A Letter to Pope Benedict About Evolution
R. Sungenis: The following is a letter written by Hugh Miller, member of the Kolbe Center for the Study of Creation (of which I am on the advisory board), to His Holiness, Pope Benedict XVI, in hopes of providing scientific information to the Vatican about the evidence against Evolution and the evidence for Creationism. This information is vital considering Cardinal Poupard’s recent endorsement of the Evolutionary theory, and his implicit rejection of the Intelligent Design arguments. Patrons, please take note of the overwhelming scientific against Evolution by our distinguished scientist and field excavator of fossils and other significant digs, Hugh Miller.
November 6, 2005
Your Holiness:
SUBJECT: Evidences for creation ex nihilo and against evolution of life from non-life for PAS meeting Nov. 13.
It has come to our attention that the Pontifical Academy of Sciences (PAS) will be reviewing the theory of biological evolution of life from non-life beginning November 13, 2005. This review will be in light of the church’s 2000 year support of scripture and the recent discussion of the Intelligent Design (I.D.) theory by such Catholics as Dr. Behe, professor of molecular biology. But I.D. proponents do not mention the age question which is critical to the gospels.
In 1984 I sent to you evidence for the contemporaneous existence of dinosaur and man based on their “pristine" footprints excavated together in alleged 108 million year old Cretaceous strata. You forwarded these reports to the PAS (see letter from them). Copies of this report are also being sent to Christopher Cardinal Schonborn and the PAS. The material sent to you this day challenges the long ages attributed to evolutionary theory and the geologic column and is just the tip of the ice burg. These items includes:
(1) An update on fossil human footprints that confirm the discoveries from the early 1970’s -1980’s including photos.
(2) Evidence that the billions of years needed for evolution to be a viable theory simply do not exist due to anomalous radiometric ages for historical magma flows [See report: “Monumental failures for long age radiometric dating methods"].
(3) Confirmation by carbon dating of fossil wood, dinosaur bones and amber that the long ages obtained by radiometric dating methods such as Potassium/Argon etc. are NOT a measure of time as the science of mineralogy suggests.
(4) And most condemning of all are the experiments performed in laboratories in France and the United States and the sedimentary flume studies at Colorado State University. (See reports from Russia, France and China).
(5) For a quick one page review of the evidence for creation and against evolution please view the enclosed “fact sheet".
(6) To be enclosed in another mailing will be a list of challenging questions about origins which the PAS scientists need to examine closely over the next year before making a careful pronouncement. Needless to say the church and its advisors, the PAS, should always give the benefit of the doubt to our Lord’s Word as suggested by the church fathers and the Magisterium. Science changes but God’s Word does not.
All polls show that a majority of Americans perceive that the God of the scriptures created life and the universe by divine fiat in six literal days as the Magisterium has always taught with regards origins. Most Americans believe that an Intelligent Designer created the universe and all life forms; we did not arrive here by any form of evolution of life from non-life. A recent CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll asked Americans what they believe about evolution or creation. The poll found that 53 percent say God created humans in their present form the way the Bible describes it, essentially endorsing a strict creationist explanation. Twelve percent endorse the strict evolutionary perspective — that humans evolved from other species, but without any divine intervention. Thirty-one percent choose the modified perspective, believing human beings evolved from other species, but with God guiding the process. That closely matches the perspective commonly known as “intelligent design".
If these numbers are accurate, why on earth is evolution still the only theory being taught in our Catholic schools?! How is the Catholic Church to remain faithful to our Lord’s Word and His Blessed Mother if it strays from truth? We pray that His science will help the PAS and His Church move away from the hypothesis of biological evolution.-The billions of years required for it to happen are just not there.
Sincerely,
Hugh Miller, BS chemistry and Bob Bennett, PhD. physics
PS: The fact that AMS radiocarbon dating laboratories continually find C-14 in diamond, amber, dinosaur bones and fossil wood; and, short half-life polonium halos in granite rocks attest vigorously to the young age of the earth and the need to drop biological evolution as a viable theory. [See Fact Sheet and web sites]
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FACT SHEET ON DINOSAURS AND THE GEOLOGIC COLUMN
(It’s a young Earth after all - In agreement with scripture.)
Many qualified scientists and research groups have examined the evidence for supposed dinosaur extinction and have concluded:
The 65,000,000 year time frame between man and dinosaur has been falsified.
The hundreds of millions of years for sediments to form strata that one sees in road cuts likewise do not exist. Cataclysmic hydraulic forces would have deposited various kinds of sedimentary mud rapidly rather than at a slow rate of centimeters/thousands of years.
The extinction of most dinosaurs could have been caused by one world-wide cataclysm only thousands of years ago. Many scientists, in peer reviewed papers, have agreed on the following sequential events or scientific paradigm the basics of which agrees with Genesis.
Creation of the earth, universe, and all life forms <10,000 years ago in situ, as opposed to formation of the universe, earth and life from non-life over billions of years.
A world-wide flood followed a few thousand years later as noted in scriptures.
2000 to 3000 ft. thick glaciers lasting ~ 600 years formed due to the flood after effects.
Regional disasters occurred as glaciers melted rapidly thus giving rise to cave dwellers.
Human repopulation of earth resumed after the flood inc concert with the population equation. The evolutionary paradigm fails to agree with both scripture and science.
EVIDENCE FOR A PARTIAL DINOSAUR EXTINCTION ONLY THOUSANDS OF YEARS AGO AND THEIR REPOPULATION OF THE EARTH WITH MANKIND
C-14 dates for dinosaur bones are similar to dates for mammoths, mastodons and diamonds.
C-14 dates for carbonized wood found in the same strata with dinosaur and human prints.
Pictographs and petroglyphs of dinosaurs on canyon and cave walls world-wide.
Pristine human and mammalian footprints in same rock strata with dinosaurs including large cat-like saber tooth tiger in TX, USA.
Hundreds of Inca burial stones in Peru depicting dinosaurs with man ~ 500 BC.
Hundreds of clay figurines in Mexico depicting different dinosaurs, also ~ 500 BC.
The more mobile dinosaurs [some w/ collagen and soft tissue] are in solid rock or clay matrices. Much less mobile creatures like bottom ocean dwellers are in lowest rocks.
[See the pictorial essay with this packet and web sites for some of the above evidences]
EVIDENCE FOR A THOUSAND TIMES SHORTER TIME-FRAME FOR SEDIMENTARY ROCK AND CLAY FORMATION IN THE GEOLOGIC COLUMN
French and Russian Academy of Sciences have peer reviewed technical papers that show sediments , fauna and flora were not deposited as a function of time but rather due to rapid paleohydraulic activities and sorting by particle size and density of material.
The above lab and flume studies destroys the assumed principles of sedimentology (Stenno, 17th century) that the top strata are always younger than the ones below.
Fossilized trees world wide that penetrate coal seams etc., indicating rapid burial.
Mount St. Helens volcanic eruption of 1980 produced a miniature Grand Canyon during catastrophic mud flows; when dry, laminations gave appearance of thousands of years in age. K/Ar radiometric dating of Mt. St. Helens lava dome gave anomalous ages up to 3 million years, as it has for other historical lava flows. (See enclosed paper)
Long age radiometric dating methods (K/Ar etc.) are NOT a measure of time.
[See peer reviewed papers that accompanying this packet]
SUMMARY: From the discovery of Polonium halos [
www.halos.com] with half lives of seconds and minutes in the granite rocks to the presence of >100 asteroid/comet impaction sites in the sedimentary layers of the earth [as well as on all planets and their moons] it is obvious the earth was created in-situ and has since undergone a major cataclysmic event as noted by Jesus and his apostles and to which all the church fathers agree. Human population statistics support a recent repopulation of the earth.
WEB SITES:
www.icr.org
www.answersingenesis.org,
www.worldbydesign.org,
www.kolbecenter.org,
www.creationevidence.org,
www.halos.com,
www.earthage.org
www.mtblanco.com,
www.creationtruth.org,
www.geology.ref.ac/berthault/.
MONUMENTAL FAILURES FOR RADIOMETRIC DATING
Scientists in past decades have pointed out major failures of the K/Ar method to date volcanic materials. Old ages ranging from several hundred thousand to several million and even 2.96 billion years have been obtained for historical volcanic eruptions from:
Mt. St Helens lava dome of 1986, from 0.3 to 2.7 million, 3 samples (Austin, 1996).
Mt. Ngauruhoe, Central North Island, New Zealand of 1949, 1954 and 1975, from <0.27 to 3.5 million, 11 samples (Snelling, 1999); and
1800-1801 Hawaiian magma at 1.41 and 1.60 million (Austin, 1994) (Dalrymple, 1968); xenolyths within the magma gave a wide variety of ages up to 2.96 billion years for Hawaii (Funkhouser, 1968).
Regarding the anomalous dates for volcanic minerals a European mineral professional, Dr. Marie Clare Van Oosterwych, worked in the Belgian Congo and then in the Belgian Museum of Natural History laboratory is well qualified to define the problems. She advised research leadership as early as 1975 that the ages obtained by K/Ar for our alleged African ancestors were ‘not’ absolute ages and were meaningless.
As she wrote:
“I am a professional mineralogist, specialized in silicates, having essentially worked on African material. I was requested at that time (~1975) by a world-famous geochronologist to give my advice about the origin of the anomalous ages which are so frequently found in geochronological works. My answer was very simple: Since the radioactive elements are imprisoned in definite crystal lattices, they were likely influenced by factors evidenced in crystal genesis and alteration which were essentially:
temperature
solutions, ‘hydrothermal conditions’
chemical composition and
granulometry
the same kind of elements being evidenced for the samples delivering anomalous ages. In addition, if the heaps of data collected during the numerous interdisciplinary missions to Africa and more specifically East Africa, completely failed in evidencing the expected “emergence process" (of man), they brought, on the other hand, impressive evidences about the occurrence of a Big Flood which had covered the whole Earth at a time not far from the present one (Van Oosterwich, 1995)."
Thus, because the variability within crystals, due to the above factors, is common knowledge among mineralogists she offered to demonstrate her case by laboratory experiments. However, she not only was refused permission to do so, she also lost her rights to perform research in the lab and actually was required to turn in her lab key.
Another researcher, sedimentologist Guy Berthault of France, has shown by flask and flume studies (Berthault, 1988, 1995, 2002, 2002, 2004 and Julien et.al., 1993) that sediments in moving waters deposit simultaneously in a vertical and horizontal manner.
As Julien concluded:
“In summary these experiments demonstrate that stratification of heterogeneous sand mixtures can result from: segregation for lamination, non-uniform flow for graded beds, and desiccation for joints. Therefore superposed strata are not necessarily identified to successive sedimentary layers (Julien et. al. 1993 p. 659)"
Likewise fossils in a top stratum could have been older than ones in a lower stratum due to sediment and fossil sorting.
Field work substantiates the lab research. This has been shown by coring in the Bay of Naples (Walther, 1894); in a Colorado flood catastrophe (McKee, 1965); by paleohydraulic studies of the Grand Canyon (Austin, 1999); the Crimean Peninsula (Lalomov, 2002), and the laminar strata of the Mt. St. Helens mudslides (Austin, 1994). Andrew Snelling in an article in AIG’s web site entitled, “Sedimentation Experiments: Nature finally catches up" has observed that Nature magazine published two articles (Fineberg, 1997) (Makse et al., 1997) that reported the same sedimentology phenomena but did not acknowledge the much earlier research of Guy Berthault and Julien published in the Bulletin Societe Geologie and by Creation Ex Nihilo Technical Journal.
Scientists who suspect catastrophic events as the cause of many geologic formations have studied the evidences in many regions and basins and have presented their data in CRSQ, ICC and other journals which conflict with uniformitarian geology and/or K/Ar data.
Currently, several Paleochronology Group members are reviewing Radiocarbon Journal reports in preparation for several articles in CRSQ regarding their own RC dating of unusual fossils. We were thus surprised to discover that there were additional anomalous K/Ar dates for catastrophes in Australia and Hawaii; we learned that these researchers, associated with the Smithsonian Institute, Washington D.C. and the U.S. Geologic Survey respectively, did not allow themselves to be misled by so-called “absolute ages". They resorted to intense field geology (stratigraphy) of australite (tektite) occurrences and RC dating (in one case) to obtain more realistic dates. The K/Ar ages obviously made no sense to the Australian and Hawaiian teams, so these geologists backed by prestigious science organizations were careful not to rely on such a method. [These are scientists who believe in Intelligent Design who discovered human-like footprints with dinosaur footprints and have RC dated dinosaur bone fragments and carbonized wood when materials for K/Ar dating were unavailable in the strata (Morris 1980) (Fields 1990) (Baugh, Wilson 1991). They obtained RC ages of 12,800; 37,480 +2950/-2140; 37,420 +6120 -3430; 45,920 +/-5550/-3250 and >49,900 RC years which makes good sense for fossils from the flood period. This represents a real age of ~5350 BP (years before the present), Brown 1992].
The first case in point appeared in a Radiocarbon Journal; it came from the study of tektites in Victoria, Australia [Lake Torrens and Lake Eyre regions] called australites (J. F. Lovering, B. Mason 1970). The K/Ar dates for tektites ranged from 700,000 B.P. to 860,000 years BP. The K/Ar dating of tektites from Indonesia, Thailand, Indochina and Philippines agreed. Fission-track dating ranged from 30,000 to 800,000 BP and was interpreted as consistent with K/Ar ages. Younger ages for fission tracks were ascribed to partial annealing of fission tracks by reheating on the earth’s surface. Team members RC dated charcoal and calcareous nodules as they were found with australites (Gill, 1965). Their conclusion with regards the RC dates and field study was as follows:
“Although RC ages were inconsistent, field work on geology of australite occurrences favored the ‘younger’ C-14 age of charcoal believed associated with australites, as well as geologic evidence, indicated age between last glacial and 6000-7000 BP (Radiocarbon, 1970, p. 9). RC ages of calcareous nodules from soil horizon in which australites were found, scatter around 13,000 +/- 3000 BP (Radiocarbon, 1970, p. 11)."
Thus the tektites fell between 6,000 and ~13,000 RC years BP. Based on the formula for correlating RC dates to real dates, the projected actual dates were ~ 4,600-5,100 years BP, or shortly after the Deluge. The flood year in the formula is designated as 5,350 years BP (Brown, 1986, 1992). It is interesting to note that K/Ar direct dating of tektites from cores in the Chesapeake Bay Impact gave 35.5 million years (Spencer, Oard, 2004); had carbon datable material such as wood or shell fragments been RC dated from the cores they might have discovered a much more believable age.
A second case was in Hawaii (Moore, Moore, 1984). It was in a report entitled, “Deposit from a giant wave on the island of Lanai, Hawaii.” K/Ar dates for Basalt of 1.25 million years on Lanai Island and 0.4 million years on other Hawaiian islands containing similar conglomerates as the Hulopoe Gravel on Lanai [limestone boulders with gravel] were determined. But, by geological studies of the strata the deposits of limestone boulders with gravel were determined to have been deposited at the height of 326 meters (1,069 feet) above sea level by a ‘giant wave’ only 100,000 years Before the Present (BP). This date is nowhere near the alleged age of the K/Ar dates of 0.4-1.25 million years for nearby basalt. It’s unfortunate that they chose not, or could not, RC date some of the shells or other fossil material associated with the conglomerates; had they done so they might have come closer to the real age. Thus without RC dating, and just having an uniformitarian paradigm to work with, these scientists still detected by stratigraphy a much younger age than K/Ar provided for basalt..
In analyzing the cause of such a ‘gigantic wave’ the authors suggest:
“Because of the great run-up of the wave, it was probably not a seismic sea wave (like the tsunami that hit Indonesia etc. on December 26, 2004) caused by a subsea earthquake. Run-up of the highest recorded tsunami reached only 17 meters (56 feet) above sea level in Pololu Valley on the Island of Hawaii in 1946 (McDonald, 1947)”.
Accordingly the authors believe the cause of such a high wave of 326 meters (1,069 feet) could have been the following:
“Either the impact of a meteorite on the sea surface or a shallow submarine volcanic explosion could have generated the Hulopoe wave. We believe, however, that a more likely explanation is a rapid down slope movement of subsea landslide on the Hawaiian Ridge, which is among the steepest and highest landforms on earth The occurrence of several major subsea landslides of various ages, possibly triggered by local earthquakes, indicates that the Hawaiian Ridge is a site of repeated slope failure (Moore, 1964). An even higher wave resulted when a landslide in a confined fjord in Alaska in 1958 produced a run-up of 524 meters (1,718 feet), the highest on record (Miller, 1960) [Moore, Moore, 1984, p. 1314].
A Mt. St. Helens mud slide in 1980 caused Spirit Lake waters to surge upwards and stripped the trees right off slopes as high as 850 feet (Austin, 1986).
The wave heights for these short term catastrophic watery events must pale into insignificance when compared to the cataclysm noted in Genesis 7:11-12,
“In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, on the seventeenth day of the second month, on that very day all the fountains of the great deep burst forth, and the floodgates of the heavens were opened. 12. And rain fell on the earth forty days and forty nights.”(Douay Rheims Bible)
These single watery events with their huge waves moved boulders and broke up rock and knocked down trees but the great flood deposited sediments many thousands of feet thick in the earth’s basins with the cataclysm lasting many months.
Conclusions and recommendations:
Geologic events dated to millions of years by methods such as K/Are are in reality thousands of years old. Australites may have been part of a post flood event that could have included an asteroid impact that tilted the earth. (Setterfield, 1983).
Uniformitarian stratigraphy dating used in the above two cases are still inaccurate. This is cause for concern with regards a true understanding of historical geology.
The formula for correlating RC dates with real ages (Brown, 1992) appears to give a more reasonable age for arrival of the tektites.
There is now sufficient documented failures for the K/Ar radiometric dating method to suggest that when both basalt and burnt or carbonized wood are available, it makes good sense to K/Ar (and Ar/Ar as well) date the basalt and RC date the fossils. Such data will build a very strong case against old age radiometric methods as the two dates would be quite divergent. We thus encourage scientists to look for RC datable fossils associated with regional geologic events, then correlate these dates with the Brown formula.
If the ‘giant wave’ was a post-flood event associated with the infall of australites near Australia there could be several other causes:
Asteroid impaction (Setterfield, 1983).
Uplift of a large mountain mass like the Himalayas (Marchel, 1996, 1997
Asteroid and uplifts occurring simultaneously. But we probably will never know much more than we know now unless someone recovers RC datable fossils on the slopes of Lanai Island and in the same horizon with/or below the Hulopoe Gravel.
The uniformitarianists in their determination to show that K/Ar dating supports human evolution and millions of years for sedimentary deposition deceived the world and themselves by refusing to perform proposed lab experiments in 1975.
There is a need for a ‘grand unification study’ (summary paper perhaps) of all regional basins so far restudied by scientists to see how each fits into the big picture of a universal flood and post flood geologic events. It is very clear that sedimentology research by lab and flume experiments, by observations in the field and C-14 dating of fossils have demonstrated that the sedimentary principles on which the geologic column is based appears to have little value to true science.
It has been suggested that RC dating is a friend of creation and I agree 100% (Humphreys, 2004). There thus appears to be a need for much more research by radiocarbon dating of fossils. The theory behind the method of radiocarbon dating suffers from questionable assumptions as does all radiometric dating.
H. Miller, for the Paleochronology Group, Box 2613, Columbus OH 43216
I am indebted to several Paleo Group members for suggesting improvements to this letter report and several Kolbe Center advisory board members for their encouragement in this endeavor.
