Russell Humphreys
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Dr. Russell Humphreys, or David Russell Humphreys, Ph.D., is an author and physicist. Dr. Humphreys was awarded his Ph.D in physics from Lousiana State University after receiving a B.S. from Duke University. Before graduating with his Ph.D., he was a believing creationist. He has worked for General Electric and Sandia National Laboratories in nuclear physics where he received a patent and a science award. He is presently an adjunct professor at The Institute for Creation Research, a lecturer for Answers in Genesis, and a board member of both the Creation Research Society and the Creation Science Fellowship of New Mexico.
Humphreys has written a book called Starlight and Time, which produces a cosmological model where the Earth is several thousands of years old and the outer edge of an expanding and rotating 3-dimensional universe is billions of years old with various ages in between due largely in part to Albert Einstein's Theory of Relativity. His critics, including other creationists, claim he misrepresents science and question his research.
Humphreys proposes that a "young earth" and older outer-edge universe can co-exist with the distant starlight problem. To do this, he changes the Big Bang model, and concludes that the universe began as a white hole with the Earth initially at the center and now, with the Earth, its solar system, and the Milky Way galaxy currently near the center. Humphreys' emphasises that the present day big-bang cosmology has all matter in a 4-Dimensional universe since most lay-people and even learned scientists outside of a thorough understanding of astronomy or cosmology have misconceptions, still believing the big bang model is 3-dimensional. An analogy Humphreys uses to help understand this is imagining all stars and planets on the surface of an expanding balloon where nothing resides inside or outside. Humphreys believes big-bang cosmologists do this to ignore data that the Earth is near the center of the universe since most or all stars show a red shift away from Earth supporting his cosmology, or as he would say, a possible "Young Earth" Biblical cosmology. Related to this, Humphreys has written a paper called The Battle for the Cosmic Center
The white hole Biblical cosmology of Humphreys establishes that time would have passed at an immensely slower rate than for the matter (and stars) which had previously been released from or near the white hole. As a result, he concludes, billions of years are available for starlight to travel to earth while the earth (still within the event horizon of the white hole) was scarcely aging at all. It is an unorthodox secular model, although probably the best young earth Biblically-based scienifically backed cosmological model to date, which claims to explain the vast distances and time for starlight to travel from most stars, the cosmic background radiation, and the redshifting of distant stellar light since they are theoretically evidence of a universe billions of years old.
Along with no signals from SETI (the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence project), this model would further diminish belief in extraterrestrial intelligence and evolutionary theory, whether theistic evolution or natural evolution, since it supports a "Young Earth" and returns to a geocentric model of the Universe similar to the one espoused before Copernicus, except with the Earth properly spinning around the Sun as opposed to stationary. Creation ex-nihilo and Biblical Genesis stories such as Adam & Eve, the serpent, the Flood, and the Nephilim leading to Jesus' death and resurrection, as a result, receive strong scientific support. A book published in 2004 called, "Alien Intrusion: UFOs and the Evolution Connection" used Humphrey's cosmology as a basis for a primarily anti-extra-terrestrial belief along with deceptions from the excluded middle realm of fallen angels. Humphreys' model or theory, while not disproven, clearly gives a more solid scientific foundation to "Young Earth" creationism in opposition to various "Old Earth" theories.
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[edit] Controversy and criticism
Many scientists disagree with Humphreys work. For example, on Humphrey's thousands of year old universe, in 1998 Dave Thomas wrote "he has his astronomy backwards - the Kuiper Belt contains the remains of the "volatile" (icy) planetesimals that were left over from the formation of the solar system - numbering in the hundreds of millions. If anything, it is the Kuiper Belt that supplies the more remote Oort Cloud, as some icy chunks are occasionally flung far away by interactions with large planets."[1]
Humphreys claims there is "not enough sodium in the sea" for a several billion year old sea. Conversely, Thomas notes that "Humphreys finds estimates of oceanic salt accumulation and deposition that provide him the data to "set" an upper limit of 62 million years. But modern geologists do not use erratic processes like these for clocks. It's like someone noticing that (A) it's snowing at an inch per hour, (B) the snow outside is four feet deep, and then concluding that (C) the Earth is just 48 hours, or two days, in age. Snowfall is erratic; some snow can melt; and so on. The Earth is older than two days, so there must be a flaw with the "snow" dating method, just as there is with the "salt" method."[2]
Likewise Dr. Kevin Henke explained he has "criticized and documented some of the numerous problems in Dr. Humphreys' work."[3] For example, Humphreys thinks "that zircons from the Fenton Hill rock cores... contain too much radiogenic helium to be billions of years old."[4] Henke noted that "the "dating" equations in Humphreys" work "are based on many false assumptions (isotropic diffusion, constant temperatures over time, etc.) and the vast majority of Humphreys et al.'s critical a, b, and Q/Q0 values that are used in these "dating" equations are either missing, poorly defined, improperly measured or inaccurate."[5]
Some critics simply assert "Humpherys misunderstands and misrepresents science" because "the rules of the scientific method do not allow individuals to invoke miracles to eliminate scientific data (i.e., U/Pb dates) and questions that they don't like."[6]
Others simply claim he uses arcane sources and misrepresents his sources. [7] For example, "in the eight years since, Humphreys has learned that 'Kuyper' is really spelled 'Kuiper'. That is all he has learned - his astronomy knowledge is still abysmal. The Kuiper Belt is no longer a "supposed" source of comets, it is a documented source, with over 800 Kuiper Belt Objects discovered since 1992," but "don't take my word for it - why not check out Humphreys's own reference on this claim."[8]
[edit] Bibliography
[edit] Books
- Starlight and Time: Solving the Puzzle of Distant Starlight in a Young Universe (Green Forest, AR: Master Books) 1994. ISBN 0-89051-202-7
- Evidences for a Young World
[edit] Videos
- Evidences for a Young World
[edit] Academics
[edit] Education
- B.S., Duke University (1963)
- Ph.D., Louisiana State University (1972)
[edit] Honors/Awards/Associations
- Creation Science Fellowship of New Mexico, President
- Industrial Research Magazine’s IR-100 award
- Award for Excellence for contributions to light ion-fusion target theory
[edit] External links
- Nine articles by Humphreys
- Talk Origins: "Young-Earth Creationist Helium Diffusion 'Dates':Fallacies Based on Bad Assumptions and Questionable Data" by Dr. Kevin R. Henke
- Russell Humphreys answers Various Critics
- Answers In Creation Old Earth Creationist Reviews of Russell Humphreys
