Extra-Solar Planets

To get the ball rolling in terms of actually analysing AiG's claims, I thought I'd start with something pretty straight forward and not too long...


His article ‘The existence and origin of extrasolar planets.’ (TJ 15(1):17-25 April 2001) by Wayne R. Spencer concerned the search for and explanation of the origins of planets outside our own solar system. After a lot of fault-finding with theories about the formation of solar systems, Wayne wrote in bold letters (just so we would get the point),

‘It is much simpler to explain the existence of the extrasolar planets if they are viewed as less than 10,000 years in age and as being supernaturally created.’

What is surprising about Wayne’s suggestion that extrasolar planets should only be thought of as being supernaturally created is that it appeared in their ‘Technical Journal’ magazine, claimed to be THE place for really impressive creationist scientific investigations into our world and the universe. How could a ‘technical journal’ claim that an event was supernaturally created?


And even more curiously, AiG was convinced that planets outside our solar system didn’t exist as recently as 1995 when A.J. Monty White wrote in ‘Creation’ magazine,

‘The death of the astronomer Professor Peter van de Kamp was announced in early July, 1995. This scientist devoted his life to the fruitless search for planets that encircled other stars.’ (The search for planets around other stars, ‘Creation’ Vol 18, Number 1, Dec 95-Feb 96).

Clearly, A.J. didn't believe that planets outside our solar system existed. Today however, AiG now accept that planets in other solar systems do exist and further more they believe that they know more about them than anybody else. On their website in 2003 they had a rundown of one of their new issues of ‘TJ’ magazine with a brief description of what articles could be found inside the magazine. On the subject of extra-solar planets they wrote,

‘The results from the discovery of a new planet are not what evolutionary cosmologists wanted to find. The fascinating new find of an extrasolar planet orbiting a binary star dents conventional evolutionary thinking, and so far, they have no explanation.  Is this more evidence of God’s amazing creativity confounding the sceptics? Creationist cosmologist Robert Newton explains.’ (TJ 17(3) 2003).

So in 1995 AiG plainly didn’t believe in the existence of extra-solar planets, but a mere eight years later they felt they knew better than anyone else about how those planets formed! What a sudden and rather embarrassing change of direction for AiG.


Overall, this is an example of AiG believing one thing wholeheartedly on day, and then completely changing their beliefs the next. Additionally, these extra-solar planets were found by secular, real astronomers, not by creationist-astronomers. The creationist-astronomers were however happy to use the hard work of the real astronomers. Either creationist-astronomers are lazy, or... well actually they do seem to be lazy.