Bernie Goldberg said tonight that those who hold to creation science are somehow ignorant. He’s usually a better journalist than that.

What Goldberg said

Adherence to three creation/evolution positions over time. Source: Gallup.

Goldberg made his remarks to Fox News host Bill O’Reilly tonight (August 29) on The O’Reilly Factor.

If any candidate says, “I believe that the earth is 6,000 years old because the Bible says so,” or that dinosaurs walked around with human beings, then…that kind of ignorance will affect something, and we ought to know about it.

Was Goldberg talking about Rick Perry? He never said.

He and O’Reilly were talking about New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller’s earlier crude remarks. Keller belittled the Roman Catholic doctrine of “trans-substantiation” during the Catholic communion. Goldberg said that Keller had gone to far, and would never have dared make a remark like that about Jews or especially about Muslims.

Goldberg clearly does not know that a candidate might have another reason for believing that the earth is 6,000 years old (give or take 200 years). That reason: a proper study of the raw data in astronomy or geology leads one to conclude that, and with no escape. Similarly, one might believe that dinosaurs walked this earth side-by-side with man, before and after the Flood. And for good reason: witnesses have described those creatures. Job (who described “Behemoth” and “Leviathan”) was not the only one.

The hidden gems of creation science

Bernie Goldberg has no reason to accept the atheistic, evolutionistic, uniformitarian narrative on the origins of the universe, the earth, and life. Has he not suffered enough at the hands of key leaders of the mainstream media, all of whom promulgate that narrative? Sadly, in saying that anyone who rejects that narrative is “ignorant,” Goldberg acts like a typical lazy “journalist.” He accepts the standard narrative uncritically—that is, without making his own judgment about it.

Take the age of the earth. Uniformitarian geologists (who insist that all processes operating today, operate always and at never-changing rates) say that the earth is 4.5 billion years old. They typically cite the ratios of certain radioactive elements to the elements that they might have transformed into. (Before Henri Becquerel discovered radioactivity, uniformitarians believe that the age of the earth was infinite.)

Creation science came about when certain men boldly questioned the accepted “wisdom” of the preceding 100 years. The first modern work in creation science was The Genesis Flood. In it, Henry Morris and John Whitcomb said that the Great Flood could have happened. Only later would another, still bolder scientist say flatly that it did happen.

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Nor does creation science founder on the “rocks” of radiometric dating. Indeed the opposite is true. How, for instance, can dacite seem to have five different ages, varying from half a million to 2.8 million years—a scant ten years after it formed? How can a tree be only 37,000 years old—while the surrounding rock is millions of years old? And these are only the first two examples that prompted the Radioisotopes and the Age of The Earth (RATE) project. That project has shown many more discrepancies in radiometric dating.

ALL of the samples taken from volcanic eruptions of known times and dates are carefully collected and sent to the labs. Then they ALWAYS come back dated at 100,000s to millions of years old. ALWAYS. NEVER do they come back from the lab, with the note: Too young to measure. It is a definite pattern. If you know the date of the source of the rock, they say you don’t have to accept this dating technique’s numbers… but if its an unknown sample, then they say: “Oh, you can trust the lab dates!”.

Yes—right up to the time when someone gets lab dates on a known sample. Then, as they did in the Mount Saint Helens case, the enemies of creation science cry, “FOUL!”

Bernie Goldberg should look more diligently for sources in creation science than he has done. He then might find the same sources that your editor has found, in patient study dating back more than twenty years. He then might learn that creation science has far more than the Bible narrative to back it up.

A challenge to a debate

In fact, Dr. Walter T. Brown, who laid out the first unified theory of creation and the Flood, has issued a standing challenge. He wishes to debate someone on his scientific discoveries and insights, either in writing or by tele-conference.

The credibility of creation and the flood, as a scientific matter, should rise or fall based on evidence, not the religious beliefs of either side of this debate.

Why have so many people refused this offer? Goldberg should take an interest in that. Especially since the debate has certain rules. No one on either side of this debate may:

1. Cite or refer to a religious writing,
2. Talk about a deity or a belief as something to laugh at, or
3. Try to use a religious writing as evidence for a scientific claim.

Obviously, Brown is confident enough in his case for a 6,000-year-old earth to challenge the best scientific minds to attack it. He also is willing to defend it in strictly scientific terms.

Who, then, is ignorant?

Bernie Goldberg can plead simple ignorance. He has never studied creation science. If he had, he might never have made the mistake he made on Bill O’Reilly’s show.

Those who insist that the earth is 4.5 billion years old, in the face of evidence that their “clock” is wrong, have a different problem. To them, the narrative is more important than the truth. They are the ones clinging to a faith—or rather, an anti-faith.

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