Jonathan Sarfati of Answers in Genesis tells us in “Exploding stars point to a young universe” that there are not enough supernova remnants observed for the universe to be billions of years old. He gives us an impressive looking table that purports to show how many supernova remanants should be observed if the universe is billions of years old, how many should be observed if the universe is 7000 years old, and how many have actually been observed. The numbers he gives, of course, support a young universe. He then does some quotation mining with:
As the evolutionist astronomers Clark and Caswell say:
‘Why have the large number of expected remnants not been detected?’ and these authors refer to ‘The mystery of the missing remnants’.5 [sic article does not have a note 5]
[Since I originally wrote the article AiG fixed its footnote problem.]
It is yet another example of an extremely blantant out-of-context quotation. When Clark and Caswell’s paper is checked the quotes are found on page 301. “Why have the large number of expected remnants not been detected?” turns out to have been a rhetorical question and “The [sic the] mystery of the missing remnants” turns out to be followed by three words: “is also solved.”
So Clark and Caswell really said the mystery is solved and many years latter the creationists quote them to say there is a mystery. How shameless can one get? That the astronomers don’t think there is a mystery should tip-off readers that the claims that Sarfati made are complete bunk. Dave Moore demonstrates that this is the case in his “Supernovae, Supernova Remnants and Young-Earth Creationism.” The creationists made dubious assumptions, confused concepts, used outdated figures, quoted out-of-context, had false facts, etc.
Sarfati’s table shows and Sarfati later stated in bold text:
There are actually no third stage SNRs observed in our galaxy!
If you want to know what a “third stage supernova remnant” is read Moore’s article which discusses it here. But for the purpose of this article it is enough to say that when Sarfati said there is not one observed third stage SNR he is not being accurate. Moore discusses observed third stage SNRs with literature references here.
Sarfati based his article largely on creationist Keith Davies’ “Distribution of Supernova Remnants in the Galaxy” which seems where these false claims started. Moore deals with claims of Davies in detail. I will point your attention to the end of the article by Davies which lists a good number of quotes by mainstream astronomers including the above out-of-context quotation. Moore deals with a number of these quotes here. Here is one of them. Davies quotes an astronomer as saying:
“The final example is the SNR population of the Large Magellanic Cloud. The observations have caused considerable surprise and loss of confidence”
Now compare to the original:
The final example is the SNR population of the Large Magellanic Cloud. The observations (many collected in Mathewson et al. 1983) have caused considerable surprise and loss of confidence in simple models such as those in this paper…
Removing “in simple models” changes the meaning of the quoted scientist quite a bit. That Davies is willing to misquote so blantantly is an indicator that he can’ be trusted—period. That Sarfati so uncritically repeated his lies also shows the quality of Sarfati’s writings. Sarfati is a major creationist personality. Answers in Genesis which has published many articles by him to their web site that claims Sarfati “is one of the strongest creationist minds in the world.” Thus I think we can hold him to a high standard. And yet he comes up often at this web site. For example, he falsely claimed that chicken lysozyme is closest to human lysozymes and falsely cited Tom Kemp to try to show that mammal-like reptiles are not transitional.
For another example of a false supernova claim by creationists see “Missing Supernova Remnants as Evidence of a Young Universe?: A Case of Fabrication.”