by Dan Phelps and Brandon Nuttall
Editor’s Note: This article originally appeared at Panda’s Thumb. We have re-published it here with the authors’ permission.
This article, “How Long Have Arches Been Around?,” by Dr. Danny Faulkner, describes creationist “research” into geomorphology. It is laughably bad, even for creationists. Natural arches and bridges are aesthetically interesting, but are only a tiny part of some geomorphology studies.
In this piece, Dr. Faulkner* extrapolates backward to “show” that arches in Arches National Park, Utah, have formed since Noah’s Flood, about 4,500 years ago. He claims this timeframe because of
- Biblical literalism. Employees of Answers in Genesis must sign a Statement of Faith that posits that the earth and universe are 6,000 years old, and that most geology is a result of Noah’s Flood, approximately 4,500 years ago.
- An exponential rate of arch collapse. Faulkner states he doesn’t use a linear decline in numbers of arches because no arches would remain after 4,500 years. No consideration is given to the possibility of much longer time scales, or changes in climate and erosion rates. Change in regional climates over time is ignored, possibly because the young earth creationists at AIG cram the nearly 2 million years of Pleistocene glacial maxima into a single ice age of only 200 years after the Flood.
Conveniently, AiG uses this denial of the Pleistocene to also ignore evidence for past climate changes and the evidence scientists use to support anthropogenic climate change in the present. Faulkner has invented his model by assuming that an exponential model is the best for arch collapse, and then he fits things assuming the rate is 43 arches in 29 years.
However, his scholarship is abysmally shoddy. Conceivably, it would be possible to make a plot of cumulative arches lost vs. time. This would be a more accurate method for modeling. However, Faulkner just assumes the loss rate was constant (a cumulative arches-vs.-time chart would show the accuracy of that assumption).
He also seems to assume that the collapse of arches in Utah is related solely to the minerals cementing the sandstone that the arches are formed from. He doesn’t document any effort to examine records to see if any collapses were associated with long term climate changes, intense storms, seismic events, vandalism, and innumerable other possible causes.
Faulkner also assumes a uniform rate of arch formation. He then uses his model and that assumption to show that, in his view, there would have been an implausible number of arches if the Earth were as old as earth scientists claim.
All his equations are a smoke screen, an appeal to look like scientific research when religious apologetics is what is actually being presented. In short, this is a parody of how science is actually done. The 4,500 year time frame and the Flood are required by AIG’s peculiar version of a “Biblical Worldview,” which is more than a bit of a science stopper and a weird excuse to start with creationist conclusions and work backwards.
Dr. Faulkner oddly discusses Kentucky arches in Red River Gorge in addition to Arches National Park, but cannot do a similar calculation for the Kentucky arches, as arch collapse here in Kentucky has not been documented. The reported observations in Kentucky are another smoke screen in the article, basically a non sequitur. The discovery/documentation rate of arches in Kentucky has no bearing on their rate of formation or collapse (and the same holds for Utah).
Dr. Faulkner’s apparent assumption of the evolution of arches from formation to collapse is naive. Surely, the height, span, and dimensions of the suspended material are factors to consider. Not all arches are formed in the same fashion: some are formed by wind or water erosion; some by collapse. Not all arches are in the same topographic position: some are isolated and exposed on points; some are parallel to cliff faces. The relationship to and importance of natural fracturing differs among arches. If Dr. Faulkner considered these factors, he didn’t document his efforts. Our assumption is that he was unaware of these complications or deliberately chose to ignore them (and didn’t document why he did so).
The nonscientific method used by Answers in Genesis “researchers” results in the publication of materials that don’t reflect reality very well; yet AiG’s conclusions are held by millions of our fellow citizens. Faulkner’s piece is a dazzle-them-with-sciency-sounding-stuff faux research that confirms AIG and their audience’s preexisting biases. The public deserves better. It should be part of our job as earth scientists to do a better job of explaining science to the public.
*Faulkner’s Ph.D. is in astronomy; he works as a researcher for Answers in Genesis. He has some family ties to the region and occasionally has led paid AIG creationist hiking tours of Red River Gorge and its arches.
Appendix. If you are interested in Kentucky geology, here and here are field guides to the Red River Gorge area written by geologists (and you can use these guidebooks to visit the public sites for free!). The Kentucky Geological Survey has a project and map service dedicated to Kentucky arches for the hiking public. (Arches on private land are generally excluded from this database.)
Did astronomer Dr Faulkner (who seems more sensible than the likes of Ken Ham and Martyn Iles to me even though he works for AiG) manage to calculate the age correctly ie the approximately 4,000 years ago that AiG adhere to (and which ‘Is Genesis History?’ would presumably agree with)? I’ll have a closer look a bit later.
Faulkner’s argument is a form (actually an extreme and illegitimate form) of *uniformitarianism*, which since the 1960s, if not earlier, has been explicitly rejected by Young Earth creationists as philosophically illegitimate.
There are three kinds of uniformitarianism: law uniformitarianism, which asserts that the laws of nature were the same in the past as they are now; process uniformitarianism, which asserts that the processes at work have been the same in the past as they are at present; and rate uniformitarianism, which asserts that the rate of processes in the past can be inferred from the rate we have today.
Law uniformitarianism is clearly justified, since if it were not, the structures we observe today would not have formed. This argument can now be extended back to early in the history of our universe. Process uniformitarianism is confirmed up to a point by observation; the raindrops on billion years old mudstone are the same as raindrops being formed today. Rate uniformitarianism is never valid as an assumption. For example, we know that rates of uplift and erosion have varied dramatically with time and place over the course of history.
Yet it is rate uniformitarianism that forms the basis of Faulkner’s argument. The assumption of a fixed rate constant, which Young Earth creationists fiercely attack when applied (correctly) to radioactive decay, is here applied to superficial geological processes which must surely have been influenced, both in the formation and the removal of arches, by the climatic changes that the creationists themselves admit to have happened since the sediments were first laid down.
Faulkner’s numbers suggesting numbers of arches and rates of collapse in the past (available past for a YEC) and future also seem to envisage all the arches in the national park being situated alongside lakes or rivers (the cause of the collapse of Double Arch, nest to Lake Powell, being said to result from water or wave erosion and changing water tables). But Delicate Arch, Landscape Arch and Balanced Rock may not be in such places and may be less prone to collapse (though I don’t discount wind or windblown sand or occasional rainstorms or maybe even frost in winter).
I’m writing having now read the Panda’s Thumb and Righting America pieces in full. The original article did address other reasons why uniformitarian plus exponential mathematical calculations might well be inappropriate.
Perhaps the article should have been entitled Young Earth Creationist astronomer calculates rate of Utah natural arch collapses based on the arches only being formed after Noah’s Flood of 4,000 years ago.’