In this white paper I discuss how Earth’s orbital dynamics work together with the planet’s features—including the configuration of the continents, ocean currents, and atmospheric circulation—to avert a permanent snowball state. These features reveal exquisite design that emanates from the mind of a wise, purposeful Creator who fashioned the planet with a glacial thermostat that allows humans to thrive.

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My Answer: Young-earth creationist scientists acknowledge that if the radiometric decay rates are constant or even approximately constant, then both the universe and Earth must be billions of years old (see the Radioisotopes and the Age of the Earth or RATE books published by the Institute of Creation Research and the Creation Research Society). However, their hypothesis that the radiometric decay rates were accelerated by a factor of a million to a billion times at the fall of Adam and/or the flood of Noah is both biblically and scientifically untenable.

The Bible repeatedly declares or implies that the laws of physics are constant. For example, in Jeremiah 33 God accuses the people of Judah of being fickle, always changing their minds. God replies by saying that he never changes. Then he offers an analogy. He states that as the laws that govern the heavens and the earth never change, likewise he does not change. Some other passages declaring the constancy of physics are Genesis 3, Ecclesiastes, and Romans 8.

Astronomical observations also prove that the laws of physics are constant. In observing the distant light of stars and galaxies, astronomers can measure the values of the constants of physics, including rates of radiometric decay and the velocity of light, when the light left those stars and galaxies. Their measurements establish that physics has been constant throughout the past 12 billion years of light travel time.     

The date for Earth’s age is very reliable. It has been measured to 4.5662±0.0001 billion years based on the measured decays in primitive meteorites (the building blocks of Earth) of uranium-238, uranium-235, and thorium-232 into lead-206, lead-207, and lead-208, respectively. (There is no natural source of lead other than the radiometric decay of heavier-than-lead radioisotopes.) In my book A Matter of Days, 2nd edition, I give multiple independent evidences for an accurate, assumption-free date for Earth’s age as well as for the universe’s age.

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In my book Navigating Genesis I explain why the creation of Adam and Eve must have occurred during an ice age.¹ Briefly, Genesis 2 states that before Adam and Eve sinned against God they were naked in the Garden of Eden. Genesis 2 also states that four known rivers, the Euphrates and Tigris, which are still flowing, and the Pishon and Gihon, which dried up toward the end of the last age, came close together in the Garden of Eden. The only geographical location where these four rivers could be in close proximity to one another is in the southeastern part of the Persian Gulf. Today, this location is more than 200 feet below sea level. However, during most of the last ice age it was above sea level. Therefore, I conclude that Adam and Eve existed during an ice age, most likely the previous one, and until they sinned, they existed without the benefit of clothing. How?

Human Anatomy
The human anatomy is wonderfully designed for warm climate conditions but poorly designed for cold ones. Humans are bipedal, tall, and slim. Hence, exposure of our bodies to the Sun’s heat is minimized. Our extremely high skin-surface-to-body-weight ratio and the minimal amount of hair on our bodies help keep us cool under high-temperature conditions. Furthermore, we are endowed with an amazingly productive perspiration system. Early humans used these unique advantages to hunt for prey during the hottest hours of the day when other large predators were forced to retreat and sleep in well-shaded refuges and prey could be chased to the point of heat exhaustion.

Those anatomical advantages for warm climate conditions become major detriments in cold conditions. Our bodies are not designed to retain body heat. When it is cold, we succumb to hypothermia within minutes. However, due to their unique brains and manual dexterity, humans were able to manufacture a broad diversity of clothing products. We can clothe our bodies with just-right garments to match the climate conditions we face.

Neanderthal anatomy is poorly designed for warm but wonderfully designed for cool temperature conditions. Nevertheless, some early humans inhabited regions that were, on average, 15°C colder than the coldest conditions that Neanderthals were able to withstand. The difference was that these early humans wore well-fitted insulating clothing that covered nearly all their bodies whereas, at best, Neanderthals may have draped animal hides over parts of their bodies as capes.

Adam and Eve in Eden
Genesis 2:25, in reference to Adam and Eve before they sinned, states “Adam and his wife were both naked.” They were naked when Earth was in the midst of an ice age. How did they avoid hypothermia?

During the last ice age, sheets of ice more than a thousand feet thick covered as much as 23% of Earth’s landmasses. Figure 1 shows the maximum extent of such ice during the last ice age. The location of the Garden of Eden is approximately 2,750 kilometers (1,700 miles) south of the nearest ice sheet. Hence, the temperature difference between the Garden of Eden and the south tip of the Eurasian ice sheet would be roughly equivalent to the temperature difference between Edmonton, Alberta, and Hermosillo, Mexico.

The previous ice age persisted from about 120,000 to 14,000 years ago. During that time period, the global mean temperature fluctuated by ±6°C (±11°F). Figure 2 shows the temperature swings throughout the last ice age. No one knows exactly when—during the last ice age, or possibly the one previous to it—God created Adam and Eve. However, it certainly is conceivable that God created Adam and Eve during one of the brief warm episodes of the ice age.

Earth’s Hot Spot
When we think about the warmest places on Earth, our minds go to the tropics. Southern India, Borneo, New Guinea, the Congo, and South Sudan are famous for their oppressive heat. As for marine regions, the South China Sea, the Coral Sea, and the Java Sea are equally famous for their heat. The world’s hottest sea, however, is not in the tropics. It is north of the tropics. The Persian Gulf holds the record as Earth’s hottest sea.² The southern part of the Persian Gulf is much warmer than the mid to northern parts of the Gulf.³

During an ice age, nearly all of what is now the Persian Gulf became the Persian Oasis—land with four large rivers flowing through it and plentiful springs fed by the large underground aquifer in the region. Earth’s presently hottest sea likely became Earth’s hottest land region. Adam and Eve would have been quite comfortable in Eden without any clothing. Genesis 3:7 declares that after Adam and Eve had sinned they sewed a few fig leaves together to cover up their nakedness, not out of a need for warmth, but to cover up their shame.

The heat of the Persian Gulf/Persian Oasis region provides evidence that God created Adam and Eve during an ice age. If God had created them during an interglacial period, the Garden of Eden location would have been too warm during the summer months for Adam and Eve and their offspring to thrive. An ice age date for the creation of Adam and Eve is consistent with the best scientific dates for the origin of modern humans.⁴

Endnotes

1. Hugh Ross, Navigating Genesis: A Scientist’s Guide to Genesis 1–11 (Covina, CA: RTB Press, 2014), 96–100.
2. B. C. C. Hume et al., “Symbiodinium thermophilum sp. nov., a Thermotolerant Symbiotic Alga Prevalent in Corals of the World’s Hottest Sea, the Persian/Arabian Gulf,” Scientific Reports 5 (February 27, 2015): id. 8562, doi:10.1038/srep08562.
3. B. Hume et al., “Corals from the Persian/Arabian Gulf as Models for Thermotolerant Reef-Builders: Prevalence of Clade C3 Symbiodinium, Host Fluorescence and Ex Situ Temperature Tolerance,” Marine Pollution Bulletin 72, no. 2 (July 30, 2013): 313–22, doi:10.1016/j.marpolbul.2012.11.032; Charles Sheppard et al., “The Gulf: A Young Sea in Decline,” Marine Pollution Bulletin 60, no. 1 (January 2010): 13–38, doi:10.1016/j.marpolbul.2009.10.017.
4. Hugh Ross, “Errors in Human Origins Dates,” Today’s New Reason to Believe (blog), Reasons to Believe, June 29, 2020.

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In a recent issue of Nature Climate Change, mathematician and climatologist Niklas Boers used measurements of sea surface temperatures and salinity data across the Atlantic Ocean basin to produce a model that indicates that the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) may soon suffer a major weakening. I’ll explain what such a weakening means for Earth’s global climate after we review several studies.

Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation
Most laypeople have never heard of the AMOC. However, most have heard of the Gulf Stream. The Gulf Stream refers to the flow of warm tropical water from the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean along the surface of the Atlantic Ocean toward western and northern Europe and Iceland; and the flow of cold Arctic Ocean water along the deep part of the Atlantic Ocean from the far northern Atlantic to the equatorial Atlantic. Without the Gulf Stream (see figure 1), western and northern Europe and Iceland would be much colder than they are. Those regions would be unable to sustain the large human populations that they presently do.

Figure 1: The Surface Part of the Gulf Stream
Credit: NOAA

The Gulf Stream is part of the AMOC, which is the system of surface and deep currents throughout the Atlantic Ocean. It is mainly characterized by a northward flow of warm, salty water from the tropics along the upper layers of the Atlantic and the southward flow of cold, low-salinity water from the Arctic along the Atlantic’s deep layers (see figure 2).

Figure 2: Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation
Orange arrows show the warm, salty surface currents. Blue arrows show the cold, low-salinity deep currents. Credit: Summer K. Praetorius, Nature 556 (April 11, 2018): 180.

Observed AMOC Changes
In 2018, two papers published in Nature presented evidence of a slowdown in the AMOC. The first paper by Levke Caesar and his colleagues compared comprehensive sea surface temperature measurements in the Atlantic made over the past century with high-resolution climate models.¹ This comparison showed that the AMOC had weakened by 15% since 1950.

The second paper by David Thornalley and his team of eleven researchers used data from sediment cores drilled on the seafloor off the US East Coast, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, Labrador, and Baffin Island.² Thornalley’s team measured the sizes of sediment grains in these cores to determine how rapidly deep ocean currents were flowing throughout the past 1,600 years. Their measurements revealed that the AMOC “has been weaker during the past 150 years than at any time during the past 1,600 years.”³ They agree with the first research team that the degree of weakening was 15%.

Both research teams concluded that the AMOC weakening has been initiated and sustained by human-caused global warming, leading to significant melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet. Cool, fresh meltwater from ice sheets and glaciers on Greenland, Baffin Island, Iceland, and the Arctic Ocean, they say, blunted the AMOC.

Niklas Boers at the Potsdam Institute of Climate Impact Research noted that direct observations of AMOC strength have been available only for the past two decades.⁴ He analyzed these direct observations of sea surface temperatures and salinity data across the entire Atlantic Ocean basin. His analysis showed that during the last century “the AMOC may have evolved from relatively stable conditions to a point close to a critical transition.”⁵ He adds that his analysis gives “a first indication that the Atlantic Ocean circulation system may be losing stability.”⁶

Climate Change and Ice Age Onset Implications
The last time the AMOC experienced a major disruption was during the Younger Dryas cooling event (see figure 3). I described this event in detail in my book Weathering Climate Change.⁷ This event was initiated 12,800 years ago by a huge asteroid striking the Hiawatha Icefield in northwestern Greenland. The collision melted huge quantities of ice on Greenland and changed the drainage of Lake Agassiz, an enormous glacial lake (see figure 4), from its flow into the Gulf of Mexico to a flow into the Beaufort Sea and the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

Figure 3: Younger Dryas Cooling Event
Diagram credit: Hugh Ross

Figure 4: Lake Agassiz Immediately before the Younger Dryas
Background image credit: NASA

The combination of melted Greenland ice and glacial meltwater flowing into the North Atlantic Ocean brought the AMOC to a virtual halt. This halting of the AMOC caused Europe and North America to become much colder and resulted in a global cooling of more than 10°C (18°F) that lasted for 1,200 years. As I explained in my book, the Younger Dryas cooling event occurred at a time when both Earth’s axial tilt variation and Earth’s orbital eccentricity variation were warming our planet. The Younger Dryas cooling event prevented Earth’s surface temperature from rising to 2–3°C above its present value, which would have melted the polar ice cap, caused huge amounts of snow to fall on Canada and Siberia, and brought on the next ice age.

In chapter 18 of my book I explained why global warming, if left unchecked, always brings on global cooling. The papers published in 2018 and Boers’s recent work show that the risk of a relatively imminent ice age onset could be greater than previously thought. Further weakening of the AMOC would first make western Europe much warmer than it is⁸ and then make Canada, Europe, and the northern parts of the United States much colder than they are now. Such weakening will also disrupt the tropical monsoon system and the climates of the Amazon rainforest, the Antarctic, and the Southern Ocean.⁹ As I described in a previous article What Will Happen if Arctic Sea Ice Loss Continues? for the seven seas that comprise the Arctic Ocean, since 1750 the summer sea ice mass loss has ranged from 31% to 99%. Meanwhile, the winter sea ice mass loss has ranged from 1% to 45%. In particular, additional loss of winter sea ice mass will cause more snow to fall on Canada, Siberia, and northern Europe and lead to the buildup of ice sheets over those regions.

Unlike during the Younger Dryas cooling event, both Earth’s axial tilt variation and Earth’s orbital eccentricity variation presently work to cool Earth’s surface. This natural cooling implies that if human activity brings the weakening of the AMOC and the loss of winter Arctic sea ice mass to their respective tipping points, we can expect a rapid global temperature drop and a rapid onset of a severe ice age.

The latest generation of global climate models establishes that when induced cooling from Earth’s axial tilt variation and Earth’s orbital eccentricity variation reaches a threshold level, strong weakening of the AMOC occurs.¹⁰ This induced strong weakening of the AMOC explains why rapid, dramatic global cooling occurs after each interglacial in the past four cycles of the ice age cycle (see figure 5).

Figure 5: Relative Antarctic Temperature Record throughout the Past 400,000 Years in °C
Data credit: Robert A. Rohde, Global Warming Art Project, CC-by-SA; Diagram credit: Hugh Ross

Boers ends his paper with a call for more detailed and comprehensive monitoring of AMOC weakening. Such monitoring, as well as detailed and more comprehensive monitoring of winter Arctic sea ice mass, will help us determine how close we are to the respective tipping points and what actions will work best for us to avoid reaching the tipping points. These responses align with the Bible’s creation care mandate for humans to manage Earth and all its resources for our benefit and the benefit of all Earth’s life.

Endnotes

1. L. Caesar et al., “Observed Fingerprint of a Weakening Atlantic Ocean Overturning Circulation,” Nature 556 (April 12, 2018): 191–96, doi:10.1038/s41586-018-0006-5.
2. D. J. R. Thornalley et al., “Anomalously Weak Labrador Sea Convection and Atlantic Overturning during the Past 150 Years,” Nature 556 (April 11, 2018): 227–30, doi:10.1038/s41586-018-0007-4.
3. Thornalley et al., “Anomalously Weak Labrador Sea,” 227.
4. Niklas Boers, “Observation-Based Early-Warning Signals for a Collapse of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation,” Nature Climate Change 11 (August 2021): 680–88, doi:10.1038/s41558-021-01097-4.
5. Boers, “Observation-Based Early-Warning Signals,” 680.
6. Boers, “Observation-Based Early-Warning Signals,” 684.
7. Hugh Ross, Weathering Climate Change (Covina, CA: RTB Press, 2020), 151–59.
8. Caesar et al., “Observed Fingerprint.”
9. Boers, “Observation-Based Early-Warning Signals.”
10. Q. Z. Yin et al., “Insolation Triggered Abrupt Weakening of Atlantic Circulation at the End of Interglacials,” Science 373, no. 6558 (August 27, 2021): 1035–40, doi:10.1126/science.abg1737.

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My answer: You will find a detailed and fully documented response in A Matter of Days, 2nd ed. Anyone can get a free chapter of this book at reasons.org/ross.

Adam and Eve are the unique exceptions among humanity. Neither came from the womb of a woman. Therefore, their size is not an indicator of age. God could instantaneously make any sized human being he wants from the dust of the earth. Reliable indicators of age for a human not born of a woman would be the extent of liver spots on the skin, hair color and hair deterioration, erosion of teeth, cholesterol level in the blood, extent of scar tissue, bone density, blood pressure, and pulse rate recovery after heavy exercise. By these scientific measures, Adam and Eve would have measured brand new on the day that God created them.

God creating with the false appearance of age is not an optional belief for anyone who believes the Bible is the inspired, inerrant Word of God. Since the Bible states multiple times that it is impossible for God to lie or deceive (see Numbers 23:19, 1 Samuel 15:29, Psalm 89:35, Hebrews 6:18) it would be impossible for him to create anything that would measure to be old when in fact it is young.

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Figure 1: A portion of the Temple Scroll, one of the longest of the Dead Sea Scrolls (Wikimedia Commons)

How Paleography Supports Radiocarbon Dating

As Stephen Chua notes in “New Radiocarbon Ages of Dead Sea Scrolls? Part 1,” radiocarbon dating is a powerful modern tool for helping archaeologists date ancient artifacts. It is especially useful in providing an independent check on other established dating methods, such as paleography. Paleography involves dating manuscripts through the analysis of scribal handwriting styles.

Since scribes normally were trained professionals and their standard, formal handwriting form (involving the shape of letters and the order of pen strokes) generally changed slowly over time, it is possible to estimate the approximate date that a given text was written by comparing it to the rare dated texts available. For example, if you have old letters from your grandparents, you can date them roughly based on the style of the letters they wrote (at one time US public schools emphasized penmanship and standardized, legible cursive script), compared to the handwriting style of your parents or of your peers.

Some experts believe that paleography can date texts to within 25 years in some cases, although other scholars are less certain since a subjective element plays into the analysis of individual scribal hands. Further, in some periods, scribal writing styles were less standardized. Thus, depending on the time period and the rate that styles were changing, paleographic date assignments can be controversial. Fortunately, scholars are starting to use artificial intelligence tools to reduce the human subjective element and gain greater precision in analyzing handwriting.

Using Paleography Combined with Carbon-14 Methods

One example of a paleographic controversy involves the dating of the scrolls written by the Essene community at Qumran. Do these documents date back to the Hasmonean period (150–130 BC), or are they later Herodian (30 BC to 70 AD) texts? The answer to this question is important for understanding the history and origin of the Essenes and their traditions.

The table below, provided by Stephen Chua, lists Dead Sea Scroll data relevant to dating the Essenes (“1s” stands for “one sigma,” or the 68% certainty range for the date. Several possible date ranges may be given due to plateaus in the calibration curve.):

Table 1: The first column shows the scientific name for the Dead Sea Scroll document under consideration. The second column shows the carbon-14 date “Before the Present”(BP), scientifically defined as before 1950. Thus, 2030 is 80 BC. The third column gives the date range based on earlier tree-ring and other calibration techniques. Column four lists the age variability based on the new IntCal20 radiocarbon calibration method. The fifth column notes the paleographic age for each document.

This sample well illustrates some of the controversy involving the comparison of paleographic and radiocarbon methods: 4Q266 Damascus Document a and 4Q171 Psalms Commentary a show a century difference between the writing style and the ¹⁴C date. Did the scribe use an “antique” hand when writing these? Or did sample contamination throw off the ¹⁴C dates? Only 4Q267 Damascus Document b shows an unambiguous, clear alignment between the ¹⁴C and paleographic dates, both of which point to a pre-Herodian origin for the document. Such data generate ample work for scholars!

Of course, the most reliable way to date a text is when it contains a written date, as happens in some legal documents. Four preserved samples are shown in the table below:

Table 2: The first five columns follow the descriptions in table 1. The sixth column gives the cultural era of the document.

These ¹⁴C ages show us that the radiometric dating method itself has significant uncertainty. In most cases, ¹⁴C dating has ± 100-year uncertainty range, a handicap similar to paleographic dating. Popular media reporting rarely mentions this uncertainty. Instead, reports often provide a single date written with three significant figures, without explaining that this number is the average of the actual century-or-more date range.

With the Bar Kochba documents above, the situation is even worse, as some of the ¹⁴C dates (columns 2–4) are over a century off from their written date (column 5). Aside from possible contamination, a known contributing problem here is that this time period is in a large plateau region of the ¹⁴C calibration curve. As the earlier article explained, ¹⁴C levels fluctuate in the atmosphere, which affects the initial (and thus final) ¹⁴C present in the sample. In the graph below (based on the 2013 calibration curve), there is a long plateau between about 130 AD and 240 AD (shown as a gray box), which gives a century of “error” in this period. (This is why radiocarbon dating the John Rylands P52 papyrus, the earliest preserved copy of the Gospel of John, would not resolve the controversy surrounding its estimated 100–150 AD paleographic date. Because of this plateau, radiocarbon dating cannot resolve whether P52 is a second- or third-century document.)

Figure 2: Radiocarbon Calibration Curve

Thankfully, for all of the challenges with dating Essene and Bar Kochba texts, key biblical Dead Sea Scrolls pose far less difficulty when comparing their ¹⁴C and paleographic data:

Table 3: See table 1 for descriptions of the columns.

Advances Promise More Dating Consistency

These documents all have unambiguous pre-Christian radiocarbon dates. Thus when reading about the scholarly challenges of comparing ¹⁴C and paleographic evidence, it is important to consider the genre of the material, the level of accuracy needed to give us confidence about the reliability of source, and the manuscript date range being analyzed. For example, Atwill and Braunheim conclude in their 2004 article, which focuses on Essene and Bar Kochba documents, “When taken as a whole the ¹⁴C dates showed that neither paleography nor ¹⁴C dating is a sufficiently precise tool to contribute conclusively to the debate over the accurate dating of the scrolls.”³

But as techniques have improved in both fields, recent work is more encouraging: Josephine Dru reports that when done with care, ¹⁴C and paleographical dates agree roughly 80% of the time. Thus, ¹⁴C methods can easily help us identify forgeries, and can help us affirm the ancient and pre-Christian origin of critical biblical manuscripts. However, the plateaus, potential contamination, and overall uncertainty range in the method give scholars plenty to discuss and debate. And as both ¹⁴C and paleographic analysis techniques continue to improve, hopefully the agreement and consensus among scholars will continue to grow.

Acknowledgement: Thank you to Dr. Titus Kennedy, professional field archaeologist, for contributing his knowledgeable experience and insight to this piece.

Endnotes

1. 4Q22 Paleo Exodus m is technically a biblical text, but it is thought to have been copied by Essene scribes rather than being brought to Qumran from elsewhere. Thus, its date is important in the Essene-origins context.
2. It is worth noting here that some scholars believe, because it has the trappings of being an official temple/synagogue scroll, that the 1QIsa scroll was written in Jerusalem around 325 BC and then brought to the Essene community two centuries later. Thus, the late paleographic date given for 1QIsa is misleading, influenced by skeptical scholars who tend to assign the latest possible dates to biblical texts in order to give them time to evolve.
3. Joseph Atwill and Steve Braunheim, “Redating the Radiocarbon Dating of the Dead Sea Scrolls,” Dead Sea Discoveries, JSTOR, vol. 11, no. 2 (2004): 157; https://www.jstor.org/stable/4193320.

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What Is Radiocarbon?

Carbon occurs in the form of two stable isotopes (¹²C and ¹³C) and one radioactive isotope (¹⁴C, radiocarbon), which is by far the rarest. When organisms die and no longer metabolize new carbon, the finite amount of radioactive carbon in their tissues begins to diminish without replacement at a rate determined by the law of radioactive decay. Every radioactive isotope has a characteristic half-life (the time during which half of all the radioactive atoms will decay). Plants and animals assimilate ¹⁴C from carbon dioxide throughout their lifetimes—thus, measuring the current rate of decay can be used to estimate the passage of time from a defined beginning point. (See “How Trustworthy Is Carbon Dating?” for details on radiocarbon production and half-life measurement.)

Figure 1: Production and distribution of radiocarbon in the environment.¹

Radiocarbon has a half-life of 5700 +/- 30 years, which means that half the radioactive atoms disintegrate in that span, with each producing a nitrogen atom and a beta particle (¹⁴C => ¹⁴N + ß; figure 1).²  These estimates are normalized by reference to the year AD 1950, a convention established by international agreement to calibrate all laboratory results to a single reference year (“before present”), and to express the utilization of a standard measure of ¹⁴C concentration approximating the time before nuclear weapons changed the composition of the atmosphere (“before physics or BP”). Hence these numbers are aptly termed conventional radiocarbon age (CRA) and expressed as “XXX yr BP.” Note, however, that an extra calibration step is needed to convert CRAs to calendar years, and that’s where a calibration curve comes in.

Calibration Curves, IntCal20, and Implications for Dating of Biblical Texts

Global and local fluctuations of radiocarbon over long timescales have resulted in nonlinear trends in constructed “radiocarbon curves,” which incorporate information from proxies such as tree rings, lake and marine sediments, speleothems (limestone cave features), and even corals. The 1998 IntCal curve has undergone several notable revisions in 2004, 2009, 2013, and as recently as 2020,³ as more data and more robust statistical methods have been introduced. In the case of the latest version, named IntCal20, new datasets from new known-age tree rings, speleothem records (from caves that can be precisely U-Th dated), and varved (seasonally/annually laminated) sediment records from Lake Suigetsu (Japan) have been revised and extended. The construction of the IntCal20 calibration curve also utilized new statistical methods to make it more statistically robust.

Figure 2: Comparison of IntCal20 (blue) and IntCal13 (red) for the 250-year period from AD 950−1200 (1000–750 cal BP) showing the radiocarbon lab measurements (either ETH or GrM) from Lancaster Castle, error bars and envelopes at 1σ.⁴

Figure 2 shows small but more precise shifts in the radiocarbon curve from IntCal13 to IntCal20.⁵ Although such offsets are typically on the order of tens of years, such shifts have important implications for dating biblical texts. To test this, I recalibrated previously published dates of the Qumran Cave Dead Sea Scrolls⁶ using the latest version of calib.org (maintained by the authors of the IntCal20 paper).⁷ I then compared my recalibrations with palaeographic age estimates for these scrolls where some are date-bearing documents. Table 1 shows selected scrolls where the more precise and reliable IntCal20 validated the document dates or improved the chronological range of these scrolls.

Table 1: Recalibrated radiocarbon ages of Dead Sea Scrolls. Multiple calibrated ages represent probable age ranges due to imprecision of “wiggle-matching” (converting radiocarbon to calendar ages). The calibrated (IntCal20) ages in bold show better agreement with the paleographic age of these selected scroll fragments.

As radiocarbon curves continue to improve with better proxy records and robust statistical methods, they better constrain actual ages and even validate other techniques such as paleography in verifying the authenticity of Scripture. God has chosen to include many details in his Word, many of them verifiable and falsifiable. The mention of historical figures and events leaves the Bible open to attack, especially in terms of overall biblical chronology and time-sensitive historical events. However, since Christians hold that Scripture is inerrant, I firmly believe the new dating methods and techniques will unequivocally show that God’s Word (logos) is indeed “trustworthy, making wise the simple” (Psalm 19:7b).

Endnotes

1. Figure 1 adapted from I. Hajdas, “14.3–Radiocarbon: Calibration to Absolute Time Scale,” Treatise on Geochemistry, 2nd ed., ed. Heinrich D. Holland and Karl K. Turekian (Elsevier, 2014), 37–43, doi:10.1016/B978-0-08-095975-7.01204-3.
2. Many studies use 5730 +/-40 yrs, but the most recent measurements find a half-life of 5700 +/-30 as in Walter Kutschera, (2019). “The Half-Life of ¹⁴C—Why Is It So Long?,” Radiocarbon 61, no. 5 (October 2019): 1135–1142, doi:10.1017/RDC.2019.26.
3. P. J. Reimer et al. (2020), “The IntCal20 Northern Hemisphere Radiocarbon Age Calibration Curve (0–55 cal kBP),” Radiocarbon 62, no. 4 (August 2020): 1–33, doi:10.1017/rdc.2020.41.
4. Adapted from A. Bayliss et al., “IntCal20 Tree Rings: An Archaeological Swot Analysis,” Radiocarbon 62, no. 4 (August 2020): 1045–1078, doi:10.1017/RDC.2020.77.
5. Bayliss et al., doi:10.1017/RDC.2020.77.
6. See Bayliss et al., doi:10.1017/RDC.2020.77 and Georges Bonani et al., “Radiocarbon Dating of Fourteen Dead Sea Scrolls,” Radiocarbon 34, no. 3 (1992): 843–849, doi:10.1017/S0033822200064158.
7. G. A. Rodley and B. E. Thiering, “Use of Radiocarbon Dating in Assessing Christian Connections to the Dead Sea Scrolls,” Radiocarbon 41, no. 2 (1999): 169–182, doi:10.1017/S0033822200019524.
8. M. Stuiver, P. J. Reimer, and R. W. Reimer, 2021, CALIB 8.2 [WWW program] at http://calib.org.

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From a scientific point of view, these questions fall under the purview of SETI (the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence). And for the most part, SETI’s approach has focused on searching for radio and optical signals intentionally broadcast by alien civilizations. But should their strategy include searching for artifacts from these civilizations?

In his recent book Extraterrestrial, Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb argues that searching exclusively for radio and optical signals stacks the odds against success for SETI.¹ If human history is any indicator, alien civilizations will only possess the technology to communicate their presence for a fraction of the time they exist. These broadcasts won’t begin until these civilizations become highly advanced. And the duration of the broadcasts will be cut short if the civilizations collapse or disappear altogether.

Instead, Loeb argues that SETI investigators need to expand their search to include long-lasting evidence for alien life, such as biosignatures (e.g., oxygen and methane in the atmosphere) and technosignatures (i.e., pollutants).

As Loeb also points out, humans have been generating radio emissions at the meter-wave radio spectrum for decades. These emissions are a type of radio pollution. If we are generating that type of electromagnetic pollution, then why wouldn’t alien civilizations do so, too? Loeb believes SETI should direct some of its resources to search for these types of signatures.

Finally, Loeb proposes a different strategy for SETI altogether—an approach he calls astro-archaeology. In this vein, Loeb argues that SETI should search for the relics of alien civilizations. He points out that we have deliberately sent five spacecraft (Voyager 1, Voyager 2, Pioneer 1, Pioneer 2, and New Horizons) out of our solar system into interstellar space. Why wouldn’t alien civilizations do the same? Additionally, Earth’s orbit is now littered with space debris from derelict spacecraft and rocket launches. Again, Loeb expects alien civilizations to leave behind the junk from their activities in space, too. In fact, Loeb believes that SETI may have better success by expanding its search to include spacecraft and space debris generated by alien civilizations than by focusing its attention on broadcast radio and optical signals. Once these artifacts are produced, they will last far beyond the alien civilization itself.

Oumuamua
Loeb believes that astronomers unwittingly discovered an alien artifact in the fall of 2017. Over the span of 11 days (beginning October 19, 2017), the Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System (Pan-STARRS)—a network of telescopes and high-definition cameras positioned on top of Maui’s dormant volcano Haleakala—recorded observations of an unusual interstellar object, 1I/2017 U1 (nicknamed Oumuamua), that fills the bill of alien technology—at least in Loeb’s opinion. If so, this object would stand as the first evidence for the existence of an alien civilization beyond our solar system.

Oumuamua came from the Vega star system (which is about 25 light-years away), moving through our solar system with a hyperbolic trajectory at 58,900 miles per hour. It spent about a month in our solar system before exiting towards the constellation Pegasus. Pan-STARRS observed Oumuamua during its final days in our solar system.

Most astronomers don’t agree with Loeb. Instead, they interpret Oumuamua as an asteroid or comet of interstellar origin—albeit one with some unusual and unexpected properties. Yet, for Loeb, it is these unusual properties that lead him to conclude that this object is alien technology.

In the face of the widespread skepticism confronting Loeb’s proposal, he uses Extraterrestrial as the vehicle to present a systematic, multi-pronged case that Oumuamua is, indeed, an extraterrestrial spacecraft.

Is Oumuamua Alien Technology?
First, Loeb notes that Oumuamua has an anomalous shape, at least 5 to 10 times longer than wide. The aspect ratio of Oumuamua would be the most extreme ever observed for an asteroid or comet. Loeb maintains that this aspect ratio would fit an object that is either shaped like a cigar or pancake. In fact, Loeb claims that astronomers know of no natural process mechanism that could generate these shapes for comets or asteroids.

Loeb also calls attention to the reflectivity of Oumuamua. It is about 10 times more luminous than any known asteroid or comet.

As Oumuamua’s orbit took it past the Sun, its trajectory changed. This change is expected because of the influence of the Sun’s gravity. But the change in the trajectory far exceeded what the Sun’s gravity alone could have achieved. Something generated a propulsive force as Oumuamua moved past the Sun. But, as Loeb points out, no natural process mechanism can account for Oumuamua’s acceleration. If Oumuamua experienced outgassing as the Sun warmed volatiles associated with it, then this could change its trajectory. But astronomical measurements failed to detect any water, carbon-based gases, and dust coming off Oumuamua’s surface. If Oumuamua disintegrated, this process could accelerate it as well. But, once again, astronomers failed to detect the expected change in spin that should accompany disintegration. Also, they noted that the change in acceleration was unexpectedly smooth and continuous, not jerky, as expected if Oumuamua disintegrated.Another unusual feature of Oumuamua is its origin in velocity position. Before it was accelerated by the Sun, Oumuamua occupied the local standard of rest (a frame of reference in which the velocities of neighboring stars average out to zero). This velocity position rarely occurs for astronomical objects.

In other words, the properties and behavior of Oumuamua are difficult to explain if this object was an interstellar comet or asteroid. But, according to Loeb, all of the data fits his hypothesis if Oumuamua were a light sail launched by an alien civilization.

The Light Sail Hypothesis
The basis for this proposal comes from another project on which Loeb worked, dubbed the Star Shot Initiative. This project was funded by entrepreneur Yuri Milner, with the objective of reaching the closest star system—(Alpha Centauri) which consists of three stars located 4.27 light-years from Earth—within Milner’s lifetime, collecting data that should provide insight into the prospects of alien life in the star system and sending the data to Earth.

Achieving this objective would require a spacecraft that can travel one-fifth the speed of light. This would require a lightweight spacecraft with a light payload. Loeb and his collaborators demonstrated that such a craft could be built by attaching a small electronic device (comparable to a small smartphone) to a reflecting sail that would be propelled by the pressure exerted on it by solar radiation.

A light sail would have the extreme aspect ratio displayed by Oumuamua. It would be accelerated by light coming from the Sun, smoothly changing its trajectory as it moved through the solar system. It would also be at the local standard of rest if it was released at the local standard of rest at the outskirts of its star system of origin.

According to Loeb, if we could conceive and design a light sail, then why wouldn’t an alien civilization do the same? If launched at its local standard of rest, then it is unlikely that Oumuamua would be space junk, according to Loeb. It would be much more akin to a buoy intentionally launched in space until our solar system collided into it.

Oumuamua and the Science of Design Detection
I find Loeb’s argument to be probative. Yet, I don’t have the expertise to judge the merits of his case effectively. (I will leave that task to astronomers.)

As an old-earth creationist and a biochemist—who holds the view that life stems directly from the handiwork of a Creator—I find Loeb’s case to be instructive, serving as a template that can be used to make the case that living systems stem from the work of an Intelligent Agent.

Specifically, Loeb uses three criteria to argue that Oumuamua is the work of extraterrestrial intelligence (i.e., intelligent agency):

1. Absence of a compelling explanation for Oumuamua based on natural processes/mechanisms
2. Oumuamua’s artificial characteristics
3. An assessment of what it would take to build a spacecraft with Oumuamua’s capabilities

Loeb also speculates about the purpose of Oumuamua and suggests the possible motivation behind its launch. In the process, he draws upon our activities and motivations as human beings, using them as a gage for what alien civilizations might do.

In many respects, the criteria Loeb uses are identical to the criteria archeologists use to determine if a stone has been shaped by natural forces or by the deliberate action of a hominin (i.e., an intelligent agent). This similarity shouldn’t be surprising because Loeb’s work falls under the umbrella of astro-archaeology.

Loeb’s work affirms a point that I (and others) have repeatedly made. Science has the toolkit to detect the work of agency in nature. To put it another way, Loeb’s thesis demonstrates that detection of intelligent design in nature is legitimately part of the construct of science.

Design Detection in Biochemical Systems
So, why not apply the same criteria to biochemical systems? Regardless of worldview, no one disputes that biochemical systems have the appearance of design. The debate centers around the source of this design. And, based on Loeb’s analysis, science has the toolkit to determine if that design stems from a mechanism or mind.

In fact, I employ Loeb’s criteria to make the scientific case that biochemical systems are, indeed, the work of an intelligent agent.

In Origins of Life (a work I coauthored with astronomer Hugh Ross) and Creating Life in the Lab, I (we) demonstrate that natural processes don’t seem to be able to account for the origin of life and, hence, the origin of biochemical systems. In my book The Cell’s Design, I propose the use of an intelligent design pattern to detect design. Toward this end, I point out that objects, devices, and systems designed by human beings—intelligent designers—are characterized by certain properties that are distinct from objects and systems generated by natural processes. The approach I take in The Cell’s Design follows after William Paley’s work. Paley described designs created by human beings as contrivances. In other words, like Loeb, I take the designs and motivations of human designers as a guide to facilitate design detection in biochemical systems. In Creating Life in the Lab, I demonstrate that attempts to create protocells starting with simple molecules and attempts to recapitulate the different stages in the origin-of-life pathway depend upon intelligent agency.

In other words, if Loeb’s light sail hypothesis is considered to be a scientific proposal, then the claim that biochemical systems are the work of a Mind, must also be considered one as well. It would be disingenuous to do otherwise.

RESOURCES

• “Is SETI an Intelligent Design Research Program?” by Fazale Rana (article)
• “Can Science Detect the Creator’s Fingerprints in Nature?” by Fazale Rana (article)
• “Can Intelligent Design Be Part of the Construct of Science?” by Fazale Rana (article)
• “Can Science Identify the Intelligent Designer?” by Fazale Rana (article)

ENDNOTES

1. Avi Loeb, Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life beyond Earth (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2021).

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My answer: It is certainly possible. Genesis 5:32 and Genesis 7:6 indicate that Noah and his family had up to 100 years to construct the ark. It is likely that in addition to employing his seven relatives, that Noah had hired many other workers. Hebrews 11:7 implies that Noah, like the rest of the prophets mentioned in Hebrews 11, warned the people around him of the coming judgment. 2 Peter 2:5 explicitly states that Noah was a “preacher of righteousness.” Noah’s role as a prophet to his generation would be enhanced by hiring many of them to assist him and his family in building the ark. With a hundred or more people working for up to 100 years and an abundant supply of gopher wood and pitch, Noah would have faced no insurmountable difficulty in constructing a 450-foot-long ark.

It is also possible that Noah may not have been limited to Stone Age technology. The discovery that humans living 14­,000–33,000 years ago were involved in harvesting, roasting, and grinding grains to make a variety of bakery products was not made until 2015–2018 because of how small-scale the baking industry was at that time (as a consequence of the extremely unstable climate that persisted throughout the last ice age).¹ Similarly, it is reasonable to presume that humans living before the Neolithic Revolution and the Copper and Bronze Ages may have been involved in small-scale metallurgy that archeologists have yet to uncover.

For example, paleoanthropologists have pointed out that the Inuit peoples of northern Canada, for likely at least the past 10,000 years, had made regular trips to northwestern Greenland to recover fragments of the Hiawatha and Cape York impactors (large stainless-steel asteroids) and used cold forging techniques to manufacture from those fragments sophisticated tools. Evidence that the ancient Sumerian and Hittite names for iron bear the meaning “fire from heaven” and that the most ancient iron relics (predating 5,000 years ago) in Mesopotamia possess nickel content ranging from 7.5–10.9%, establishes that ancient Mesopotamian peoples also were cold forging tools from stainless-steel meteorites.² With the use of such tools, Noah and his family could have constructed the ark in far fewer than 100 years.

As I explained in Navigating Genesis, chapter 18, gopher wood likely had a tensile strength much superior to oak.³ If gopher wood indeed was of that quality, it would have simplified the engineering designs of the ark, making its construction even more straightforward.

ENDNOTES

1. Hugh Ross, “The First Humans Developed Food-Processing Technology,” Today’s New Reason to Believe (October 5, 2015); Hugh Ross, “Confirmation That Early Humans Were Making Bread,” Today’s New Reason to Believe (August 27, 2018).
2. T. A. Rickard, “The Use of Meteoric Iron,” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 71, no. 1/2 (1941): 55–66, doi:10.2307/2844401.
3. Hugh Ross, Navigating Genesis (Covina, CA: RTB Press, 2014), 174–75.

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