On Sat, 28 Sep 1996, Alan M Feuerbacher wrote:
> Glenn said,
>
> >Having watched this thread without getting involved it is now going to the
> >stage of urban myth. I finally walked the 25 feet to my library and got Scott
> >Huse's book The Collapse of Evolution and Tom Barnes, Impact #110.
>
> Dang, you beat me to it. I went out and bought Huse's book today and
> dug out my Impacts, too.
>
> >First, Neither Huse nor Barnes give the 5.6 cm/year figure. That figure was
> >given by Alan Feuerbach who does not believe that the moon's recession
> >presents a problem for evolutionists (unless you have changed, Alan, since we
> >last exchanged e-mails about 3 years ago.)
>
> Nope.
Just a reminder, the source Alan cited for the 5.6 cm/year figure was a
scientific american article from 82.
>
> >He merely states it and cites the wrong page (page 4 instead of page 1 or 2)
> >of Barnes' 1982 impact article.
Huse mis-cites this in both his 1983 editions and his 1993 edition.
>
> Not only that, but Huse's previous "argument", that the earth's rotation
> slowing down proves a young earth, cites the wrong page of the reference.
> The reference is to Randy Wysong's _The Creation-Evolution Controversy_
> (Inquiry Press, 1976, pp. 164-6). And guess what? Wysong took his
> argument from Thomas Barnes, referencing the ICR's _Acts and Facts_,
> 3 (July-August, 1974). Of course, Wysong gave no values or calculations
> either.
>
> In the No. 110 _Impact_ article Barnes referenced his earlier article
> in _Impact_ No. 16, which summarized several of Lord Kelvin's
> calculations on the age of the earth. But Barnes failed to realize
> that quoting Lord Kelvin on the age of the earth is like quoting him
> on the completeness of Newtonian physics -- he simply didn't have all
> the data to make correct conclusions. Furthermore, Kelvin was more
> than a bit arrogant. He once calculated that powered flight was not
> possible. In 1895 he said that he thought scientists such as himself
Do you have a reference on this flight comment by Kelvin?
> had pretty well wrapped up all there was to know about the world.
> Later that year, of course, radioactivity was discovered, laying the
> foundation for the transition to quantum physics and giving Kelvin a
> bit of egg to clean up.
>
> Anyway, Barnes nowhere gives any calculations in the _Impact_ articles,
> and I bet he doesn't in the _Acts and Facts_ article either.
>
I wonder if it was really lifted from an article he cites by Slichter
1964 because Barnes said on page 2 of the impact article that slichter
said that the "the time scale of the earth-moon system still presents a
major problem."
> This brings up an interesting trend among young-earth creationist
> authors. They seem to quote each other without ever checking each
> other's calculations or arguments. Here we have Huse referencing
> Wysong and Barnes, Wysong referencing Barnes, and Barnes referencing
> the 19th century physicist Lord Kelvin. It appears that young-earth
> creationism rests solidly on 19th century knowledge.
>
well the Kelvin (that is, Barnes Impact article 16) seems to be more
about rotation rather than the distance to the moon.
I feel that now I have to be in the strange position of defending YEC's
in general. We really shoulding judge all YEC's behaviors based on
Huse. Indeed, I think Huse's book is one of my top two absolute worst
creationist books, which is saying something about its quality. My
favorite game to play with Huse's book is "count the secondary sources."
I remember checking all the quotes to see how many of them were primary
quotes. I no longer have the numbers, but the percentage was very high
for that sort of thing (it should be zero). My favorite example is a
quote from Charles Darwin regarding the eye. Obviously, the reference
should be one of Darwin's books, but if you have Huse's book, look it up
(the quote is on page 73 in the first edition, 94 in the second). You'll
find he cites Shute 1961! For the next part of the fun, try and find the
text in the second half of the quote - after the ellipse. It's in there
(Darwin) - count the number of pages of text removed in the ellipse!
Indeed, I caught a very clear citation error in Huse's book. I e-mailed
Huse and informed him of the error and he promised to corrected by the
next printing of his second edition. At the time, the second edition
just came out. I just got a brand new copy of the second edition in my
mail today (free thanks to D James Kennedy). It's still in there (that
might be the publisher's fault, but I'm still irked). Here's the error.
Huse cites a quote in the introduction and the source is:
Strokes, William and William Lee 1966 ....
Well, building my reference database, I decided to check this one. No
such book. There is a book with the same title and year by:
Stokes, William Lee, 1966...(btw, notice his name is Stokes, not Strokes)
Commonly, library computers will have errors or appear like this:
Stokes, William (William Lee)
but if it's a library error or misinterpretation, why didn't he notice
the error when he looked up the book? Misspelling a name is one thing,
but mistaking one author for two? This brings up two obvious questions.
First, after 10 years, he didn't bother to double check, isn't that
sloppy? Second, did he really look up that quote or is that also secondary?
Huse's book, both editions, are riddled with this sort of thing.
However, I don't think it's really fair to accuse YEC's of poor work
based on what Huse did. After all, these kinds of mistakes are made in
all fields, not just YECs. Huse's book can stand as a horrible example
of this sort of thing, but beyond that, we should be cautious.
Tom