God isn't a scientist, he's a fine arts professor.

Once again, the good folks at Fundies Say the Darndest Things have provided me with some creationist fodder to debunk. Today's post comes from Gideon over at Flyleaffans.com. Here it is in full:

The sun has gives off ultraviolet rays doesn't it? And it has been proven that humans in fact, need the nutrients of these rays in order have healthy skin, and so on. But when a human has too much UV, the effects have proved harmful. Knowing this however, He decided to create the ozone layer and a magnetic field to shield us from such radiation. Also, while the earth rotates it is slightly tilted as it hangs, and with good reason: If that tilt was even 1 degree higher or lower than it is now earth would suffer through unstable seasonal change, orbital change, and much more... also making it impossible for us to live on it. As we know, scientists do not just analyze they also have the ability to create; a scientist does not only make observations. So God therefore that would make God a perfect scientist because he knows everything and can create anything (like the examples shown above) perfectly, unlike us human scientists. And so you see, God uses logic even for these basic things. Did that make sense?

Let's dismantle this piece by piece, shall we?

"The sun has gives off ultraviolet rays doesn't it? And it has been proven that humans in fact, need the nutrients of these rays in order have healthy skin, and so on. But when a human has too much UV, the effects have proved harmful. Knowing this however, He decided to create the ozone layer and a magnetic field to shield us from such radiation."

Yes, the sun does give off ultraviolet rays, in three forms: UVA, UVB and UVC. This might be the only thing in Gideon's entire post that he actually gets right. But it has not been proven that humans "need the nutrients of these rays in order to have healthy skin and so on". This is because the rays dont have any nutrients! Ultraviolet rays are composed of photons with a wavelength shorter than that of visible light (but longer than X-rays). In the mid-1800's James Clerk Maxwell showed that light - photons - are a form of electromagnetic radiation. In other words, ultraviolet rays are a form of electromagnetic radiation. UV is energy. As such, it is absolutely impossible for UV light to have any nutrients. "Nutrients" are chemicals necessary for the metabolism of an organism which must be taken in from the environment. They are physical, material substances. UV, energy, cannot "carry" nutrients.

Nevertheless, ultraviolet light is necessary for our health. The biosynthesis of Vitamin D requires UVB light as a catalyst; people who do not get adequate exposure to natural UVB light end up becoming deficent, a condition known as rickets. This might be what Gideon was alluding to but was too ignorant to get the facts right. Too much of it is also dangerous. UV light causes pyrimidine dimers in your DNA: pyrimidine bases, like thyamine will pair with each other in the same strand. This causes the DNA to bulge, preventing replication enzymes from working and causing mutations. This is why you get a sunburn that often peels; your cells get enough mutations that they kill themselves off to prevent themselves from becoming cancerous.

However, while the ozone layer does work to keep out harmful UVB and UVC rays (UVA is not as harmful - it's what's emitted by blacklights), the earth's magnetic fields does pretty much nothing to protect us from ultraviolet light (and it would be pretty crappy if it did protect us. Since the magnetic field has varried in intensity and direction over time, so would our exposure to UV). Chemicals like CFCs destroy ozone molecules, putting us at higher and higher risks of overexposure to UV light. Gideon seems to think that the protection against UV is a gift from His Almighty. This kinda makes me wonder though. Does Gideon think his God is stupid? Why would God design us so that we require something that could easily kill us as an essential factor for life? Wouldn't it be smarter to make sure that everything we require for our metabolism isn't harmful? Was this an oversight on God's part? For someone who's supposedly infinite in his foresight, it seems a bit odd that he would do this.

"Also, while the earth rotates it is slightly tilted as it hangs, and with good reason: If that tilt was even 1 degree higher or lower than it is now earth would suffer through unstable seasonal change, orbital change, and much more... also making it impossible for us to live on it."

Wrong, wrong and more wrong. The Earth's tilt is caused (most likely, the debate is still open on the cause) by the shape of the Earth itself. The Earth is not a perfect sphere; and because of this it rotates with a bit of a wobble. This wobble gives the Earth it's tilt. It is also the reason why the rest of Gideon's claim about the Earth's axis is bunk. The Earth is not tilted because an axis of plus or minus one degree would spell disaster. In fact, the angle of the Earth's axis has changed over time: it changes from 21 degrees to 25 degrees and back again once every 41,000 years (much more of a deviation from the current tilt of 23.5 degrees than the "deadly" 1 degree difference claimed by Gideon). The tidal forces on the Earth due to the gravity of the moon also have an effect on the tilt of the Earth; this is called nutation, and occurs in a cycle of 18.6 years. This means that the axis of the Earth changes (assuming that the rate of change of the Earth's tilt is constant) at least one degree every 5100 years¹. If such a change in the axis would cause "unstable seasonal change, orbital change, and much more... also making it impossible for us to live on [Earth]", then humanity would have been wiped out within recorded history. Even if you believed in Young Earth Creationist claims that the earth is only 6000 to 10,000 years old, if Gideon's claim were true then humanity would have been wiped out at least once. Obviously, this is ridiculous. The truth is that the Earth's tilt is due to the shape of the Earth and the exact angle of the tilt varries at a known rate. There is nothing special about the Earth in this respect - even the moon has axial tilt - and there certainly isn't any "design" aparent in this regard.

"As we know, scientists do not just analyze they also have the ability to create; a scientist does not only make observations. So God therefore that would make God a perfect scientist because he knows everything and can create anything (like the examples shown above) perfectly, unlike us human scientists. And so you see, God uses logic even for these basic things. Did that make sense?"

Gideon is right that scientists do not only make observations, but they also make interpretations of those observations to try and elucidate the way Nature works. What scientists create are working models of Nature. We use experimentation to ask Nature a question and we evaluate her reply. God would not make a perfect scientist at all. Scientists seek answers; God, in all his infinite knowledge, supposeldly already knows the answers (just like a Creationist, eh?). This would make him a terrible scientist: the whole purpose of science is to find the answers to how the world works. If all the answers were known then science would be futile (thankfully, this isnt the case). And if God knows all the answers, then he has no working models to create. God would be just about the worst scientist you could imagine, and not just because he's only had one publication in the 6,000 year's he's supposedly been working. So, no, Gideon. That doesn't make sense.
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1. An entire cycle takes 41000 years, so it takes 20500 years to go from 21 degrees to 25 degrees, a difference of 4 degrees. If the rate of change is constant, then the tilt changes once every 20500/4=5125 years.