Astounding Evidence that Creationism Is a “Science Stopper” – Click Here to Find Out How, with Pluto and Friends!

Okay, so I’m not great at the click-bait headlines.

I was glancing through some of the young-Earth Creationist mainstream sites, as I do with some regularity, and I came across the Institute for Creation Research’s “Looking Back at Pluto” by Jason Lisle. Being involved with New Horizons (though this blog is completely separate from that work/employment), and given that Dr. Lisle graduated from the same school and program I did (but a summer before I got there), I had to click.

Jason goes through some of the interesting things we found at Pluto. In particular, he highlights: (1) The craterless (as far as we can tell) Sputnik Planum area (which he mistakes for Tombaugh Regio), (2) the polygonal terrain in Sputnik Planum that is likely due to convection, (3) giant ice mountains and cliffs and canyons, (4) potential cryovolcanoes, (5) dark red area at Charon’s north pole, and (6) some of its small satellites spin really fast.

For Realz scientists are studying these features, developing hypotheses to explain them, and testing those in the lab and/or with the data returned by New Horizons. And some of them just aren’t mysteries at all because Jason hasn’t done his homework.

For example, for point (1), going in we expected that Pluto may be devoid of many craters because its surface is constantly sublimating (turning from ice to gas) as material gets transported around the body from the summer pole to the winter pole. (Pluto, like Uranus, is tilted on its side so right now the north pole is in constant sunlight.) Jason also said that having the encounter hemisphere be the bright “heart” was “by providence,” but it was specifically planned years in advance based on the (now primitive) maps we had from the Hubble Space Telescope — that area displayed the largest ranges of brightness, so it was the area we wanted to see up-close the most. It’s not providence, it was planning exactly the way you would when doing Real Science.

Another example is point (6), where yes, we would expect satellites to not rotate really fast because tidal effects should slow down the spin rates over long periods of time. If I can replace gravity for magnetism for a moment, imagine holding a strong magnet in place, and several inches away have a bar magnet that is on a post that it can spin freely around but it can’t get closer to or farther from the magnet you’re holding. Spin the bar magnet. It’s going to slow its spin pretty quickly to align with the one you’re holding. That’s kinda sorta how moons tidally lock and slow their spin except the force is gravity rather than magnets.

Anyway, at least one of the moons spins on its axis, fully, in about half a day. Is it young? Maybe possibly but unlikely … but that particular moon also has giant craters on it, so it’s just – if not more – likely that it recently (as in within the last few million years) got whacked by a large piece of debris that simply spun it up, increasing its rotation rate.

I can’t discuss papers that have been submitted by other authors on the team, but there are very plausible, natural explanations for several of the other features Jason lists, that are currently undergoing peer review, with conclusions based upon the available evidence.

As for the attempt at click-bait title? Here’s how Jason ends his article:

These are perplexing problems for secular formation scenarios. However, Christians delight in seeing the Lord’s creativity continually revealed.

In other words, his brand of Christians just STOP at the observation, attribute it to their god, and move on. How is that not a science stopper?

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Podcast Episode 45: The Moon’s Changing Recession Rate

A discussion of this young-Earth creationist claim, dating back about 3-4 decades, has been posted. The main segment is reasonably short, around 13ish minutes.

No new news segment, but all the others are there excepting a new puzzler: Q&A, Feedback, Puzzler solutions for episodes 43 and 44, and some announcements.

The main announcement is that I’ve re-released my Richard Hoagland lunar ziggurat debunking. If you downloaded it on Monday, that’s the old version. I released this new one at around 6AM GMT on Wednesday, July 25. It’s 5 minutes 29 seconds long — not the 4 minutes 25 seconds one. There’s a minor correction about shadows, and I also show the latest lunar imagery that shows no ziggurat. Plus Mike Bara complaining that Hoagland took the image from him without credit.

If you do nothing else, I would appreciate feedback on the video (post here, send e-mail, whatever). As I mentioned in my last post, these suckers take A LONG TIME, and I don’t want to do them if you don’t think they’re worth it. What you liked, what you didn’t like, what you think I should do differently or make sure to do next time, file size, etc. … all fair game.

Incest Between Institute for Creation Research and Answers in Genesis?

From what I’ve found, there are really two major “think” tanks in the United States of America when it comes to young-Earth creationism (YEC). And, there are almost as many astronomers who work for them. One of them is Dr. Jason Lisle, who got his Ph.D. in astrophysics from the same department at the same university as I. We only missed each other by a few months in terms of his graduation and my matriculation.

Upon his graduation, Dr. Lisle went to work for Answers in Genesis (AiG) which is now headquartered in Kentucky, under an hour’s drive from where I grew up in Ohio. Dr. Lisle used his astronomy background to design their astronomy exhibits in the AiG Creation Museum, design their planetarium show, and of course write for AiG’s website. He’s still writing for them today, and AiG still lists him as on staff uses “we have a real astronomer on staff!” as an argument from authority.

One of Lisle’s books is entitled, “Taking Back Astronomy” – a book which I still plan to review on this blog but I’ve been saying that now for almost three years. Another is a book where he argues that the very fact we have things like logic means that God created the universe 6000 years ago (I’m not joking on this one – he really does say that).

This is why I was surprised to read from the Institute for Creation Research, which is headquartered in Texas, that Dr. Lisle is the ICR’s new Director of Research. No where in the press release that I linked to above does it say anything about working at AiG nor having some sort of joint appointment. On his bio page on ICR’s site, it also does not mention AiG nor a joint appointment, but it does state that since his graduation, he’s worked “in full-time apologetics ministry … [and] was instrumental in developing the planetarium at the Creation Museum in Kentucky.”

I find this intriguing, hence why I’m writing about it. I’m not quite sure what’s going on here and am a bit surprised that either (1) he’d be allowed to have such a joint appointment spread so far apart, or (2) AiG still has him listed in any capacity. I’m not sure if there’s any particular deep dirty secret reason for this move by Lisle, but, since I monitor these sorts of things, I thought I’d bring it up here.