Here is a video sent to me by an atheist who asked for help in refuting it. It was sent to him by an “arrogant christian”. I’ll warn you, it’s almost 27 minutes long and incredibly irritating to watch. But I’m sharing it with you because we are working on logical fallacies for our next meeting, as well as reading Nonsense by Robert Gula for the Book Club.
It would be awesome if we all could comment or email Neece with refutations against all the lies and logical fallacies used. If you send in an email, I’ll post it to share with everyone. Or comment below and we can all add to it little by little. 
Cross-posted from Heaving Dead Cats
Normally I don’t watch videos like this in effort to refute them, because it takes much longer to research the claims than it does to originally make them. But I’ll try to have watched it by Sunday and send you my comments.
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Neece Reply:
August 27th, 2009 at 2:24 pm
I know, Gerald. I agree. I think it’s good practice, but I hate doing it. I keep putting it off myself.
Oh, and here’s my first comment about the video:
Argument from Authority: When quoting the bible exclusively, why does he need to wear a lab coat and call himself a chemist? Because he’s trying to validate himself as a trusted expert.
But how is a chemist an expert in geology, astrophysics, astronomy, anthropology, etc? He’s not, of course. Whatever background he has is irrelevant to what he’s arguing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority
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I watched the entire video and took notes. Basically it is just your typical creationist nonsense. I’ll post my reply tomorrow.
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Neece Reply:
August 27th, 2009 at 3:50 pm
Awesome, looking forward to it!
I know it seems typical to us, but to a lot of people they have no defense against this. I am thinking of people on the fence, like my mother, who has a vague idea that science is probably right, but no idea how to handle this nonsense.
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Here is my write up for the John Pendleton video. I know there are refutation of it on YouTube, but telling someone to watch a certain video always seems lazy to me.
First of all, I don’t really know if John Pendleton is a scientist at all, or if he even has a degree. I did a quick search on him and didn’t find much about him.
I’ll go through Pendleton’s claims in the order they appear in the video. He starts off assuming the Bible is literally true, and goes from there. Throughout the video he refers to the Bible and discards any evidence that shows it might be incorrect. You can’t just assume that something is true, it must be based on evidence. It would be like assuming The Lord of the Rings is literally true and trying to argue that Europe 20,000 years ago was really like the way it was depicted in the books. Basically Pendleton assumes the Bible is true because it is the Bible. This is circular logic. It’s like assuming Crest toothpaste is the best at fighting cavities because Crest toothpaste says so.
Pendleton claims the Flood occurred ~4000 years ago. There is no evidence for a global flood. If there was such a flood, there should be a thin uniform layer near the top of the geologic column. This layer would be filled with the remains of a multitude of creatures, since they would have all died in the Flood. We should expect modern and ancient flora and fauna mixed together in this layer, but we don’t. We also have an unbroken archeological record dating back to before the supposed time of the flood. These are just a few problems with the idea of a global flood 4000 years ago.
Pendleton says that the Big Bang occurred 20 billion years ago. This is incorrect, the Big Bang happened just under 14 billion years ago. He also calls it an explosion, which is also wrong. It was an expansion of matter, not an explosion.
Pendleton says that no one knows where earth got its water. No one knows for sure, but earth’s water could have came from comets. Or the water could have come from the early earth’s hydrogen rich atmosphere reacting with oxides in the earth’s crust.
Pendleton uses the Luke genealogy presented in the Bible to calculate the age of the earth. He ignores the fact that there are two conflicting genealogies, one in Matthew and the other in Luke. He also uses a span of fifty years for a human generation, which is a bit too high. Human generations are usually considered to be 20-25 years.
Pendleton claims the geologic column can only be found in textbooks. The entire geologic column does exist in certain parts of the world. The Bonaparte Basin of Australia and the Williston Basin of North Dakota are two examples. The entire column does not have to exist all in one place in order for it to be understood. There is enough overlap in many parts of the world to figure out the column anyway.
Pendleton next portrays a straw man version of evolution, by claiming that worms turn into fish; the fish into frogs; the frogs into a cat; the cat into chimps; and the chimp into humans. This is incredibly wrong and would take a great deal of explaining to clear up. For example, no one claims that humans came from chimps. We share a common ancestor with them, but are not direct descendants. We are cousins.
Pendleton also describes evolution as “chance”, when in fact it is the opposite of chance. It is selection of random variations introduced into a population.
Next he claims that the Mississippi delta isn’t old enough. He doesn’t seem to know that the sediments do not sit around forever, they get washed away and broken down.
Pendleton claims that the Bristlecone pine and Sequoia trees are just the right age to have began growing after the flood. Speaking of trees, there are tree rings, which are often used to date past events in human history. They go back 8000 years.
The next argument he uses deals with human population. He assumes that the population growth is constant, and that it is the same as today’s. Human population was relatively stable and remained low until better agricultural and medical technologies allowed people to live longer.
Pendleton brings up the old claim that Carbon 14 dating is inaccurate. He gives examples of this, such as a seal dated to being extremely old. Carbon 14 dating can only be used to date things younger than 50,000 years old, and it can only be used on once living things like wood, bone etc. or carbonate deposits such as tufa. Using Carbon 14 to date objects younger than 150 years will also give bad results due to the carbon released in the atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution. Carbon 14 dating has been tested repeatedly and it is confirmed by other dating methods. Tree ring dating, which goes back 8,000 years, has calibrated Carbon 14. Carbon 14 dating has also been verified by testing things on which the age was already known. Multiple samples from the objects were tested, and they gave consistent results. His claim that Carbon 14 dating has been checked on things in which the age is known and then gave inaccurate results is just plain wrong. The same can be said for Potassium Argon dating, which he also discusses.
Next Pendleton goes over a long list of supposedly fossilized modern items, like a cowboy boot, bottle, pliers, water wheel, hat, ham, and bag of flour. I won’t go over each of these, because many sound like they come from the pages of the National Enquirer. What is important about fossils is not how quickly they form, but the context they are found in. We have large numbers of fossils that appear in multiple geologic layers. We can also date the fossils by using radiometric dating techniques which can show us how old a fossil is.
I could not find any information about his next claim, that opals can form in months. The only source I found claiming that opals can form in months came from a creationist magazine. Since opals are extremely valuable, then being able to create them in months would be an easy way to make some cash. Since creationists have not demonstrated that they can do this, I will say this claim is probably false. And besides, we don’t date the age of the earth based on opal formation rate anyway.
Pendleton tells his viewers to ask people if they were there and have first hand knowledge about the earth’s history. A better question would be “How do you know?” If the person can back up their answer with evidence, then it should be considered a valid answer. We know evolution happened because of a convergence of evidence from the fields of biology, geology, chemistry, paleontology, biogeography, cosmology, physics, astronomy, archaeology, ancient history, and basically every other –ology. There would have to be many fundamental flaws with all of these fields if creationism was correct.
The police solve crimes all the time without eyewitnesses. They have to rely on physical evidence. Scientists are like detectives, they go where the evidence leads. The evidence points to evolution, not creationism.
Pendleton next claims that stalactites can from rapidly. They can, but there is a catch. Quickly forming stalactites often grow from concrete and mortar, which would be the kind shown in his video growing under various monuments. Water reacts with the concrete to form calcium hydroxide. The calcium hydroxide reacts with carbon dioxide to quickly form these kind of stalactites. Slower growing stalactites, like the kind found in caves, are made up of calcium bicarbonate. The calcium bicarbonate is produced from calcium carbonate, which is the product of the limestone reacting with water. When the calcium bicarbonate is exposed to carbon dioxide it reverses the process and the calcium bicarbonate turns into calcium carbonate.
Pendleton claims that coal and oil can be created quickly and easily. I couldn’t find any information on this. But if this true, then creationists could solve our dependence on foreign oil very easily. Why haven’t they done so if they can turn toilet water into oil, as Pendleton claims in his video? Once again the context of where coal and oil is found is what is important, not how quickly they form.
Finally Pendleton says that the natural gas pressure is too high for the earth to be old, because it would have all bled off long ago. He doesn’t seem to know that the gas is trapped underground by rock.
Now I will have to watch the refutations of this on YouTube to see how close to the mark I was.
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Neece Reply:
August 30th, 2009 at 6:08 pm
Wow, Gerald this is awesome!
And yes, I agree, watching a video instead of doing the work yourself is pretty damned lazy.
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