No Evidence that the Young-Earth Creationist RATE Project Ever Endorsed Nuclear Wars before Noah’s Flood
Kevin R. Henke
September 15, 2022
In a discussion on the Hellenistic Era, Lundahl (2022f) makes a passing comment on the existence of nuclear wars before Noah’s Flood:
“Objection 2
Athens and China pretend to have started with Kekrops and Fu Hsi who had human torso and arms and head, but below the torse the body of a large snake.
Answer
Probably they were both born in the time after the Flood when cosmic radiation was higher from above and radiation from pre-Flood nuke wars in the ground was higher too, and were born with legs not properly separated, and managed to move by wiggling around. This didn't stop them from becoming leaders, unlike what it would in these days of medical tyranny.” [my emphasis]
In Henke (2022b), I responded to this comment:
“Once more, Lundahl (2022f) makes a huge mistake of just assuming that whatever view an ancient community may have had about its origin, it must be reliable history. No. Such stories about the founding of various communities may be fairly accurate history or they may contain legends or consist entirely of myths without historical evidence. It’s the job of historians to separate history from fantasy. Although we have plenty of evidence about New Amsterdam proceeding New York City, there’s not a shred of evidence for the existence of Moses or the Exodus, Moroni’s ghost and his golden plates, or the events in Matthew 28 and Acts 2 (Finkelstein and Silberman 2001; Fitzgerald 2013; Loftus 2010; Loftus 2011). Rather than realizing that half-human and half-snake creatures are probably just made-up stories like the centaurs, Lundahl (2022f) thinks that they may have been humans with fused legs. While such a birth defect is certainly possible, his reasoning for this defect in Lundahl (2022f) is not. Without any evidence whatsoever, Lundahl (2022f) argues that nuclear wars before Noah’s Flood contributed to their conditions. Of course, Flood geology is bogus and there’s no evidence whatsoever in the Precambrian for a 4,400-to-6,000-year-old civilization with nuclear weapons (see my essays against Flood Geology here). If Mr. Lundahl has evidence for such a nuclear ancient civilization, I want to see it and I’m willing to change my mind. Until that evidence ever comes forward, Mr. Lundahl is totally failing to separate history from his fantasies about the nuclear pre-Flood civilizations. The speculations about pre-Flood nuclear wars in Lundahl (2022f) are so bizarre, outrageous and unfounded that I doubt that even the young-Earth creationists at Creation Ministries International and Answers in Genesis would take them seriously.” [my emphasis]
Lundahl (2022o) then responds to my bolded comments:
“I think I even got the general idea from some remark in connexion with the RATE project. How about asking Jonathan Sarfati if my memory totally sucks, or not? But "failing to separate history from his fantasies" is not an argument about my actual arguments, it's an ad hominem.”
In 1997, a small group of young-Earth creationist PhDs associated with the Institute for Creation Research (ICR), the Creation Research Society (CRS) and Answers in Genesis (AiG) (then including what would later become Creation Ministries International, CMI) formed the RATE (Radioisotopes and the Age of The Earth) committee (Vardiman et al., 2000, pp. 6-7; Humphreys et al., 2004, pp. 3-4). The purpose of this “research” committee was to demonstrate their religious convictions that radiometric dating is wrong and that the Earth was young as indicated by their religious interpretations of Genesis. That is, they wanted to explain away radiometric dating. Over the years, I have extensively written about the total failure of one RATE project, in particular: Dr. Humphreys’ Young-Earth Helium Diffusion “Dates” from Zircons: After More than 15 Years, Still a Failure and Unable to Compete with Dr. Loechelt’s Uniformitarian Model: A 2020-2022 Update
The RATE committee concluded that radiometric dates were affected by periods of accelerated radioactive decay. YECs still disagree over whether these periods occurred during the Creation Week, Noah’s Flood, and/or perhaps at other times. As indicated in my essay and its references, the RATE claims about accelerated radioactive decay are totally without merit and have a serious heat problem.
I’m very familiar with the RATE literature and, as far as I know, Dr. Sarfati was never involved in the project. I also don’t recall Dr. Sarfati or anyone associated with RATE ever arguing that nuclear wars occurred before the Flood. Mr. Lundahl really needs to confirm his memory and check his sources before he makes such a claim and associates it with RATE. Nuclear wars might metamorphose or melt some rocks, but they’re not going to universally accelerate radioactive decay rates on the Earth, in meteorites or on the Moon. As for my criticism of Mr. Lundahl, I’m not committing an ad hominem fallacy. I am correctly attacking Mr. Lundahl’s speculations and correctly pointing out that they are groundless and bizarre. I am not attacking him personally.
References:
Humphreys, D.R., S.A. Austin, J.R. Baumgardner, and A.A. Snelling, 2004, “Helium Diffusion Age of 6,000 Years Supports Accelerated Nuclear Decay,” Creation Research Society Quarterly, v. 41, n. 1, June, pp. 1-16.
Vardiman, L., A.A. Snelling and E.F. Chaffin, eds., 2000, Radioisotopes and the Age of the Earth, Institute for Creation Research, El Cajon, CA and Creation Research Society, St. Joseph, Missouri. http://www.icr.org/i/pdf/research/rate-all.pdf (accessed August 2, 2022).