From: LARRY SITES                                      5 Aug 94  19:50
To  : ALL
Subj: ICR Lunacy

A while back, I reported on the ICR's half hour radio show called 
"Apollo, Quest for the Moon". It concluded by offering a free 
publication, "The Moon, Creation, and Composition" by calling 
1-800-743-6374, for more details. Well, today I got my copy of this 
little gem. Guess what, Duane Gish is now an astrophysicist! He's 
the author of a 24 page tract that confidently proclaims God created 
the moon.

Gish says, "Creation scientists, based on the clear and unequivocal 
statements in the Word of God, and firmly supported by well- 
established natural laws and the failure of all theories on the 
evolutionary origin of the universe, accept the supernatural, 
special creation of the universe, which, of course, includes the 
origin of the solar system with its earth and moon." (page 5) After 
quoting Genesis 1:14-16, Psalm 33:6,9, and Genesis 2:1-3, He says, 
"Thus, using special processes operating nowhere in the natural 
universe today, God created all the heavenly bodies, including the 
earth, the moon, the sun, and all the other objects in the solar 
system." (page 6)

Gish then goes on to totally misrepresent the October 1984, Kona, 
Hawaii conference of the moon origin as documented in _Origin of the 
Moon_ by WK Hartman, RJ Phillips, and GJ Taylor, Eds, Lunar and 
Planetary Institute, Houston, TX, 1986. In typical Gish fasion, he 
culls quotes out of context, such as "... solving the mystey of the 
Moon's orgin was billed as a major goal of lunar exploration." 
followed shortly with "As it turned out, neither the Apollo 
astronauts, the Luna vehicles, nor all the king's hourses and all 
the king's men could assemble enough data to explain circumstances 
of the Moon's birth". (Both from _OofM_ prefix p.vii) Gish 
concludes, "What these data were sufficient to do was to falsify all 
the theories on the origin of the moon that had been contenders up 
until that time."

He then asks retorically if creation will be accepted by science, 
no, but as expected by "creation scientists" the moon did not arise 
by a scientifically explainable process. He goes on to briefly 
explain 3 leading theories and their fatal flaws. He discusses the 
intact capture, coaccretion, and fission theories. Painting the 
latter in it's worst possible, to a creationist, light by 
associating it with Darwin and quoting a 1936 government radio 
program!

After suggesting that the failure of these 3 theories should cause 
scientists to abandon their ideas about the age of the earth, Gish 
says, "A new theory was desperately needed, causing theorists on the 
origin of the moon to rethink the whole problem. Not yet willing to 
admit that the problem is intractable (most would never consider 
supernatural creation), and never short on imagination, these 
theorists have come up with a new idea: collision ejection theory." 
(page 15) That is a impact by a large object while the earth was 
still molten, causing ejection of moon material. He then says, 
without naming any, that the theory "involves a series of 
assumptions, by nature of which most are untestable. No attempt has 
been made to account for the chemical composition of the moon that 
would have been produced by formation of the moon by collisional 
ejection." (page 16) After quoting the 1986 report on the 1984 
conference saying that the theory is so new that problems aren't yet 
apparent, Gish judges that, "It is popular today only because of the 
consistent failure of all other models." (page 17) He concludes, "We 
can say with great confidence, then, that the results of the Apollo 
explorations to the moon, and data from all other sources as well, 
contradict and frustrate all human efforts to provide a naturalistic 
evolutionary origin of the moon. The uniqueness of the moon, as is 
also increasingly apparent from every other object in the solar 
system, is providing powerful, positive evidence for their special 
creation by God as proclaimed in [the bible]." (page 17)

Gish spends the last few pages rehashing radiometric dating methods. 
He says they, "are based on a series of assumptions, and thus the 
accuracy of the method depends, of course, on the reliability of 
these assumptions. These assumptions have been questioned, and the 
vast ages thus derived have been challenged." (page 17) He gives 3 
references for these "challenges": JC Whitcomb and DB DeYoung, _The 
Moon - Its Creation, Form, and Significance_, BMH Books. Winona 
Lake, IN. 1978, p. 99; JC Whitcomb and HM Morris, _The Genesis 
Flood_, Baker Book House, Grand Rapids, MI, 1961, pp. 333-344; and 
HM Morris, _Scientific Creationism_, 2nd Ed., Creation-Life 
Publishers, Colorado Springs, CO, 1985, pp. 137-149.

He reproduces Table IV-4 from Whitcomb and DeYoung which lists 12 
Apollo rock samples along with ages from Uranium-Thorioum-Lead 
Methods (2 columns, a low and high), age from Potassium-Argon 
Method, and a column labeled "Age Inconsistencies, extremes" which 
appears to be the difference between the highest and lowest values 
from the other 3 columns! He quotes out of context from _OofM_ a 
statement that the differences may place the age estimates in 
"jeopardy" and he concludes that billion year ages "may be in 
serious doubt according to these scientists." (page 20) He then 
states that the 2 Morris books describe a "great number of physical 
processes that indicate a young age". (page 20)

Gish summarizes by paraphrasing the scientists shooting down Gish's 
strawman version of their own theories and being "embarrassed" that 
"they still have little idea where the moon came from." (page 21) 
Gish ends with, "... the best statement we can make, scientifically, 
concerning the origin of the moon is still "In the beginning God 
created the heavens and the earth'"

As much as possible, I have tried to refrain from comment as I typed 
the above, prefering to let Gish hang himself. Between the time I 
ordered and received this booklet, I acquired from America OnLine an 
article by G. JEFFREY TAYLOR in SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN July 1994  
Volume 271  Number 1 Pages 40-47 on this very subject. The specific 
title was not included in the article and I can't remember it. 
Comparing the SA article by one of the authors of the work that Gish 
misrepresents is quite enlightening.

Gish makes it appear the the impact theory was created at the last 
minute only when it became clear that the others failed. That is 
false. Taylor refers to it thus, "I wondered what new twists the 
proponents for these fatally flawed ideas [the three strawmen 
knocked down by Gish, LS] would devise. Although modifications were 
indeed presented, we were all surprised by the enthusiastic 
reception given to a long-ignored idea: the giant impact theory. 
Among the most surprised was conference co-organizer Hartmann, and 
he was one of the inventors of the notion. By the end of the 
deliberations, a clear consensus formed in support of the idea that 
the impact of a large projectile with the growing earth dislodged 
the material that would form the moon. Of course, skeptical diehards 
and others desperately clinging to one of the old ideas remained, 
but the giant impact theory of lunar origin enchanted most 
participants. The idea was not really brand-new. Like an actor who 
achieves "overnight success" after years of small roles, the giant 
impact theory was a bit player for a long time.

Hartmann and his colleague Donald R. Davis proposed the impact 
theory in 1975. They had been investigating the accumulation of 
planets from smaller objects and noticed that numerous large bodies 
would have wandered near the earth. A few could have been as large 
as Mars. Hartmann and Davis hypothesized that the earth collided 
with such an object. As a result, some of the debris was launched 
into orbit, providing raw material for the moon. Alastair G. W. 
Cameron of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and 
William R. Ward of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, 
Calif., independently suggested the same idea one year later as they 
tried to resolve the angular momentum problem. They also addressed 
the details of the mechanism by which the material could achieve 
orbit and not fall back to the earth. The work of Hartmann and Davis 
had been anticipated almost 30 years before by the late geologist 
Reginald A. Daly of Harvard University. Two distinguished pioneers 
of lunar science, Ralph B. Baldwin of the Oliver Machinery Company 
in Grand Rapids, Mich., and Don E. Wilhelms of the U.S. Geological 
Survey in Menlo Park, Calif., found that Daly had suggested in 1946 
that the moon formed from the earth by the glancing impact of a 
planet-size object. Although Daly's analysis contains errors, the 
giant impact idea is clearly stated in this insightful but 
completely ignored paper. Even if Daly's work had been widely read, 
it might have been discounted: the paper was published before 
scientists realized that impacts were an important planetary process 
[see "Prematurity and Uniqueness in Scientific Discovery," by 
Gunther S. Stent; SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, December 1972]."

Gish also stated that "No attempt has been made to account for the 
chemical composition of the moon [assuming the impact theory is 
correct]." I'm no chemist, but Taylor uses about half of his article 
space talking about what appears to me to be just exactly that! 
Apparently Gish has been so busy for the last 10 years trying to 
find things in the 84 conference report to misquote that he doesn't 
know what's going on NOW.

I wonder how long it will take Gish to update this misleading 
propaganda piece?


 Peace, Larry
___
 * WR  # 398 * I started out with nothing & still have most of it left.