characterized anomalies near Iceland’s mid-Atlantic ridge
as ‘proof’ that sea-floor spreading has occurred in the past,
yet further study has shown that their understanding of
the evidence was less than clear. 35 Cleland’s purpose for
smoking guns is also questionable. She states that they clarify
hypotheses that are “better explanation[s] for the total body
of evidence”. It is ironic that, having disparaged experimental
science for problems of data completeness, objectivity, and
unknown variables, the same issues are fixed in historical
science by ‘smoking guns’:
“Finally, it is important to keep in mind that the
findings of historical scientists are just as tentative and
subject to revision as those of experimental scientists”. 21
Thus, a ‘smoking gun’ is the important data (or
interpretation) at the time, based on the shifting context
of the scientists’ belief system and experience. This can be
avoided by Christians by defending the Bible as a source
of absolute truth, recognizing that science and history are
different disciplines, and seeing geohistory and biohistory
as mixed questions, which require equally valid input from
theology, philosophy, science, and history. 23
Critique 8: Is the rock record complete?
Cleland does not describe how the overdetermination of
past evidence can overcome the fundamental paucity of the
rock and fossil records relative to her long-age understanding
of Earth’s history. 36 Her view that there is excess evidence is
at odds with geologists, who worry about its incompleteness
and the implications of preservation potential for stratigraphy
and paleontology. Ager37 said that there was ‘more gap than
record’ and that the record consisted of a series of ‘frozen
accidents’. Van Andel warned:
“… invariably we find that the rock record requires
only a small fraction, usually 1 to 10 percent, of the
available time, even if we take account of all the
possible breaks in the sequence. Evidently deposition,
unlike work in Murphy’s Law, does not expand to fill
the time available. This might in principle be expected
but the universality and especially the magnitude of the
shortfall are startling.” 38
Similar concerns have been expressed by Sadler, 12, 13
Torrens, 14 and Bailey and Smith, who note that “it should
always be borne in mind that the record may not be
representative of this history”. 39 It is not enough that we
have evidence of the past and that properties of causality
may supply redundant evidence. A high confidence in the
translation of a paragraph means little when it is all that
remains of a book.
Critique 9: Historical science in practice
Cleland pointed out failings of practice in
experimental science. Yet the same problems are true
of historical science, where the same mechanisms for
reducing subjectivity are not available. Kuhn40 criticized
the control of experimental science by paradigms, yet
the role of beliefs in historical science is much greater,
as illustrated by evolution—a theory that cannot be
falsified, despite abundant negative evidence. Moreover,
Rudwick41 noted that researchers were confident in deep
time a priori.
Geologists cannot even describe their own history in
a reliable manner. Gould31 called the standard account
of the history of geology a ‘cardboard empiricist myth’.
The heroic sagas of Hutton, Playfair, and Lyell devolve
into much more complex stories as new studies delve into
the interacting personalities with competing agendas,
oversized egos, and a desire for fame and fortune. 41 They
were united only by a common animosity to biblical
history. That bias remains, and may be the dominant
theme of geohistory and biohistory since the 18th century.
Figure 4. Dr Carol Cleland is a philosopher at the University of Colorado,
Boulder, specializing in understanding the logic and philosophy of
science. Her interest in historical science seems driven by a desire
for epistemological equality as defined by method, and results in the
assimilation of historical inquiry into a broader scientific method.
