery Institute … and early this year, the judge rejected every single one of his arguments.

The episode is an interview with a legal professional who is going by the name of Harold Ormansky (or “Harry”) – a pseudonym because of various issues with his name being associated with this kind of stuff. But I can vouch for him. And anyone who may recognize his voice due to this person’s other endeavors will agree. But, let’s keep his real name on the “q-t” or “d-l.”

The main interview is about a half hour long, and then I go through a few points of clarification. All of the other normal segments will be back for the next episode.

Follow-Up: David Coppedge Who Sued NASA Is Fired

Introduction

Last April, I wrote about a man named David Coppedge who was suing NASA over religious discrimination. I have tried to keep apprised of what was going on with the suit, but unfortunately, news was lacking.

I was just informed today that he has been fired.

Background

For background, read my previous article. Seriously. It goes through Coppedge’s lawsuit that claimed religious discrimination, went through some of Coppedge’s previous young-Earth creationism work, and my thoughts on the subject. I pointed out there that the only news that was really reporting on the suit was the creationists and intelligent designers.

I also found it quite humorous that Coppedge was claiming religious discrimination – and the Discovery Institute was advocating that, as well – when he was accused of handing out Intelligent Design materials even though the Intelligent Design folks fervently deny that it is religion.

Anyway …

Laid Off

The only new development in this suit, as far as I can tell, is that Coppedge was laid off last week “in a round of routine layoffs related to” the budget cuts on the project for which he was a computer administrator, NASA’s Cassini mission at Saturn (read more here). Coppedge – and by extension, the Discovery Institute – is of course claiming that this is retaliation for the lawsuit.

By the way, I love that article’s characterization of the Discovery Institute: “… The Discovery Institute, a conservative lobbying organization with right-wing Christian ties best known for their promotion of intelligent design.”

Continuing Thoughts

I normally end this with “Final Thoughts.” But, since this is still ongoing and has yet to reach a resolution, they are continuing thoughts. Not the least of which is how long does it take to get something heard in court? This thing is going on 9 months now. Anyway, I still have yet to hear any official NASA view on this matter. It is still completely either directly from the ID or YEC side or through the news but based on quotes and press releases from the plaintiff, his lawyer, or the ID or YEC side. So, as before, I have yet to make up my own mind on this issue.

In the News: David Coppedge Sues JPL for Religious Discrimination

Introduction

This has been in the news quite a bit lately, even making some normal mainstream news sources. It’s definitely made the rounds of ALL the young-Earth creationist and Intelligent Design sources that I peruse on a near-daily basis.

Since it does somewhat cover the topics that I address on this website, I thought I would weigh in with my own thoughts on the issue.

The Lawsuit – What’s Known

The lawsuit in question is being brought against NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The lawsuit was filed on behalf of David Coppedge by attorney William Becker, Jr., of The Becker Law Firm, in California Superior Court in Los Angeles, and besides against JPL in general, Coppedge’s direct supervisor, group supervisor, and Manager of IT Resources are all named.

The suit alleges that Coppedge was faced with religious discrimination, harassment and retaliation, general violations of his free speech, and wrongful demotion.

So far, everything about the case has come out of pro-ID or -YEC sources, Coppedge, or the attorney (and related court filings). JPL has yet to comment publicly, and I sincerely doubt they will since they state their policy is not to comment on pending litigation (and they have also stated that, at least as of the end of last week, they have not yet been served with the lawsuit).

The events in question allegedly came as a result of Coppedge handing out pro-ID materials to co-workers who expressed an interest in them. And everything else came as a result of that.

Regress: Some Background on David Coppedge

My run-ins with Coppedge are purely from his writings … on the Institute for Creation Research’s website. Yep, that’s right: Coppedge is a young-Earth creationist, at least based upon his writings. He has written several articles for the ICR, though I have only addressed two in this blog: “Venus and the Battle of Uniformitarianism (A Creationist Argument)” and “Dating Planetary Surfaces with Craters – Why There Is No “Crisis in Crater Count Dating”.” From his writings, he has a very poor grasp of astronomy, despite the attempt of argument from authority by posting at the bottom of them, “David F. Coppedge works in the Cassini program at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. (The views expressed are his own.)” I address this more below.

Coppedge runs computers at JPL for the Cassini mission to Saturn. His expertise is in computers, not astronomy. And not evolution.

My Thoughts

First, I would like to point out that the Discovery Institute, the “think tank” behind Intelligent Design, has steadfastly maintained over the years that ID is not religion. I find it somewhat ironic that, for allegedly promoting pro-ID materials, he is suing for religious discrimination.

The DI’s claim that one of NASA’s mission statements is to examine the origins of life and so Coppedge was doing something within that is not valid in the objective sciences, in my opinion, because he was taking the religious route. Coppedge, as far as I can tell, is a young-Earth creationist. He was handing out ID materials. ID is religion (despite the protestations of the DI).

I also find it very interesting – and very telling – that no where in ANY of the Intelligent Design stories about this lawsuit do they mention Coppedge’s YEC leanings. Do a word search on their story’s page about the suit for “creation” and you won’t find it. And the DI has continued to exploit this lawsuit, writing near daily articles about it on their blog, Evolution News & Views.

Now that I have that off my chest, I want to look at what has been alleged by Coppedge. Remember that he was a supervisor, in charge as Lead Team System Administrator of ~200 computers involved in NASA’s Cassini mission to Saturn. As a supervisor, though even I doubt he tried to use his role as supervisor, it is stated he distributed pro-ID materials.

This is something that I think, at the very least, should not have been done unless (a) he was specifically asked for them, and (b) he did so while he was not “on the clock.”

I bring up the first condition because there can be a very strong implied coercion – even if unintentional – for people to follow what “The Boss” says. I doubt my father remembers this, but when I was very young and spent one school year in the Cub Scouts, I asked him to bring in a sign-up sheet for whatever fundraiser I was doing at the time. At that time, he ran a research lab with several faculty, post-docs, techs, and graduate students. He refused to do so because he didn’t want people to feel obligated to sign up for something from “the boss’s son” even though he in no way would have tried to use his position.

The second condition is that, like it or not, the First Amendment guarantees as much a freedom of religion as a freedom from religion, and the government cannot in any way advocate for or against religion or use its capital in such an endeavor. If Coppedge used time when he was being paid with government money to spread this material, then I would consider that a reprimandable offense. Granted, if it was a “first time” thing, then if I were his boss I would just bring him into the office and mention there are issues here and he needs to do this on his own time and away from NASA buildings so that it doesn’t give the appearance in any way of a government-sponsored event.

Several of the reports on blogs and pro-ID and -YEC sites have emphasized that Coppedge has not been informed of who complained about him handing out material. They make this seem sinister and under-handed, but to me it makes perfect sense. Say you’re working in an office, and your supervisor does something you think is very bad, but you’re afraid that if you tell him about it he’ll fire you. Instead, you go to his boss and complain about it and ask that your identity be kept confidential in order to avoid reprisals. Even if your supervisor wouldn’t have fired you, it could still unconsciously have affected your job evaluations or future promotions if they knew it was you. Keeping your identity secret is the only way to prevent this, though in a lawsuit you would likely necessarily be called as a witness. In this sense, making a big deal about Coppedge not being “informed of the identities of his alleged accusers or even of the specifics of any of their complaints so that he might have the opportunity to rebut them” seems perfectly reasonable, in my opinion. (source for that particular quote)

My next point is, admittedly, perhaps a little more vindictive and has nothing to do with the merits or lack-there-of of this case. I think that Coppedge has used his position as an employee of NASA and position on the Cassini mission as an argument from authority for way too long and this lends an air of undeserved credibility to what he writes. It’s also a complete non sequitur authority because managing computers says nothing about someone’s knowledge of astronomy which also says nothing about that person’s knowledge of evolution.

Finally, I’d like to end with this repetition: All information so far has been from the plaintiff’s side (Coppedge’s). Almost all news articles available on the subject are from pro-ID or -YEC sources. As with any lawsuit, there are almost always two sides to every story, and I suspect that NASA’s is different. I suspect NASA will likely claim Coppedge used his position to push the materials on others. And/Or I suspect NASA will claim Coppedge has done this in the past, was warned, and after continuing to do so he was finally reprimanded pursuant to the Establishment Clause.

On the other hand, it is entirely possible that Coppedge simply did obtain pro-ID materials that another employee requested and JPL over-reacted and did something that legitimately was unwarranted (though I honestly doubt it but that is my own bias). I think that as this case unfolds we will see that Coppedge is not quite the victim he has been made to seem.

Venus and the Battle of Uniformitarianism (A Creationist Argument)

This entry is in specific response to the “Venus vs. Uniformitarianism” article from the Institute for Creation Research, written by David Coppedge.

This is meant to be a short post on the heels of my crater discussion from yesterday, and it actually fits in fairly nicely even though it’s about something completely different:  The planet Venus.

Venus is an interesting planet and has held peoples’ imaginations ever since it was realized that it was shrouded in clouds, hiding its surface from view.  At almost the same size as Earth, it was long thought of as Earth’s twin and it may hide a paradise beneath the atmosphere.  That view vanished in the 1960s when spacecraft showed it to be a planet with a surface temperature far above the boiling point of water, the clouds full of sulfuric acid, and the atmosphere so heavy that the surface pressure is the equivalent of being under 1 km of ocean on Earth.

But another highly unexpected observation was that Venus’ entire surface seemed to be the same age based off of the crater population (see, there is a link to my post yesterday!).  There are just under 1000 craters on Venus, and statistically they are distributed randomly over the planet, no region being older nor younger than another (to the accuracy of crater age dating).  And then, based off of the crater density, the surface age of Venus was estimated to be 500 million to 1 billion years old (the agreed-upon number today is about 700 million).

(Note that a pretty good, definitive paper on this is found in the Journal of Geophysical Research, vol. 97, No. E10, from 1992 in an article by Roger Phillips et al. entitled “Impact Craters and Venus Resurfacing History.”)

The question is:  What would make the entire surface a single age, between 11-22% the estimated age of the solar system?  That brings us to the Institute for Creation Research article I cite at the beginning of this post.  David Coppedge uses Venus to say that it “poses a serious challenge to uniformitarian views,” (views that say geologic history has resulted from the action of continuous and uniform processes throughout time; in other words, the opposite of catastrophism).

This is actually true.  It’s very difficult to think of a uniformitarian process that would produce what we see on Venus today.  That’s actually why no one really does (hence, it is a straw man argument, an argument against something that the other side doesn’t actually say).  The prevailing view today is that Venus’ current surface is the result of a catastrophic release of magma from within the planet that broke through the crust and covered the planet in a geologically short period of time – hundreds or thousands of years.

The proposed mechanism is that without plate tectonics to release heat and energy, the build-up in the planet’s mantle eventually overpowered the strength of the crust, resulting in the catastrophic release.  It is possible that this is cyclical, occurring once every few hundred million or few billion years – we just don’t know because we (a) haven’t seen it and (b) we can only see the evidence from the last time.

Why this becomes important to creationists, and why it’s on the ICR website, is two-fold.  First, creationism relies upon catastrophic events to explain geologic features like the Grand Canyon (general appeal is to Noah’s Flood).

Second, which is the point of the last two paragraphs of the ICR article, is, “One idea never considered is that the missing 90% never occurred.”  So he is arguing for a young solar system based on the data showing that Venus’ surface is ~700 million years old.  There are many, many things wrong with this argument, but for the sake of my promised brevity, I will only address two.

The first should be obvious:  For creationist arguments, the goal is to get the age of the solar system down to 6000 years or so.  However, it shouldn’t take a math major to figure out that 700,000,000 is much greater than 6000 … by a factor of over 100,000.  The point of the article is more likely to try to make the reader second-guess the “millions of years” arguments rather than have the reader actually think of the timescales that are being suggested.

Second, and this is more subtle, he is still relying upon an argument from crater age dating.  This has been calibrated from the Moon.  So let’s say that the lunar timescale were off by, oh, a factor of 1,000,000 (what’s needed to get it to 6000 years).  Remember from my post yesterday that crater age dating is relative, and so that would mean that Venus’ age (since the article is suggesting that its surface age is the same age as the planet) is also younger by a factor of a million.

That would place Venus’ age at between 500 and 1000 years old.  Not even creationists think that Venus is that young – they can’t, because there are historic records dating back over 4000 years showing observations of Venus.  As you can see, if you actually think about these arguments logically, and carry them through to their conclusion, they become unrealistic unless there is some sort of “other” special happenstance.  You can’t pick and choose how far you want to take the evidence, as they do in this article.

Finally, I want to end with two comments on the last paragraph of the article.  First, “If it were not that Darwinian evolution requires vast ages …, many of the features observed by the space program would be considered young.”  This is not true.  Geologists had already figured out Earth was at least on the order of millions of years old before Darwin ever presented his theories on evolution.  Geology in terms of figuring out how old things are has absolutely nothing to do with biological evolution.  It has much more to do with basic physics, such as heat transfer, collision rates, gravitational perturbations, etc.  Nothing in space is dated based on an idea that evolution says something has to be old … this is an absolutely ridiculous claim showing naïveté, especially coming from someone who “works in the Cassini program at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.”

Now that I have that out of my system … second, a more philosophical point:  “Should scientists be allowed to infer histories that are indistinguishable from myth?”  Speaking as a scientist, the idea that I can or can not formulate a history from on my observations based on the whim of whether someone else thinks I should or shouldn’t be allowed is very … irritating.  Who is he to say whether someone can or cannot think something?

Science works by lots of people coming up with lots of different possible explanations based on the observations.  They can then test those explanations by making predictions for further observations, and those observations should be able to rule out some of the explanations and still allow others.  Then the process repeats until (hopefully) one is left that explains all the observations.  If none do, then a new hypothesis must be built that can explain all the observations, and then be further tested.

The “catastrophism” idea for Venus is not presently testable due to financial and technological constraints.  However, there are ways that it can be.  One would be sending ground-penetrating radar to Venus to peer within its crust and determine heat flows.  Another would be to find fissures across the planet that could be outlets for the resurfacing material.  A third would be to actually date material on the surface and to dig down within the crust and date that material, as well.  The argument from the article – that the first 90% of Venus’ history never actually existed – is not testable at all, nor does it make sense in the context of the rest of the solar system (as discussed in my demonstration that Venus would need to be 500-1000 years old based on this article).

Dating Planetary Surfaces with Craters – Why There Is No “Crisis in Crater Count Dating”

This entry is in specific response to the “Crisis in Crater Count Dating” article from the Institute for Creation Research, written by David Coppedge.

How can astronomers say that Mars had recent volcanism?  Or that the surface of the moon Io is younger than 50 years?  Or that the youngest stretches of terrain on our moon’s surface dates back to about 3 billion years ago?  The answer is one of the basic tools of comparative planetology:  Impact craters.

Impact craters are ubiquitous throughout the solar system – every single solid body has craters on its surface except for the moon Io (because its surface is so young due to the incredible amounts of vulcanism).  Impact craters form when an impactor – like an asteroid or comet – hits the target surface of a planet or moon.  The impact occurs at high speed, and the final crater depth, diameter, and shape are effectively determined by the surface gravity, the mass of the impactor, and the velocity of the impactor.  Almost all impact craters are circles; only impacts at very low angles (less than 10°) will form elliptical craters.

Note:  There are craters of other origins, such as pit craters or caldera craters at the top of volcanoes.  Only impact craters are used to date surfaces, and for brevity I will only be referring to them from this point on as “craters” instead of “impact craters.”

The basic idea behind using craters as an indicator of a surface’s age is that the longer the surface is around, the more craters will form.  If an impactor were to hit a target at a rate of 1 per year, then a surface that’s 1,000,000 years old should have 1,000,000 craters.  But if that surface were to have something happen to it, like it got covered by lava, then that would erase the craters and the crater age would be set back to 0.

That’s effectively what people do in order to date the surfaces of planets or moons that are not Earth:  We count the number of craters of different sizes for a part of the surface and then compare that with the rate of impacts of that size.  This is called “crater age dating,” and it is a form of “relative age dating.”  The reason that it’s relative is that it cannot give an absolute age in years, it can only say if a surface is statistically older or younger than another surface.

To actually calibrate the number of impactors of a given size to an absolute age requires us to date the rocks within that surface.  This was one of the science results from the Apollo lunar missions – samples brought back from the moon were dated in the lab and hence an absolute age could be assigned to surfaces with a certain density of craters (number of craters per area).  This can then be extrapolated to other locations in the solar system.

Craters form in all sizes – from microcraters on airless bodies like the moon to giant basins literally 1000s of kilometers across.  In general, researchers use craters that are on the 10s of meters scale to about 1 kilometer, or a few kilometers to a few 10s of kilometers for age dating (at present, there is a general mismatch gap in what is used; this is generally because the meter-scale craters are used to date smaller, isolated surface areas whereas kilometer-scale craters are used to date much larger geologic units that cover a significant percentage of the planet or moon).

One more piece of background information is that when craters form, they send up clouds of debris, from dust-sized particles to objects up to a few percent the size of the original impactor.  These larger chunks of material are ejected outwards from the forming crater, and they may end up forming their own craters.  These are called secondary craters since they were formed as a result of the original, or primary crater.

Secondary craters are different from primary craters in the way they look because of their formation history — mainly they are much smaller and they are also shallower.  This is both because the ejected material that formed them was much smaller than the original impactor and because the velocity of the debris is much less than the original impactor, so there is significantly less energy to form the secondary crater.  Observations and computer models have shown that the largest secondary craters can only be up to ~5% the diameter of the primary crater (observations made on Earth, Moon, Mars, Mercury, and Europa), although the vast majority are much smaller than 1% of the primary.  In addition, secondary craters that form closest to the primary (within about 10 crater radii) are usually very easy to identify as secondary due to the way they look and the surrounding surface.

The point of this background it that crater age dating has been used for over 50 years, and it rests on very solid theoretical, experimental, and observational grounds.  However, you wouldn’t think that given the ICR article, “Crisis in Crater Count Dating:”  “New thinking about ‘secondary craters’ has thrown this whole foundation of comparative planetary dating into disarray.”

The article continues with misleading statements:  “One writer in Nature estimated that a single large impact on Mars could generate 10,000,000 secondaries, and that 95% of the small craters on Europa could be from fallback debris.”  You are clearly expected to infer from this that almost all craters (95%) on surfaces are secondaries by simply connecting those two phrases together.  That may actually be true.  But there is no size range stated.

Those same authors, Alfred McEwen and Edward Bierhaus, who are not mentioned in that quote wrote a paper in 2006, “The Importance of Secondary Cratering to Age Constraints on Planetary Surfaces,” in the Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Science.  I highly recommend reading it if you are interested in this subject, and it is written at a non-technical level.

In their paper, they show that yes, secondary craters do dominate planetary surfaces, but for Mars (the object of interest at the moment), the critical diameter at which secondary craters dominate is about 1 km.  Craters smaller than 1 km are likely >50% secondaries, but craters larger are >50% primaries.  And because a significant amount of age dating is done with craters larger than 1 km, there is no way that “this whole foundation of … planetary dating [is in] disarray.”

The ICR article goes on from there, and either shows the author’s ignorance of the issues or that they are simply lying:  “Without a way to reliably identify secondary craters …”  As I stated above, the majority of secondary craters that are close to the primary can be identified because of their distinct shapes and characteristics – they are shallower, they are often elongated with the long axis pointing towards the primary, they appear in clusters, and there are generally trails of them that lead back to the primary.  One could also ask the question, “If there were no ‘way to reliably identify secondary craters,’ then how could we know that there even are secondary craters?”  Granted, it does become more difficult the farther from the primary crater and the smaller the secondary, but this becomes a non-issue when using large craters.

But, you can still use small craters to date planetary surfaces.  One of the arguments used is that reference crater densities that indicate a certain age for a surface were created  without taking secondary craters into account – in other words, they have both primary and secondary craters in them.  So when using them to date a surface, it doesn’t matter if there are plenty of secondary craters there because they are in your reference, too.

Besides this, this topic is still in active debate at planetary astronomy conferences today (William Hartmann and Gerhard Neukum are two of the strongest proponents that secondary craters aren’t even an issue for sub-kilometer age dating).  In fact, I was just at a conference – the Division of Planetary Science for the American Astronomical Society held at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY (October 2008) – where Dr. Hartmann presented results which indicated that secondary cratering is not a problem at sub-kilometer diameters for age dating.

In the last crater-related point I want to address from the article, it implies that astronomers applied crater age dating from the moon to other objects “believing they knew how old the earth-moon system was.”  This is true, but it’s not true the way they imply it.  From this statement (the next-to-last paragraph of the article), you are clearly meant to think that we used crater ages from the moon to go to other bodies, but if we don’t even know how many craters equals 1 year or 100 years or 1000 years on the moon, how could we possibly know what it means on other objects?

The answer should be apparent given the background I discussed above:  Craters give relative ages, while radioactive decay dating methods give absolute ages.  We applied the relative ages from the crater densities on the moon to other bodies, so it doesn’t really matter if we don’t know how old that surface is on the moon for that exercise.  But then we can calibrate the relative scale with the absolute scale from the moon because we have independently dated its surface with a completely different method.  Therefore, the ICR article is yet again trying to mislead the reader.

The final point that I would like to address is the article’s last sentence:  “There is an important lesson here, though, for all science lovers:  question assumptions.”  (emphasis mine)

I whole-heartedly agree.  You should question assumptions.  You should try to understand why someone says what they do.  You should do your own research, your own experiments, and make your own observations.  You shouldn’t take my word for it, you shouldn’t take ICR’s word for it, you should go out and look for yourself.

Finally, you should always question someone’s assumptions, especially if they are based in an ideology:  If they start from the premise that the Bible is Truth, the literal word of an omnipotent and infallible deity, and then try to make all observations fit within that view, you should be questioning that assumption.