Your response again illustrates my point: Robert Leo Odom was

Comment on Avondale College Arguing in Favor of Darwinian Evolution? by Sean Pitman.

Your response again illustrates my point: Robert Leo Odom was arguing in favor of that possibility, and you summarize what he said as “it didn’t seem to make sense” to him. There is no possible way to accurately summarize his statements in that way, even if he is dead wrong. Accuracy and fairness is my concern here.

I’m sorry. In my comment I meant to talk about your reference to John Gill’s commentary where he argued that the phrase, “the stars also” in Genesis refers to the planets as well as all of the rest of the stars in the sky – despite the fact that some would limit the term “stars” to the planets. Gill clearly doesn’t agree with limiting the term “stars” to the planets of the solar system.

Beyond this, Odom also argues very much as I have regarding the “stars” mentioned in Genesis.

“There is the possibility that the rest of our solar system was brought into existence then [during the Creation Week of Genesis]. However, we would not speak dogmatically on that point. Other heavenly bodies were in existence before our world was created. We would not attempt to say how much older they are than the earth, because the Scriptures do not tell us specifically when they were created. Many of them may be millions of years older than the little planet we inhabit.” – Odom, 1959

This is exactly what I’ve been arguing – that here is the possibility that the rest of our solar system was brought into existence during Creation Week. However, we should not speak dogmatically on this point. The same is true for the origin of the basic material of the Earth. Such questions simply aren’t fundamental to Adventism.

I have an email from Collins in which he agrees with me that his theory posted on his website probably cannot account for the existence of Po halos. This is because if the crystal grows too slowly, the resulting halos will be more exposed on one side than the other, darker in color on side than the other, and no such lopsided halos have been found. If one instead proposes rapid growth of the crystal, then one should be able to produce granite in the laboratory, and you end up with problems re: the accumulation of enough isotopes during the proposed timespan. When faced with these considerations, I told Collins my gut feeling was that it couldn’t happened, and he concurred. I will have to read his article to see if he has come up with anything new since then, but a cursory scan indicates that he is still using the same arguments.

How old is your E-mail, because in the Collins’ paper I referenced he argues that the crystals can grow quite rapidly:

The rate at which silicate crystals grow in granite pegmatites (where large crystals several centimeters wide may form) can be rapid because of the local great abundance of water (steam). The abundant water occurs because water tends to concentrate in localized volumes in late stages of crystallization of magma because most minerals crystallizing in granite lack any water in their lattices, and it is where abundant water is present that pegmatites form. Crystals in pegmatites can grow to large sizes in a matter of a few days or weeks (London 2008; Nabelek and others 2009; Sirbescu and others 2008; Webber and others 1999).

The rate of growth of calcite and biotite in fluids where calcite vein-dikes form must be even faster than the rate of growth for silicate minerals crystallizing in pegmatites in a granite body. The fluids that produce the calcite vein-dikes would have a high water content and notably low silica so they would have low viscosity. The growth of large crystals of biotite (and fluorite) crystals could, perhaps, be in a matter of hours or less, and, therefore, the growth of superposed lattice layers would also surround nucleating polonium ions on the faces of the growing crystals. Thus, thousands of polonium halos per cubic centimeter in crystals of biotite and fluorite are possible lacking any evidence for microfractures.

– Collins, 2010

And, finally, regarding your last comment:

I’m interested in any evidence supportive of the biblical accounts. I do not understand why you would say you are uninterested in evidence for a young earth, especially since you have already said multiple times that you are open to the idea.

As I’ve mentioned several times already, I just don’t see that your ideas are required of the Biblical accounts nor are they fundamental to one’s reading or understanding of the key claims of the Bible or the Gospel message. That is why I don’t consider your ideas fundamental to Adventism and why I really am not all that interested in using a great deal of my time reviewing these perhaps interesting but non-fundamental concepts… with you or anyone else. I find it far more conclusive and profitable and fundamental to Adventism to talk about the origin of life on this planet. So, that’s where I’m going to concentrate my study and time. I hope you don’t mind.

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Sean Pitman Also Commented

Avondale College Arguing in Favor of Darwinian Evolution?
First off, I’m sorry but I feel that your latest posts on this topic needed to be combined so that they are located in the same proximity within this thread – so as to better keep track of individual conversations.

As far as the arguments you’ve presented, there seem to me to be numerous significant problems for your position. First off, your suggestion that post-Phanerozoic granitic rocks don’t exist is just nonsense. They do exist – to include granite rocks with “crystals visible to the naked eye”. Even Gentry himself used such rocks in his original paper on the topic. Consider that numerous creationists admit this particular fact and many have argued that Gentry’s claims simply aren’t tenable. For example, in a 1988 paper R. H. Brown, H. G. Coffin, L. J. Gibson, A. A. Roth, and C. L. Webster (Link) argued:

In Creation’s Tiny Mystery, Gentry repeatedly states (pp. 25, 36, 65, 66, 98, 117, 153, 184) that the Precambrian granites represent the primordial creation rocks. Part of the reason for this statement is the presence of pleochroic halos found in them. However, Wakefield (6) and Wilkerson (7) challenge this interpretation, pointing out that the localities where the pleochroic halos are found represent secondary rocks, specifically dikes of granite and even calcite veins that intrude older rocks; hence, they are at least secondary in origin. Wise (8), who has reviewed the literature on the localities where pleochroic halos have been reported, indicates that a majority (15 out of 22) appear to come from veins or dikes (pegmatites), and hence represent secondary and not primary rocks.

Without entering into the argument as to the absolute age of the rocks (either primary or secondary), it would be safe to state that the majority of halo-containing minerals are younger than the host rock and therefore do not represent primordial material.

The presence of non-polonium pleochroic halos found near polonium halos in biotite, fluorite or other minerals weakens Gentry’s case even further. This is especially true when Gentry must invoke a nonuniform increased radioactive decay rate to account for the presence of U-238, Th-232 and Sm-146 halos, while leaving untouched the polonium decay rates! Gentry must invoke a nonuniform rate increase for some of the halos, because at present the half-lives of these other halo-producing isotopes are on the order of hundreds of millions to thousands of millions of years!

If Gentry’s independence assumption (polonium halos formed from polonium which was not produced by the radioactive parent U-238) is found to be incorrect, or even found to be strongly questionable, his whole contention that pleochroic halos are evidence of ex nihilo creation becomes suspect. The fact that the polonium isotopes involved in halo formation in the rocks are only those which are daughter products of systematic uranium and thorium decay forces one to suspect immediately that they are derived from uranium rather than a special creation.

Also, the existence of older xenolith inclusions within granite rocks (even within Mesozoic or Cenozoic granitic rocks) is also inconsistent with Gentry’s notion that God created all granite rocks instantaneosly during the Creation Week. It just doesn’t make sense that God would incorporate such xenolithic inclusions, some obviously from sedimentary rock, within such specially created granite rocks. Consider Collins’ arguments further in this regard:

Precambrian granite bodies in the bottom of the Grand Canyon in Colorado have an erosion surface on which the horizontal, Paleozoic, fossil-bearing sediments are deposited, with the Cambrian Tapeats sandstone at the bottom and the Permian Kaibab limestone at the top. The eroded surface indicates that these granites are older than these sediments, the so-called “Noachian Flood deposits.” On the other hand, the Donegal granites in northwest Ireland intrude and enclose inclusions of sedimentary rocks of Cambrian age, illustrating that the granites are younger than the Cambrian deposits, whose contacts with the granites have a high-temperature metamorphic aureole (Pitcher and Berger, 1972). The same kinds of metamorphic contact-relationships are found in the granites that intrude fossil-bearing sediments in Maine, Connecticut, and Rhode Island (Harrison et al., 1983). The Narragansett Pier granite in Rhode Island surrounds inclusions of Pennsylvanian metamorphosed sediments containing flora fossils, Annularia stellata (Brown et al., 1978). The flora fossils are now totally carbonized as graphite, indicating the high temperature of the granite body that metamorphosed the sedimentary inclusions. The fact that the granite contains inclusions of these fossil-bearing sediments makes the granite younger than these supposed “Flood” sediments. The Sierra Nevada granite intrusions in California also have intruded and metamorphosed supposed “Flood sediments” in roof pendants containing Ordovician graptolite fossils (Frazier et al., 1986) and Pennsylvanian brachiopod fossils (Rinehart and Ross, 1964; Rinehart et al., 1959). In other places, the Sierran granites have intruded and metamorphosed “Flood sediments” containing Triassic ammonites (coiled cephalopods) (Smith, 1927). A granite in the Mojave desert in California near Cadiz intrudes Cambrian limestone containing stromatolite fossils. At the contact, this limestone is converted to marble with high-temperature metamorphic minerals, but remnants of the stromatolites can still be found (Richard Squires, oral communication, 1998). Thus, it is very clear from the above examples that some granite masses are the same age as or even younger than the “Noachian Flood deposits.” (Collins, 1998)

As another example, consider the Bathurst Batholith which intrudes into fossil-bearing layers of sedimentary rock. At the contact with this granite batholith the host fossiliferous sedimentary strata have been metamorphosed by the heat of the cooling granite batholith (Joplin 1936; Snelling 1974; Vallance 1969). Numerous minor granitic dikes cut across the margins of the Bathurst Granite and out into the surrounding host strata. Good exposures of these dikes are seen in the many railroad cuts between Sodwalls and Tarana. Up to 45 m (about 150 ft.) wide, these granitic dikes have the same composition as both the Bathurst Granite and the Evans Crown dike, often with the same porphyritic texture (Snelling 1974). The granitic bodies making up the batholith invade host country rocks as young as upper Devonian, and on the eastern margin are overlapped by Permian sediments. (Link)

As far as your reading of the SoP, I’ve gone over what Ellen White has to say about origins very very carefully and have discussed these comments with you in some detail already. Suffice it to say that your arguments remain unconvincing to me and I highly suggest that you not press the issue with others or become “dogmatic” in your position on this topic. It simply isn’t fundamental to Adventism.

Avondale College Arguing in Favor of Darwinian Evolution?
I do believe that God parted the sea for Moses and the Israelites to cross over while drowning the entire Egyptian arm. I also believe that God created the structure of the planet needed to support complex life. And, I believe that He accomplished these feats outside of what mindless natural mechanisms can achieve. The same is true for explaining the origin of a computer or an F-16 or a highly symmetrical granite cube or a chocolate cake. None of these artifacts of intelligent design can be explained by mindless natural mechanisms or “processes” either. Just like we can create beyond what mindless natural laws and processes can explain, so can God – just on a higher level is all.

Avondale College Arguing in Favor of Darwinian Evolution?
I agree…