In keeping with the discussion of defending science, I want to touch on another topic, deep time.

But first I have a little diatribe to get out.

In order to stay somewhat aware of what the creationists are up to, I watch some of their television programs. At the end of one episode where they had been tearing down evolution, the host summarizes by saying that evolution is "a fraud and a forgery."

My goodness, I was devastated. How could it be that just about everything I learned in obtaining a B.S. in physical geography was all based on fraud and forgeries? I decided to make a list of all those evil science classes to try to figure out what went wrong.

As part of my undergraduate work, I took 28 science classes related to my major and a few math and statistics classes. Did they all lead me astray? Was it the Anthropology classes, the Biology classes, or perhaps Physical Climatology? Could it have been some of my favorites like Historical Geology, Glacial and Periglacial Geomorphology, Pleistocene Stratigraphy of the Great Basin, or a devilish little class known as Rocks and Minerals? The truth is, it was all of them that helped to make me the defender of science I am today. (Come to think of it a lot of my high school classes were corrupting me way back.)

I had to make this statement for a couple of reasons. First, the assertion that evolution is a fraud and a forgery is baseless when you really look at the arguments creationists present. Second, it insults my intelligence when these boobs dismiss all the massive amounts of information accumulated in numerous scientific disciplines, which all add to the knowledge that the earth is extremely old.

The knowledge that the cosmos is extremely old is very gratifying. To me, deep time (simply put, a lot of time) is what allows for all the myriad of changes that have taken place in the universe and specifically the earth's biology. The Hubble space telescope has recorded images of galaxies over 14 billion light years away, that is a lot of time! When fossils are scrutinized, they also reveal great age. The study of glaciers shows us that it took considerable time for them to accumulate and a long time for them to carve and straighten out their paths. Stratigraphy also reveals many things and again the evidence of lots of time is one of them, as we can see that these layers represent sediments having been deposited for millions and even hundreds of millions of years.

There are many more examples we can come up with, and they all point to an exquisitely old and wonderful earth and universe. The idea that the earth is only a few thousand years old is as untenable as the notions that the earth is flat or that the sun revolves around the earth.

--Bob Lane