The created world has gone

Whether from a creationist or an evolutionist viewpoint, putting one’s finger on the beginning of the world is not an easy thing. Trying to reconcile the appearance of great age in the rock record to a ‘reality’ of a few thousands years, the 19th-century creationist Philip Gosse suggested that God created the world so that it looked as if it had a prior history, and modern creationists take a similar view. Charles Darwin’s problem, by contrast, was the appearance of design in the living world. He sought to reconcile this appearance to the ‘reality’ that life was not created by arguing that the continual improvements of natural variation had produced a world that merely looked as if it had been designed. But a theory that is false to appearance is likely itself to be false. This article proposes that (a) a Creator would create only that which, in the nature of the universe created, could not have evolved into existence of itself, and (b) the universe in its original form no longer exists.

How long is the Cretaceous?

The Earth appears to be much less than 4.55 billion years old and much more than 6,000 years old. But can we be more precise? Recent stratigraphic studies suggest we can. Sedimentological evidence shows that the rhythmic alternation of chalk and mark in some Cretaceous sequences cannot be 20,000-year-long Milankovitch cycles, but are annual cycles. While this evidence is not sufficient to enable dating the whole of the Cretaceous period, the length of time attributed to the chalk sequences appears to be inflated by a factor of around 20,000.

Evolution in the genome

If science is to be true to itself, it needs to consider other possibilities than evolution by accident in one corner and the creation of immutable species in the other. Biological studies do not support the idea that significant evolution (which has certainly occurred) is undirected. This article looks at what a mutation is, and at evidence that the biggest changes in the history of life have been the result of genetic sub-programs being switched on or off by regulatory systems or even, in a controlled and fore-ordained way, the result of being reconfigured.

Tiktaalik roseae – a missing link?

This recently described Devonian fish has been hailed as one of the most important fossils ever found, plugging a major gap in the story of how aquatic life invaded the land. Is the fanfare justified, or is an ecological transition being confused with an ecological transition?

The early history of the Moon (withdrawn pending revision)

In the conventional view the Solar System is assumed to have formed ‘4.6 Ga’ (4,567,000,000 years) ago, though strictly speaking this is the date when the oldest rocks containing radioisotopes cooled to isotopic closure, not necessarily the age of the Solar System. In recolonisation theory, rates of radioactive decay were then at extremely high levels, such that the first 700 million years equates to possibly as little as 150 years in real time. In the conventional view the Moon’s surface was initially molten, down to a depth of at least 20 km, probably much more. In recolonisation theory, it began cold and heated up only as a result of radioactivity. These are such radically different interpretations that it is difficult to imagine that the evidence could support either of them. This article reviews the principal evidence and suggests that high rates of radioactive decay during the first 700 million years of history is evidentially well supported.

A critique of The Genesis Flood: did animals escape to higher ground?

The idea that the order in which terrestrial animals were fossilised reflects the order in which they succumbed to rising Flood waters was first proposed by John Whitcomb and Henry Morris in The Genesis Flood, a book that made a huge impact amongst American evangelicals and is regarded by most creationists as their founding document. This article tests the validity of the proposal against the predictions made for it by the authors themselves.

Discussions planned but not imminent:

The evolution of whales

Earth’s early atmosphere

The Cambrian Explosion

The K/T extinction