The Saturn system has a problem: young moons. The current consensus on the age of the solar system (4.5 billion years) cannot handle such young objects. Richard A. Kerr in Science last month described the vexing problem:1
Posted on 02/08/2006 3:35:44 PM PST by bondserv
Keeping Saturn’s Moons Old 02/06/2006
The Saturn system has a problem: young moons. The current consensus on the age of the solar system (4.5 billion years) cannot handle such young objects. Richard A. Kerr in Science last month described the vexing problem:1
Why is there geology on Saturn’s icy satellites? Where did these smallish moons get the energy to refresh their impact-battered surfaces with smoothed plains, ridges, and fissures? These questions have nagged at scientists since the Voyager flybys in the early 1980s, and the Cassini spacecraft’s recent discovery that Saturn’s Enceladus is spouting like an icy geyser has only compounded the problem. (Emphasis added in all quotes.)The power to run those geysers is 8 gigawatts. Cassini just released another distant image of Enceladus showing a distinct boundary between two terrains (see Cassini website), and captioned it “Youthful Enceladus.” (For background information, see the 11/28/2005 entry about Enceladus eruptions, and for entries about its youthful surface, see 08/30/2005, 07/14/2005 and 03/04/2005. See 01/07/2005 about Iapetus).
If this model is correct, how did Enceladus’ neighboring twin Mimas avoid a similar fate? Why did Iapetus and Enceladus steal all the Al-26 and leave none for Rhea and Dione? If this were unique to Saturn, it might be a quirk, but the whole solar system is filled with anomalies that do not fit into cozy models. Every solution breeds new problems.
Let’s use this story for a lesson about how science is done. Practicing scientists assume that natural explanations (those that invoke only secondary causes) are better than those that invoke primary causes (such as creation). To deny this is to be a heretic these days. Even if one believes in God or some other philosophical design principle at the beginning of things, one cannot be a scientist without limiting one’s explanatory resources to secondary causes. These are the rules, people like Eugenie Scott say, and many scientists and theologians assume this without thinking about it any deeper than retorting that invoking miracles is taboo in science (the either-or fallacy).
This principle is known as methodological naturalism. One is free to believe in God, but forbidden from invoking Him (or Her, or It) in scientific explanations. What one does on a Sabbath or Sunday is a personal matter, but in the science lab, just act as if the God you believe in is limited to working through secondary causes. At the risk of sounding completely nuts to this scientific culture, let us ask a few questions no one else seems to be asking. Is this not Deism – a religion? Practically speaking, what is there left for a God to do? This type of methodology puts a Designer out of business and makes his existence irrelevant. This is not science; it is religion or philosophy masquerading as science.
Now, we are not going to suggest that natural causes have not been active on Enceladus or Iapetus for unknown amounts of time, and we are not wishing to insert some miracles to make Enceladus erupt or Iapetus magically form mountains at its equator. We are not suggesting that the intervention of God is required continually or that He cannot work through natural law if He chooses to do so, which may be the overwhelming majority of the time. Nor are we arguing that models are not useful in many contexts. This discussion is not really about God at all, but about the truth claims of methodological naturalism in dealing with the unobservable past. Even if one finds the right settings of the knobs that produce a resemblance to these bodies, how would one know the model is true? By tweaking parameters in a model, which is not reality but a simplification of it, the modeler has only applied his or her intelligent design to achieve a correspondence between an imaginary prehistory and the actual history of the world. Is the correspondence real or contrived? If it feels satisfying to discover a correspondence, how is this feeling validated? When a whole class of causes (specifically, intelligent causes) has been ruled out from the get-go, then what remains must be forced to fit even when it does not fit very well.
Furthermore, numerous assumptions in the models are never addressed. One is the age assumption. A straightforward interpretation from unbiased observation is that these moons cannot be very old. Yet the entire exercise is focused on preserving a fixed parameter – 4.5 billion years. Why is this parameter never questioned? Other astronomers are now claiming that planets can – and indeed must – form quickly, or else they risk being swept up into their parent stars (05/07/2001, 05/30/2002) Some have even suggested gas giants could form in just a few hundreds or thousands of years (11/20/2002, 12/02/2002). What is so sacred about this number 4.5 billion years that everything under the sun must be forced into it, no matter how improbable? Could it be simply that Darwin needs the time? And if these moons and the entire solar system actually were created by primary causation, how would they know? There very methodology precludes such a fact from being discovered, if that indeed is what happened.
A commitment to unbounded methodological naturalism is a commitment to secondary causation into the past ad infinitum. As such, it is indistinguishable from philosophical naturalism. One cannot defend such a position scientifically, because it is an a priori assumption. It sets arbitrary bounds on scientific explanations that may be very useful for observable, repeatable phenomena, but not necessarily for historical phenomena. In operational science, a persistent search for secondary causation has been productive. To assume it is, and must be, in every case, including origins, is not a scientific question, but a question of philosophy about science.
When methodological naturalism produces the kind of refined storytelling as seen here, it seems more a quest to preserve one’s philosophical preferences than to know what actually happened. It is not qualitatively different from choosing a philosophy or religion or hobby because it feels good. In this game, a personal Creator actually involved in the creation and free to act in direct ways has been ruled out of bounds by dogma. The creation myth is already decided even before the observations are allowed to speak. Playing by these rules is bound to produce implausible scenarios in which multiple tweaks must be added in the right sequence to keep the story going. Nature, however, often refuses to submit to our presuppositions. Perhaps a little humility is in order.
Required reading for global warming freaks.
Hoagland is interesting if nothing else.
....but stupid!
How many Spanish Angels are needed to push Saturn's Moons around?
Your understanding is wrong.
So much ignorance, so little time....
Which essentially means the debate, while it may involve science, is not about science per se. In arguing from the specific (empirical science) to the general (natural philosophy), each observer will begin with a set of rules into which the evidence may fit. What a shame we are encouraged and free by the laws of our land to engage any assumption, yet prohibted by cultural zeitgeist from letting divergent viewpoints have a voice in public schools.
Current best estimate is the Big Bang happened 13.7 billion years ago. The solar system is thought to be about 5 billion years old.
Sorry. You blokes keep changing it so darn fast
When was the last time the estimated age of the earth was outside of the range 4.4 - 4.6 billion years?
Answer about 50 years.
upi ust cant face it that evolution never happened... :)
...gotta love that typing first thing in the mornng....
Cool, someone said zeitgeist!
Zetigeist. Zeitgeist.
I love that word, and a fine point you have made.
I wonder if/what the noted OEC, Hugh Ross, has to say about this. He comes up with some intriguing stuff.
probably because it(macro evo) didn't happen
Could you possibly toss in a larger non sequiteur? In the context of calculating the age of the Solar System, this statement has no meaning and distracts from the discussion at hand (which of course is a standard CRIDer "argument" tactic).
This speaks directly to the fact that science has so little data to make it's assumptions. Much of the article is the commentary provided by the scientific journalist. Let's try not to avoid the fact that scientists purposefully put themselves in boxes of their personal choosing. Creation-Evolution Headlines has documented and compiled over 4 years of scientific articles that give clear evidence of the Evolutionary Box and it's perversion of good science.
In keeping with the theme of the article we are commenting on:
“Science works by first making definitive theories, and then doing many years of research to discover if we were right,” said an unnamed NSF spokesman. “During the extended research phase, our job is to vigorously promote our assumptions until the facts disprove them.”
The unnamed above is fictitious. Have you ended your low-fat diet yet?
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