Old Earth (9 page)

“And we’ll never be able to resolve the interpretation of the word
day,
” Lobel said. “Twenty-four hours or eons?”

“It’s not open to interpretation,” Cohen shot back.

“Then how come this debate doesn’t go away?” McCauley proposed. The professor encouraged the argument and recognized that they would no more solve the question now than anyone on a college campus or church pulpit had before.

Trent said, “It’s all part of a political agenda.” He was showing his stripes. “Lots of different kinds of politics. Government, the church, even academia. They’re singing the chorus led by others. And who knows who else is out there in the shadows pulling strings?”

McCauley had the distinct impression that Chohany suddenly broke her eye contact.

Thirteen

OCTOBER 1, 1632
FIRENZE, ITALY

“Galileo Galilei?” the priest asked barely able to hide his nervousness in the home of the famed scientist.

The sixty-eight-year-old Galileo was unmistakable as he stooped before the priest in the anteroom. His twisted white beard flowed to collar length. A receding hairline pushed almost halfway back across his scalp. Galileo wore loose fitting pants and a thick, gray shirt with a ruffled, dirty-white collar that was pulled up over his neck to keep him warm. He looked old and certainly in ill health, but it was the scientist’s piercing brownish black eyes that warned the priest to measure his words carefully.

“Yes, and what is the occasion of your unscheduled visit?”

“By order of his Eminence, Pope Urban VIII, you are hereby ordered to present yourself to the Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Roman and Universal Inquisition at the Holy Office.”

“With what authority do you present such contrivance?” Galileo defiantly demanded.

“I am the Inquisitor of Florence,” the local priest, half Galileo’s age, affirmed.

“You?” Galileo hazarded a throaty, phlegm-filled laugh.

“You are compelled to comply.”

“And the charges against me?”

“They are here.”

The Inquisitor handed Galileo a document. The ailing scientist read the official declaration from the Vatican Inquisition. The principal charge referred back to 1616 when the church’s Index of Forbidden Books censored the works of Copernicus. At that time, Jesuit cardinal Robert Bellarmine instructed Galileo never to hold or defend the opinion that the Earth moved. Galileo agreed but arguably only loosely complied.

“I have a certificate signed by Cardinal Bellarmine that states I have no such restriction other than any applied under the edict of 1616.”

“Which, according to the charges, you violated. I suggest you find it.” The priest felt empowered and fully in control now. “Though such a paper should bring you little consolation.”

“This is how they come to me?” Galileo looked up to the heavens. He sighed heavily. “I would request that any proceedings against me, no matter how fabricated, be settled here.”

“His Holiness requests your presence in Rome.”

“But, as you can see, I am in ill health. An extended trip to Rome will take its toll.” Galileo coughed, not just for effect. He was sick.

His request was denied. In late January, 1633, Galileo began an arduous journey to Rome in the dead of winter. Twenty-three days later, two days before his sixty-ninth birthday, weakened by crippling sciatic pain, he took up residency in the Florentine embassy. Over the next four months, he tried to get his strength back to endure the private hearings and public humiliation. As he prepared, Galileo feared for what the Inquisitors would conclude from his writing given their strict Biblical interpretations, and what they might find if they explored further. He was certain the punishment would be death.

Fourteen

MAKOSHIKA STATE PARK, MT

The discussion from earlier in the day continued around a campfire.

McCauley used the time to better understand his team, their individual abilities and personal perspectives, and whether they could also listen and work well with others. It was good information for him and a character building exercise for them.

“Play the devil’s advocate now,” McCauley said.

“I’m not sure the devil needs an advocate,” Al Jaffe chided.

The gang laughed.

“Okay, okay. Got me,” McCauley acknowledged. “What I want are arguments in the affirmative that the earth is under ten thousand years old. And as you do, remember, you’re representing the view of nearly fifty percent of the country. Who’s first?”

The crackling wood in the fire pit didn’t drown anyone out because no one volunteered. McCauley could read the faces in the glow of the flames. This was going to be harder than he thought.

“I’ll kick it off with an assumption: Evolution cannot be observed. Therefore it doesn’t exist.”

It worked. Anna Chohany jumped right in. “But fossils—”

“Fossils? There aren’t any transitional fossils,” the professor quickly countered. “If the ancestor of today’s horse, supposedly
Miohippus,
evolved from
Mesohippus,
where are its fossils? And again, don’t argue against the proposition, speak in favor that since evolution cannot be observed in real time, it does not exist.”

“All right, though there are ways to support evolution under the microscope,” Adam Lobel offered.

“Nope. Stick with the argument.”

Leslie Cohen raised her hand ready to join the conversation, but Lobel held the floor.

“There’s the erosion of Niagara Falls. I could argue that it absolutely lines up with the timeline of a few thousand years since the flood. It proves we live on a young Earth because its erosion is consistent with biblical fact.”

“Not a lot of support, but it would make a strong sermon,” McCauley noted. “Give me more detailed thought that debunks
deep time
, the long-held view of evolutionists.”

Cohen put her hand down.

“Can I try again?” Lobel asked.

McCauley laughed. “Okay, sure. Back to the gentleman from Penn State.”

“The Grand Canyon. It was cut by the receding waters after the flood.”

“The Flood?” Trent asked.

“THE Flood,” Lobel responded. “The Noah’s Ark flood.”

“Got it, but to do so, the water would have had to rush through five times the speed of sound.” Trent was highly sarcastic.

“Whoa. I said no counter arguments. Not yet,” McCauley proclaimed. “Only positions that speak to our inhabiting a young earth.”

Anna Chohany was ready again. “Where are the geologic columns of recognizable soil layers? If deep time was correct, with two hundred million years of life on earth, there should be an overabundance of evidence in fossilized soil formation.” Role playing, the Harvard grad student sounded indignant. “There isn’t any!”

Al Jaffe stood up. “Ladies and gentlemen, both the Royal Greenwich Observatory and the U.S. Naval Observatory have made exacting measurements that show our sun is shrinking at a rate of roughly five feet per hour. Moreover, records of a dwindling number of solar eclipses over the last four centuries reinforce the shrinkage. A smaller sun by the year, fewer opportunities for the heavenly phenomena to occur. Even the most zealous evolutionists would have to deduce that if the sun existed millions of years ago, it would have been so
ginormous
that it would have cooked the earth and no species could have lived here. Ergo, young Earth.”

His argument brought a round of applause.

“Nice job, Mr. Jaffe. Deeper reasoning. You may sit down now.”

“There are other astronomical arguments. Anyone? Mr. Tamburro?”

“Well,” he started slowly. “This wasn’t going to be my example, but I can go with it. Up there.” He pointed to the crescent moon. “Consider the rate the moon accumulates meteoritic dust. If it were really billions of years old, that layer should be a mile deep. NASA was concerned about that when they sent the Apollo astronauts to the moon. They worried that they’d sink into dust. But there was very little, which to them proved that the moon, like the Earth, is young.”

“Hadn’t considered that,” McCauley said, complimenting him. “Let’s go back to Leslie. Looks like you’ve been thinking something through.”

“I have. It’s about the spin down rate of the earth.”

“The what?” Rodriguez asked.

“The spin down rate,” she repeated. “Atomic clocks have measured the earth’s rate of rotation for the past three decades to billionths of a second. They’ve found that the earth is slowing down almost a second a year. If the earth were as old as the evolutionists claim, its initial spin rate would have been so fast that the earth would have been a different shape. Therefore it is not billions, only thousands of years old.”

“Wow, that was good!” Cohen’s boyfriend, Adam Lobel, said. “Very good. Now how about this? It’s absolutely improbable for life forms, as complex as they are, to develop by chance. It’s like saying that a tornado could rip through a junkyard and create an Alfa Romeo or a Boeing 777. Improbable? No, impossible. There’s intelligent design to it all. There’s a creator.”

It was the first mention of a higher force by anyone in the group. It was followed by complete silence.

McCauley let the quiet settle in. Then he spoke just above a whisper.

“We’re not going to change people’s minds. Young Earthers base their evidence on their own set of facts and their faith. They maintain that since evolutionary phenomena can’t be observed in motion, they doesn’t exist. That since evolution doesn’t explain things like the Big Bang, it is therefore false. That scientists disagree on its veracity. And most importantly, new species do suddenly appear through intelligent design. They claim we are evidence of that.

“Certainly many of the arguments are deeply held, unshakable beliefs by everyday people, your own clergy, dedicated fathers and mothers, teachers, police officers, librarians, computer experts, perhaps members of your families.”

This brought some nods.

“They’re also propagandized and exploited for political and financial reasons by those in government and media personalities who preach through their own commercial pulpits. The views become valuable political capital for lobbyists and corporations. So, we must work hard to patiently separate argument from beliefs.”

“That’s impossible,” Jaffe complained.

“Your impossibility is someone else’s faith.”

“And their faith negates the possible.
X
is the age of the earth and they claim that
A
is evidence of it.”

“Basically.”

“Then conversely,
not A
is evidence against their
X.
But they won’t consider that,” he added.

“No they don’t because they don’t
believe
it,” McCauley offered. “Belief is different from consideration. They hold intelligent design near and dear. So while you may chalk up Young Earthers’ arguments to pseudo-science, absurd ‘uniformitarianism,’ unsupported assumptions, false dilemmas, affirming a consequence or invoking miraculous violations of physics, you cannot sway basic religious belief. We can refute them and challenge data mining, but when it comes down to fundamental convictions, we’ll have no more luck turning
them
around than they will
us
.”

“So what’s the point of what we do, Dr. McCauley?” Leslie Cohen seemed to speak for her colleagues. “What’s the chance of making a significant new find? Who’s to say there is anything new to discover, that there’s nothing remarkable right here?”

Quinn McCauley smiled. Leslie Cohen had just stepped into what he liked to describe as
intellectual quicksand
.

McCauley paced, which made it look like he was thinking. But he knew exactly what to say. He didn’t want to embarrass her. That could humiliate the young woman and destroy the team building that was so important for the full summer experience.

“All fair questions, Leslie,” he finally said. “But how about if I flip it around. What if we’re all standing atop something remarkable? Groundbreaking? Astounding? Right here. This very spot.” He pointed straight down. “But we’re exploring over there a thousand feet away.”

“Bad luck,” Leslie replied, taking McCauley’s bait.

“There’s an expression.”

“I’m sure there is,” Jaffe called out.

“Really. It’s been used and misused by a wide variety of people—for laying down scientific theories and for strictly political reasons. You can find examples from astronomer Carl Sagan to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and a slew of others. Anyone?” He waited a few seconds before picking up the point. “That’s okay. I’m happy to share it. It’s simple. The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.”

McCauley saw recognition on some of the faces. Others were working through the circular phrasing.

“I know. It’s hard on the ear. Let me give it to you again. The absence of evidence,” he paused, “is not evidence of absence.”

Now it registered across the board.

“Someone want to take a stab at it?”

Carlos Rodriguez raised his hand. “Mathematically, if you look for
X,
but don’t find it, it doesn’t mean
X
doesn’t exist.”

“Excellent. Now practical examples.”

Chohany spoke up next. “Rumsfeld was making the case that just because the U.N. didn’t find WMD in Iraq it didn’t rule out the possibility that they had them.”

McCauley nodded approvingly and saw that Rich Tamburro had another idea.

“Take life like us on other planets. We haven’t found any yet, but that can’t suggest that we won’t ever. I suppose that was Sagan’s argument.”

It was going well. Now to see if the young woman who proposed the question was following the line of thinking. “Ms. Cohen?” he asked.

“Dinosaurs,” she admitted. “New species, new genus. We won’t know until we find them.”

“Very good,” McCauley said. “There is an actual probability theory in support of the proposition. If I had the whiteboard up, it would be easier. So, consider yourself spared from classroom pedagogy.”

McCauley heard an “amen” and “thank goodness.”

“Just trust me,” he continued, “it weighs probability against events in the favor of evidence. In our realm, Young Earthers and creationists might assert that the lack of some fossils disprove evolution. But specific proof may be missing because fossilization is not a democratic process. It has not occurred with every specimen or species.”