You can alter rates of c 14 to C 12 with a hot stove and a wok, throwing off carbon dating, but thats not altering the rates of radioactive decay.
As to potasium argon dating being an hourglass where we don't know how much sand it started with, this is incorrect. We know it starts with zero sand in the bottom, since argon is a gas and doesn't stick around in molten lava.
I've posted at great length on radiometric dating here before -- I should really just archive my pages of explanations and speed-dial them on repost, because the same old tired canards get spouted ad nauseum, but let me simply propose a challenge for now:
1. Assume that all decay rates change over time.
2. Find two rock samples of different ages that have also been dated with two radiometric methods (it's pretty standard, actually, to do this, in order to reduce error).
3. Calculate the rate of change of the decay rates that would still yield matching dates for the two methods for both samples.
4. Bonus: Add a third sample and see if you can make it work
5. Hint: You can't.
6. If one of the samples is basalt, also figure out correct sea floor spreading rates to account for that age -- remembering that we actually measure the spreading of the Atlantic using satellites, so there's a recent history of numbers you can't fudge or hand-wave.
--
People also blather on about error in radiometric dating, forgetting that an error of +/-50,000 years in a 200 million-year-old rock represents an error of only 0.025%
nm
nm
Is that kind of like putting your fingers in your ears and yelling "la la la!"?
(I assume "nm" means "never mind," as in, "I don't want to even think about what you're saying and prefer to ignore it completely.")
Kirth--
Question for you over in the "Gauging Interest" thread.
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Well, carbon dating has been proved pretty accurate by comparing it to dendrochronology.
The inside of a tree is dead. Only the outer layer is alive. I'm sure you've heard you can count the tree rings and get the age of the tree.
That's just the start though. Because trees have good and bad years the rings vary. If you rate them from say, 1 to 10 , you get a pattern.
You can then match up different trees , living or fossil, one after another, and establish a reliable chain back longer than the life of any single tree. It would have to be a hell of a coincidence for this method and carbon dating to match up so well time after time.
It's been demonstrated in laboratory experiments that tremendous pressure will greatly accelerate decay rates.You would need to be pushing atoms together to do something like that. The pressure of lava in the ground isn't even close to doing that.
Actually not really. Some of the factors that might affect the trees also might affect the various methods of dating, so it wouldn't be either that unheard of nor coincidence. It can be a lot of things, from the change of heat, introduction of chemicals or reactions within the area or whatever. The big thing that needs to be looked for is the population of the site. Is it a small area (citywide), a masive forest, or practically global.
The pressure of lava in the ground isn't even close to doing that.
Nitpick: If it's still in the ground it's "magma." The word "lava" applies only when it reaches the surface. Silly, I know, but there you have it.
Do any of these people actually consider the implications of their theories? Most of modern scientific knowledge has to be wrong. If evolution is wrong, everything we think about the relationship of groups of animals and plants goes out the window. All the genetic studies. All the fossil evidence. Modern biology goes from being a coherent field to just a collection of facts about unrelated creatures.
Geology is nonsense. All our understanding of rock formation, plate tectonics, etc. Gone. Physics loses its understanding of radiation. According to this guy's theory radioactive material doesn't come from long ago novas, but was created in the flood event. All our basic cosmology is gone. Heavy elements aren't formed in the nuclear reactors of stars. Even human prehistory has to be radically rewritten. Especially if this event is supposed to have occurred on the Biblical schedule.
"It would be a lot of work to fix things" is a TERRIBLE reason to cut off investigation, though. A much better reason is "we've heard all these lame arguments a million times before and have shown repeatedly where they can't be made to fit the physical observations."
For example, the ONLY way to "falsify" radiometric dating using the supernatural is if decay rates are not only random, but are immediately re-set by God upon use of the techniques -- specifically to come up with matching ages using different methods. For every single sample and every method, God has to go in and fix the time to match the other methods, and also make all the decay rates seem to be stable, so that all the math works as if the rates were constant. That's a lot of effort to go to simply to make it seem as if a simpler explanation is actually correct.
For geologic dating to all be incorrect, a necessary condition is that God is a trickster, like Loki, who gave us the gift of reason solely to give himself more opportunities to fool us using elaborate illusions and cosmic sleight-of-hand. If that's the God that Creationists worship, so be it, but for most of the Christian, Jewish, Muslim, and Hindu communities, that's the exact opposite of the types of deities that are revered.
Actually not really.
Yes really.
Really really really.
Show me ANYTHING that indicates pressure short of a sun can mess up, not just radioactive dating, but SPECIFICALLY the rate of radioactive decay: the rate at which subatomic particles are ejected from the nucleus, NOT the amount of a substance you start with.
Some of the factors that might affect the trees also might affect the various methods of dating
Specifically?
Atmospheric c14 levels do vary slightly over time due to fluxuations in solar radiation. That doesn't change the rate of decay.
so it wouldn't be either that unheard of nor coincidence.
Ok, so the "coincidence" happens to work with two completely different methods of dating with thousands of trees from different areas around the globe?
Also remember that the method works hundreds of times within the SAME tree. How on earth can carbon 14 dating be so subject to change but consistantly give the right (or at least a close enough) answer every single time?
You're talking a last thursdayism level of supernatural influence to pull that off.
It can be a lot of things, from the change of heat, introduction of chemicals or reactions within the area or whatever.
Those don't mess up rates of radioactive decay. And the idea is that anything that effects one tree affects them all. You would need someone both fluctuating the c14 levels and gardening every tree on the planet to get that to work.
The big thing that needs to be looked for is the population of the site. Is it a small area (citywide), a masive forest, or practically global.
It usually works as long as the trees are in a roughly state wide site. Ideally you want trees from say, the same exact bog (because swamps tend to produce nice, fluctuating rings, and preserve the wood)
nmIs that kind of like putting your fingers in your ears and yelling "la la la!"?
(I assume "nm" means "never mind," as in, "I don't want to even think about what you're saying and prefer to ignore it completely.")
Nope.
I originally interpreted BNW's post as implying that lava does not have gasses dissolved within it. I thought otherwise.
I posted a link from the usgs with a quote discussing the gases dissolved but made it clear that I was not taking a side but simply modifying a statement that had been made (no gases in magma/lava). It was this link that I posted with a quote from the page. After posting and rereading the post being responded to, I determined it was entirely possible (even likely) that BNW was specifically referencing magma that was not pressurized by being underground such as that which came to the surface before solidifying. I decided to delete my post but accidentally hit edit instead. Rather than backpaging so that I could still delete, I erased my post and replaced it with nm.
RPG Superstar 2013
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I am maybe going to irritate soembelievers here, but I have to point out how failinf to study creation in the bible can get you wrapped up in arguments that don't have much to do with the Gospel or changing hearts and minds.
The simple truth about Biblical creation is that the Bible doesn't claim the earth was made a few thousand years ago. This is not a re0invention of scripture to make it more palatable or to write out the supernatural ability of God. It's simply a study of what the Bible actually says about the matter.
The Genesis account of creation uses two specific words. God speaks the universe into existence and creates from nothing according to His artistic design. The word used for this is bara, which specifically means "creates from nothing". Later, when the Bible talks about the forging of the world, the crafting of life, etc, the Bible uses a different word - asah. This means to shape or produce from something. Breathing or speaking the universe into existence happened some indeterminate time before the world was formed. The world was formed and shaped as God intended some time later, and Scripture is unclear as to when. The word used to give us the translated phrase 'In the beginning" is re's&!* , which only means in the beginning, and not that any subsequent phrase comes next in the sequence of events. Hebrew history is well know to skip unimportant events, and move on to the next salient point in history, as with the geneologies in the New Testament. The literal interpretaion of the Bible tells us three important things: God creates, Creation allow for both an old world and new world view (maybe most correctly an old world with recent humanity, which makes carbon dating inconsistencies more germane than, say, argon dating, which is much more consistent and dates rocks instead of living organisms). And finally, we know that the biblical account of Creation reveals an author's understanding about the earth and its shaping that no one in the ancient world had.
A great principle of exegetical theology is that the Bible can never say something it never said. In this case, Christian apologists, myself included, have made the mistake of trying to justify their faith against prevailing scientific theory, when the correct approach would be to let the Bible judge all truth and then let science expand our understanding of the world God made. We should avoid getting tied up in combatting secularism based on science. I support that approach less and less. I think the Holy Spirit convicts hearts and minds and our witness should be more about the testimony of what we know as Christians and less about what we think we can prove. God is interested in a saving relationship with each of us, and not in winning some cosmic argument about the veracity of scientific naturalism.
Having said that, the Old Testament refers to the earth as round at least three times. It was impossible for me to wrap my atheism around that one.
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Mr Helt,
It is nice to be able to agree with you on the subject involving religion for a change.
The only thing I'd nitpick is about the Bible saying the world was round. This wasn't a great secret. Greek mathematicans had calculated the Earth to be round and even got the diameter pretty close. The Romans took from the Greeks, and so on. The Flat Earth was believed by certain people in certain places but it wasn't nearly as universal a belief as subsequent generations have sought to portray.
Wikipedia link to summarise.
[joke]Maybe you should try a more flexible type of atheism. I hear some of the new kinds can be stretched to include everything.[/joke]
I posted a link from the usgs with a quote discussing the gases dissolved but made it clear that I was not taking a side but simply modifying a statement that had been made (no gases in magma/lava). It was this link that I posted with a quote from the page. After posting and rereading the post being responded to, I determined it was entirely possible (even likely) that BNW was specifically referencing magma that was not pressurized by being underground such as that which came to the surface before solidifying. I decided to delete my post but accidentally hit edit instead. Rather than backpaging so that I could still delete, I erased my post and replaced it with nm.
Aah... now I get it. Wow, I was badly confused. Thanks!
Long series of posts because I don't like people debating my present points before I've finished discussing their past ones. I apologize if I appear overly opinionated or if you get tired of seeing my posts.
I also want to say outright that I mean absolutely no offense to any of you by anything I say. I really do enjoy these types of conversations because I like being challenged and the opportunity to learn. :)
Oh, and one quick note about the Fossil Rabbit page: I don't see how that shows that naturalism is falsifiable.
Ice Age.
1. An ice age implies extreme snowfall which, in turn, requires cold temperatures and heavy precipitation. Heavy precipitation can occur only if oceans are warm enough to produce equally heavy evaporation. How could warm oceans exist with cold atmospheric temperatures?
2. Another problem is stopping an ice age once it begins — or beginning a new ice age after one ends. As glaciers expand, they reflect more of the Sun’s radiation away from earth, lower temperatures and cause glaciers to grow even more. Eventually the entire globe should freeze. Conversely, if glaciers shrink, as they have in recent decades, the earth should reflect less heat into space, warm up, and melt all glaciers forever.
Let's start here, because it's quick and provides a pretty good example.
1. For a geologist, an ice age implies heavy snow accumulation, but not a big heavy snowfall all at once, because we do not insist that it has to happen overnight -- we work within time frames of thousands of years. Low temperatures lead to lower evaporation rates, but do not mean that all evaporation magically stops. As long as it's cold enough to accumulate, low rates over longer periods of time work just fine as an explanation. What Brown is doing here is attempting to force the reader into a de facto acceptance of very short time frames -- i.e., a young earth.
2. Brown is correctly describing ONE of the feedback loops involved in climate. In this case, it's a positive feedback loop: more ice = higher planetary albedo (more reflection of incoming solar radiation) = lower temperature. There are a large number of these loops, however, both positive and negative. For example, warmer temperatures promote more cloud cover; low (stratus) clouds tend to reflect sunlight and cool climate, but high (cirrus) clouds can be transparent to sunlight allowing it to reach the Earth) and opaque to infrared radiation (thus trapping heat and warming the climate). It is possible that warmer tempratures are more favorable for forming stratus clouds, thus creating a negative feedback loop: higher temperatures = more clouds, and more reflective clouds = cooler temperature. A lot of the uncertainty in climate models is from the complexity of these loops; you can't simply point to one of them and ignore the others.
1. So scientists have a very thorough and reasonable explanation for the Ice Age(s)? I was under the impression that the feedback loop of #1 was puzzling to scientists. I'll look more into it.
2. Yes, that's another feedback loop. He discusses it at length in the section on global warming. So he's definitely not ignorant of that particular feedback loop.
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2)...We know how this stuff works.
I'm not sure we DO know how this stuff works. In many cases people seem to add more time to the problem until it goes away. However, more time to something that is impossible in the first place wouldn't help.
3) I don't know enough about this to really comment. A quick google search make me think that there's no great mystery. Either that or all the geologists studying it are hiding their confusion.
All people are biased to some degree or another, and that includes geologists (Once again, no offense Kirth or in fact anyone on this board, I mean in general. I in no way whatsover desire to suggest this
about any of you.). Some of them simply don't want any scientific theory implying God's existence to be true so much that they never consider it at all and/or deny contradictory results. Many others areafraid of losing their job if they publicize any of their discoveries that contradict the status quo. The scientific establishment's persecution of creationists is a very real thing. As to non-scientists,
many of them don't think to question what their science teachers have been telling them their whole lives. I didn't for the longest time. I once believed in the big bang theory and evolution as well.
Oh, and speaking of the ocean floor, did you know that we've discovered "continental rock" under the Pacific floor?
(5) Does any mainstream scientists think this? Or is this a problem that he invented to solve? I've never heard this suggested before.
(Aside: I'm a caver. I happen to believe there isn't anywhere near enough limestone in the world. Especially in my part of it.)
Google the "Dolomite problem" and look around for a bit.
4) This kind of thing is what marks this firmly as pseudoscience. Is it possible that radioactive decay is not constant? Yeah, I suppose. Proving that would guarantee a Nobel prize in physics and shake the entire foundation of modern understanding of the universe to the core. In creation science, you not only assume it isn't constant but that it varies just the right way to make your story work. We can't observe it in the past, so it could have been different then. Poof, move on.
That's exactly correct. Nobody can observe the subjects in question. That's why we have to date them indirectly in the first place. We both have to maintain what we maintain about decay rates in order to preserve our respective worldviews. The difference is that you have to assume that they have NEVER changed under any circumstances. All young earth creationists have to do is show how they could've and a plausible mechanism, which Walt does in his book in the section on radioactivity. Our position seems more falsifiable to me.
“It is obvious that radiometric techniques may not be the absolute dating methods that they are claimed to be. Age estimates on a given geological stratum by different radiometric methods are often quite different (sometimes by hundreds of millions of years). There is no absolutely reliable long-term radiological ‘clock.’ ” William D. Stansfield, Science of Evolution (New York: Macmillan Publishing
Co., 1977), p. 84
A few decay rates increase by 0.2% at a static pressure of about 2,000 atmospheres, the pressure existing 4.3 miles below the earth’s surface. [See G. T. Emery, “Perturbation of Nuclear Decay Rates,”
Annual Review of Nuclear Science, Vol. 22, 1972, pp. 165–202.]
Decay rates CAN change.
Do any of these people actually consider the implications of their theories? Most of modern scientific knowledge has to be wrong. If evolution is wrong, everything we think about the relationship of groups of animals and plants goes out the window. All the genetic studies. All the fossil evidence. Modern biology goes from being a coherent field to just a collection of facts about unrelated creatures.
Geology is nonsense. All our understanding of rock formation, plate tectonics, etc. Gone.
Physics loses it's understanding of radiation. According to this guy's theory radioactive material doesn't come from long ago novas, but was created in the flood event. All our basic cosmology is gone. Heavy elements aren't formed in the nuclear reactors of stars.
Even human prehistory has to be radically rewritten. Especially if this event is supposed to have occurred on the Biblical schedule.
So? And that's a case of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Macroevolution being false doesn't mean that there's no use in studying genetics or that you can't study how creatures adapt to their environment. Creationists do that too. We believe in natural selection just as much as you do. Its ability to do what macroevolution claims is another matter. Also, if there's the SLIGHTEST possibility that some of that can turn out to be based on wrong assumptions and therefore invalid, wouldn't the progressive scientific thing be to investigate?
For that matter we believe in operational science just as much as you do as well. That's the method of science that's given rise to technology. It's only historical or origins scientific methods that we disagree on.
Besides, what about the implications of naturalism? What about the implications of there being no God? No higher purpose? So how does life have meaning then? What's so bad about death if it's just a necessary step in the evolutionary process?
Well, carbon dating has been proved pretty accurate by comparing it to dendrochronology.
The inside of a tree is dead. Only the outer layer is alive. I'm sure you've heard you can count the tree rings and get the age of the tree.
That's just the start though. Because trees have good and bad years the rings vary. If you rate them from say, 1 to 10 , you get a pattern.
You can then match up different trees , living or fossil, one after another, and establish a reliable chain back longer than the life of any single tree. It would have to be a hell of a coincidence for this method and carbon dating to match up so well time after time.
To a certain extent dendrochonology is accurate. As in, usually ones that are still living (and some have been living for quite some time. Heard of the Methuselah tree?) or can be reliably dated within documented history. However, going further back than that relies on many assumptions about matching up sections of a tree that could very well have been done incorrectly. I know of no dating of dendrochronology of older than 8,000 years that the scientist in question released for independent statistical verification. For that matter, blind testing is rarely done and published on supposedly older trees or for radioactive dating for that matter. When they are done on radioactive samples of known age (other than radiocarbon) they give extremely wrong dates.
It's been demonstrated in laboratory experiments that tremendous pressure will greatly accelerate decay rates.
You would need to be pushing atoms together to do something like that...
Yes, that's precisely how Walt describes it in the radioactivity section.
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You can alter rates of c 14 to C 12 with a hot stove and a wok, throwing off carbon dating, but thats not altering the rates of radioactive decay.
Sorry, I should have mentioned at the outset but I didn't have time. The problem with radiocarbon dating isn't the rate of decay. It's being able to know the ratio of C 14 to C 12 when the thing you're dating stopped living because the flood would've changed the balance, which due to radiocarbon forming 28–37% faster than it is decaying, would have been different from today's balance anyway. That's why radiocarbon dating can be accurate, but only the relatively recent dates derived from them, such as from things that died after the environment stabilized after the flood. It's the other radioactive dating methods that have trouble with constant decay rates. Why that is the case is explained on the site.
As to potasium argon dating being an hourglass where we don't know how much sand it started with, this is incorrect. We know it starts with zero sand in the bottom, since argon is a gas
and doesn't stick around in molten lava.
On several occasions much more Argon than was expected has been measured coming from lava flows. For that matter excess Helium has been found in rocks where Uranium has decayed. That suggests rapid and recent decay.
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I've posted at great length on radiometric dating here before -- I should really just archive my pages of explanations and speed-dial them on repost, because the same old tired canards get spouted ad nauseum, but let me simply propose a challenge for now:
1. Assume that all decay rates change over time.
2. Find two rock samples of different ages that have also been dated with two radiometric methods (it's pretty standard, actually, to do this, in order to reduce error).
3. Calculate the rate of change of the decay rates that would still yield matching dates for the two methods for both samples.
4. Bonus: Add a third sample and see if you can make it work
5. Hint: You can't.
6. If one of the samples is basalt, also figure out correct sea floor spreading rates to account for that age -- remembering that we actually measure the spreading of the Atlantic using satellites, sothere's a recent history of numbers you can't fudge or hand-wave.
--
People also blather on about error in radiometric dating, forgetting that an error of +/-50,000 years in a 200 million-year-old rock represents an error of only 0.025%
1. Invalid assumption, as there's a plausible mechanism for the decay rate for radiocarbon not changing while the others do.
2. Blind tested? Better yet, double blind tested? Or just regularly tested by scientists with a vested interest in maintaining the status quo of geology? (Once again, no offense.)3-5. See #1 and #2.
6. He goes into specific detail on why, according to his theory, the continents are generally moving toward the Pacific. It's related to the mass deficiency under it, something about filling partial vacuums. :P
For example, the ONLY way to "falsify" radiometric dating using the supernatural is if decay rates are not only random, but are immediately re-set by God upon use of the techniques -- specifically to come up with matching ages using different methods.
Who said anything about random changes to decay rates? I never did, and neither did Walt. A truly global flood would have similar pressures and effects on rock throughout the world, and would thus alter the decay rates (except radiocarbon) in approximately the same way everywhere.
Show me ANYTHING that indicates pressure short of a sun can mess up, not just radioactive dating, but SPECIFICALLY the rate of radioactive decay: the rate at which subatomic particles are ejected from the nucleus, NOT the amount of a substance you start with...
I understand the difference quite well. I actually consider myself fairly intelligent, and at the risk of not being very modest have test scores to back me up (99th percentile on ASVAB for instance). I don't say that to brag and I by no means assume that any of you are less intelligent, but I want you all to see that I'm not some ignorant person who believes what I believe without good, logical, and (yes) scientific reasons.
...Ok, so the "coincidence" happens to work with two completely different methods of dating with thousands of trees from different areas around the globe?
Also remember that the method works hundreds of times within the SAME tree. How on earth can carbon 14 dating be so subject to change but consistantly give the right (or at least a close enough) answer every single time?...
...Those don't mess up rates of radioactive decay. And the idea is that anything that effects one tree affects them all. You would need someone both fluctuating the c14 levels and gardening every tree on the planet to get that to work...
So you're saying that any effect that would drastically alter radiocarbon test results on trees from different parts of the world would by necessity be global in scope? I completely agree. :P
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This wasn't directly touched on by anyone, so I suppose this is as good a place as any to post it:
“The products released from the central area of the target [that was] destroyed by an extremely powerful explosion from inside in every case of the successful operation of the coherent beam driver created in the Electrodynamics Laboratory ‘Proton-21,’ with the total energy reserve of 100 to 300 J, contain significant quantities (the integral quantity being up to 10-4 g and more) of all known chemical elements, including the rarest ones.” [emphasis in original] Adamenko et al., p. 49.
In other words, an extremely powerful, but tiny, Z-pinched-induced explosion occurred inside various targets, each consisting of a single chemical element. All experiments combined have produced at least 10-4 gram of every common chemical element.
u In these revolutionary experiments, the isotope ratios for a particular chemical element resembled those found today for natural isotopes. However, those ratios were different enough to show that they were not natural isotopes that somehow contaminated the electrode or experiment.
Since February 2000, thousands of sophisticated experiments at the Proton-21 Electrodynamics Research Laboratory (Kiev, Ukraine) have demonstrated nuclear combustion21 and have produced traces of all known chemical elements and their stable isotopes.22
Essentially, that says that every isotope of every element has been produced through experiments using a miniature version of the mechanism that produced isotopes and radioactivity according to Walt's theory. Contamination has been ruled out as a factor.
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I am maybe going to irritate soembelievers here, but I have to point out how failinf to study creation in the bible can get you wrapped up in arguments that don't have much to do with the Gospel or changing hearts and minds.
The simple truth about Biblical creation is that the Bible doesn't claim the earth was made a few thousand years ago. This is not a re0invention of scripture to make it more palatable or to write out the supernatural ability of God. It's simply a study of what the Bible actually says about the matter.
The Genesis account of creation uses two specific words. God speaks the universe into existence and creates from nothing according to His artistic design. The word used for this is bara, which specifically means "creates from nothing". Later, when the Bible talks about the forging of the world, the crafting of life, etc, the Bible uses a different word - asah. This means to shape or produce from something.
Breathing or speaking the universe into existence happened some indeterminate time before the world was formed. The world was formed and shaped as God intended some time later, and Scripture is unclear as to when. The word used to give us the translated phrase 'In the beginning" is re's%** hope the auto-editor let's that through, which only means in the beginning, and not that any subsequent phrase comes next in the sequence of events. Hebrew history is well know to skip unimportant events, and move on to the next salient point in history, as with the geneologies in the New Testament. The literal interpretaion of the Bible tells us three important things: God creates, Creation allow for both an old world and new world view (maybe most correctly an old world with recent humanity, which makes carbon dating inconsistencies more germane than, say, argon dating, which is much more consistent and dates rocks instead of living organisms). And finally, we know that the biblical account of Creation reveals an author's understanding about the earth and its shaping that no one in the ancient world had.
A great principle of exegetical theology is that the Bible can never say something it never said. In this case, Christian apologists, myself included, have made the mistake of trying to justify their faith against prevailing scientific theory, when the correct approach would be to let the Bible judge all truth and then let science expand our understanding of the world God made. We should avoid getting tied up in combatting secularism based on science. I support that approach less and less. I think the Holy Spirit convicts hearts and minds and our witness should be more about the testimony of what we know as Christians and less about what we think we can prove. God is interested in a saving relationship with each of us, and not in winning some cosmic argument about the veracity of scientific naturalism.
Having said that, the Old Testament refers to the earth as round at least three times. It was impossible for me to wrap my atheism around that one.
1. Yes, far and away the ONLY important thing according to Christianity is the gospel of salvation by belief in Jesus and I very much want that for everyone. Don't think this means that I think that everyone who isn't a Christian is an "all out sinner" in the sense of being a constant mess of a horrible person. I don't. It's just that according to the Bible all have sinned (Rom. 3:23) and the wages of sin is death (Rom. 6:23). It doesn't matter if someone sins a lot or a little, sin is sin and leads to death without God's forgiveness.
I don't want to imply that I think differently about the importance of the gospel or that the age of the universe is as important. I'm not saying you have to agree with me about when creation happened or anything else but accepting the gospel in its simplest form. However, discussing scientific matters with those inclined to be interested in scientific matters (this is a gaming site after all.) is possibly a legitimate way to get others to consider my point of view.
2. Once again, I very much appreciate your sentiment. It's clear, though, by looking at Genesis 1-11, especially 1-2 and the genealogies in 5 and 11 (linked to the time of Abraham, whom we know lived about 2,000 B.C.), that the creation week as written of in Genesis happened about 6,000 - 7,000 years ago. Ex. 20:8-11 confirms that a week (as we measure time now.) passed between the original day of creation and the day that God rested. Plus, Jesus confirmed in the Gospels (Mt. 19:4, Mk. 10:6) that Adam and Eve were created "at the beginning". These are claims, indirect as they may be, by the Bible about the age of the universe.
It's just as clear by the language is that the flood in Noah's day was global in scope and not just local as many claim.
3. Since you've obviously done your homework (and I commend that btw.), I suggest looking up the original Hebrew meaning behind every word in Gen. 1:6-8 from several different sources. It's quite fascinating as it fits with this theory. :)
To a certain extent dendrochonology is accurate. As in, usually ones that are still living (and some have been living for quite some time. Heard of the Methuselah tree?) or can be reliably dated within documented history.
This is not a matter of opinion it is a matter of fact. This is not something where you get to say “well its just what I believe you’ll have to accept that”. Dendrochronology is not accurate “to a certain extent”. It’s the most accurate measure of time we have (the guys doing ice cores put up an argument with that once, but it was snowballs vs Louisville sluggers so that didn't last long). Its often accurate to the year, which is more than we can say for many historical documents.
Dendrochronology ’s accuracy is NOT limited to living trees. It goes back further than any existent written document. I explained above how it can work with fossils, buried or petrified wood to extend it back MUCH further than the life of any individual tree.In some areas of the world, it is possible to date wood back a few thousand years, or even many thousands. In most areas, however, wood can only be dated back several hundred years, if at all. Currently, the maximum for fully anchored chronologies is a little over 11,000 years from present.[1]-wiki . Please note that wiki is sourcing something more reliable here.
I absolutely detest the epistemic nihilism required to flat out ignore verified, tested, and proven knowledge. We’ve worked too hard to figure this stuff out to hand wave it away because its inconvenient.
However, going further back than that relies on many assumptions about matching up sections of a tree that could very well have been done incorrectly.
Assumptions such as ? You keep tossing out these vague aspersions on well tested science saying that they don’t work but you don’t explain why. Be specific.
I know of no dating of dendrochronology of older than 8,000 years that the scientist in question released for independent statistical verification.
… when they publish the data anyone can double check their statistics if they’d like.
When they are done on radioactive samples of known age (other than radiocarbon) they give extremely wrong dates
.
Citation? Which other method were they trying to use on trees? Most other methods are like trying to use a yard stick to measure a fleas… leg.How do you explain the trees and radiocarbon matching up so well? Even if the odds of the carbon dating getting the right answer were 50 50, the odds of getting 1 date in 1000 trees right would be 1 in something with over 300 zeros. You’re trying to pass that off as a coincidence and its really REALLY not going to work.
Yes, that's precisely how Walt describes it in the radioactivity section.
Except that he’s wrong. You’d need the mass of a sun to get that kind of compaction. Little old earth just isn’t going to cut it.
when the thing you're dating stopped living because the flood would've changed the balance
1) How would the flood do that?
2) In what year was this flood?3) Can you cite a credible scientist stating that the pressure from an ocean would do anything to decay rates?
On several occasions much more Argon than was expected has been measured coming from lava flows. For that matter excess Helium has been found in rocks where Uranium has decayed. That suggests rapid and recent decay.
Citation? Was this lava at the surface or was it taken from samples that formed under the ground? A very common claim is about mt st Helens where they took olivine formed under the ground instead of the flow that had been exposed to the air.
So you're saying that any effect that would drastically alter radiocarbon test results on trees from different parts of the world would by necessity be global in scope? I completely agree. :P
You’re both ignoring the point and putting words in my mouth.
You can alter radiocarbon dating with a wok, so I’d imagine something like a coal fire to a buried trunk would do the same thing, so you could get localized anomalies.Fluctuations in solar radiation cause fluctuations in c 14 levels. These swings aren’t massive though.
I understand the difference quite well. I actually consider myself fairly intelligent,
Intelligence doesn’t enter into it if your data is wrong and you insist on your conclusion as your argument.
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Nategar05,
First off, if you want not to be offensive, a good start is not accusing the people you're speaking to of lying, cheating, being blind to the evidence and part of some global conspiracy to suppress the truth. That is offensive and saying "no offence" or "I don't mean you guys" does not change that fact.
Second, most of your points are PRATTs (Points Refuted A Thousand Times). I suggest you read Talk Origins which is a pretty good overview of the actual scientific consensus.
Third, I'm not a geologist like Kirth, but I do have a genetic degree and your point about genetics still holding is false. If humanity was reduced to a population of 8 within the last 6000 years, which your claim says is true, we would see that in the genetic record as there isn't enough time for the wide genotypic variance we do see within humanity. Unless you're positing some kind of hypermutation rate beyond anything we've ever seen, this does mean we have to throw genetics out the window. For the unclean animals (population: 2), this is even worse. Even for the clean animals, (population: 14, before sacrifice), it's not a genetically viable population.
Fourth, naturalism isn't necessarily true. But it works so far. Before science started using naturalism, demons were thought to cause disease, the storms were Thor's hammer or Zeus' lightning, etc, etc. Unless you can show why we should accept your supernatural explanation and refute all the other supernatural explanatins, I'll take naturalism in sicnece over anything else.
Finally, I'm done. Explaining science to creationists is like teching a gorilla to fly. It only wastes time and annoys the gorilla. No offence. ;-)
Many others are afraid of losing their job if they publicize any of their discoveries that contradict the status quo. The scientific establishment's persecution of creationists is a very real thing.
I call foul here, because you make it clear that you have never worked as a scientist in any capacity -- nor even been around any of what you term the "scientific establishment." This canard you're spouting is on the same level as "all creationists abuse their wives and kids" -- obviously not true to anyone who has ever been around 99.9% them, but it makes a nice story if you want to claim some group is all wrong.
The best and easiest way to gain fame and prestige in the scientific community is to overturn some aspect of what you call the "status quo." That's the lifelong goal of every research scientist, and all of them work at it diligently. As far as "persecution of creationists," it's very real in the alternative universe that Ben Stein inhabits, but not in the real world (all his examples were grossly misrepresented). What IS "persecuted" is the claim that "I don't need to understand any of your stupid science to refute it because godditit! Ooh yeah! Take that!" By the same token, we "persecute" astrologers, alien invasion conspiracy theorists, and snake oil salesmen.
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I'm going to leave off now, as you've been reduced to repeating the standard YEC talking points, all of which have been extensively rebuked (and far more thoroughly than you apparently realize), enough times that there's no point in continuing. Additionally, your specific replies indicate that you understand maybe about a third of what you're debating, making it too easy for you to ignore the other 1/3.
Let me put it this way -- don't you hate it when someone cherry-picks a specific line from Scripture and claims it somehow "proves" that Christianity is all false -- except they take it out of context, have no idea what it means, and when you try to show them what the whole message of that passage is, they ignore you? That's sort of exactly what you're doing here, except with selected pieces of scientific discoveries.
Doesn't science require causation? It's my understanding that, by the theory of relativity, all moments of time simultaneously exist along some axis and we don't understand the arrow of time well enough to be sure its a ray. Does that cast doubt on causality? If it casts doubt on causality, doesn't it knock the legs out from under science?
It's a matter of scale, and what's being measured. Newtonian physics work perfectly well for balls rolling down a hill; it's only when examining more outlandish scenarios like speed-of-light and gravity wells that we need to modify it with relativity. Same deal with causality: it works perfectly well on earth-scale stuff, but will probably need some mathematical adjustment on a Big Bang scale.
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"Close enough for horse shoes and hand grenades" is also called "a useful fiction". Which raises the question, "Should we focus on 'useful', 'fiction', or both?"
Semantics, at that point. Does your automobile work? Do nuclear reactors generate electricity? At that point I'll stick with "useful" and let you theology types debate matters of Truth.
Which raises the question, "Should we focus on 'useful', 'fiction', or both?
Useful. It can't be absolutely wrong if the theory is close enough to reality to actually work.
If you stand around navel gazing waiting for omniscience you'll never get anywhere. Measure twice, cut once, cut again or get another 2 by 4 if you have to
Or to put it another way, even if we may never know exactly how much beer was consumed at the constitutional convention we still know the document they produced. The options are not "we know everything" and "we know nothing"
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Useful. It can't absolutely wrong if the theory is close enough to reality to actually work. If you stand around navel gazing waiting for omniscience you'll never get anywhere. Measure twice, cut once, cut again or get another 2 by 4 if you have to.
An actual example from my work: someone asks me to assess groundwater quality, and I find a dissolved plume of some toxic chemical. My approach is to delineate the problem, apply corrective measures based on my knowledge of the hydrology and geochemistry, and reduce the concentration to below current detection limits -- and far below levels that present a health-based risk -- although I realize that there is still some of the toxin present; it's just not enough to be harmful.
Alternatively, I could just pray for it to go away and accept no less than 100% removal, and then wait around while people drink the stuff and die.
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Psychological impacts of a belief in a higher power have been studied by scientists and a lot of them have been useful (such as with pain management).
Wait -- I thought your claim was that all science is merely fiction? Shouldn't you refrain from citing it, then?
Also, I personally get the same pain management effects from meditation -- and a community can get the social benefits you mention from secular gatherings, causes, and such -- so the case that non-supernatural solutions are worse than supernatural ones kind of falls apart there.
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Overall, I feel that science provides us with tangible benefits. You have shown that churches can, too. Why can't we have both sets of benefits? Trying to replace science with the least useful parts of church doctrine doesn't help anything, and trying to use science to investigate God seems to me to be a waste of time.
Can you define transcendent in such a way that its different than supernatural... ie, something not subject to the laws of this universe but still interacts with this universe.
Can you define transcendent in such a way that its different than supernatural... ie, something not subject to the laws of this universe but still interacts with this universe.Yes, I can and that's why I'm trying to figure out what Kirth meant.
Could you define transcendant then? The only way I've ever seen the word used is ' i've defined the being as transcendent therefore it does whatever i want without the baggage that comes along with being supernatural'
Rudimentarily speaking, there are two places "spiritual stuff" can be; here and somewhere else.
By that explanation transcendent is a type of supernatural
John Milton, Internet Troll:
On the Late Massacre in Piemont
Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughtered Saints, whose bones
Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold;
Even them who kept thy truth so pure of old,
When all our fathers worshipped stocks and stones,
Forget not: in thy book record their groans
Who were thy sheep, and in their ancient fold
Slain by the bloody Piemontese, that rolled
Mother with infant down the rocks. Their moans
The vales redoubled to the hills, and they
To heaven. Their martyred blood and ashes sow
O'er all the Italian fields, where still doth sway
The triple Tyrant; that from these may grow
A hundredfold, who, having learnt thy way,
Early may fly the Babylonian woe.
You equate religion with the supernatural. I'd like you to define "supernatural" as you're using it. Do you mean "transcendent"?
I equate religion with a professed belief in what believers term "the supernatural." I have never encountered a definition of "the supernatural" that made any sense, or that was consistent from person to person (much less from religion to religion), so I have no definition of that to offer you.
All I can refer to is our history books where the racial equality movement was -persistently- wrapped around churches. For that matter, you see the same persistent association between churches and women suffragists. You also see churches heavily involved in hospitals and orphanages.
History equally shows the defense of racial equality persistently wrapped around other churches. And the use of Scripture to argue against women's suffrage. And the largest single charity in the world being secular...
Dead heat.
I'm not saying churches don't do good. I do argue that they don't do demonstrably more good than bad, or more good than the alternatives. I'm saying that they're human institutions, subject to the same limitations, and so their record comes out pretty even.
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The flip side of my previous post is that everything in the Bible is true without any mixture of error. I say this because I don't want Christians thinking I don't believe in Creation or atheists thinking I don't believe the Bible.
As people continue to fight out this idea of proof, I have a supposition to make: you don't have to have everything proved to you. The exact reason for God to forbid a carved image is so that our hope would not be in something we can 'prove', but instead in something we can witness. There's a big difference. If I tell you about the good God has done in my life, about my sin and the transformation I have been through after becoming a Christian, I won't offer to 'prove' God exists. You know God is there by having the courage to ask God to show up in your life (which you only will when the Spirit prompts you to), and by applying the Bible to your life.
I reiterate, this talk of proving science is false or Scripture is false is missing the boat. The Bible is true and science does not contradict it. When either are manipulated, you get corrupted science or a watered down gospel. Neither should be acceptible to any of us.
And I meant to respond to the pint that some of the Greek believed the earth to be round. That is certainly true a few hundred years before Christ, but Job was written as early as 2000 bc. My point is that scripture credibly predict things that no one could know about when written. The crucifixion in Psalm 22 or Isaiah 53. The reference to the world being round in Job, Proverbs, or Isaiah, which predate ancient Greece (or in the case of Isaiah, was written 100 years before the Parthenon was dedicated). The empires to come predicted in Daniel. The Bible is a selective telling of history relevent to the protection of the Israelites and the sacrifice of God to bring us back to him. It can never say what it never said, and time spent on proving science wrong and the Bible right is not time spent acheiving its ultimate purpose, which is to communicate God's love to a lost world.
Creation is a vital doctrine, which explains to us our value in God's eyes, and God's sovereignty in our world. But it isn't the gospel by itself. I jsut hope we Christians remain mindful of that.
And I meant to respond to the pint that some of the Greek believed the earth to be round. That is certainly true a few hundred years before Christ, but Job was written as early as 2000 bc. My point is that scripture credibly predict things that no one could know about when written.
Have you ever looked at the horizon at the ocean? You can see the curvature. A round earth isn't a prediction; it's a straightforward observation.
I liked the rest of your post, though, especially the bit about corrupted science and watered-down scripture.
I like you, Kirth. We should game some time. Gen Con?
It's taken me a while, but I find that I share the sentiment. Would love to. Unfortunately, my "geek cred" isn't anywhere near awesome enough to get me in and out of a convention without going postal. However, if you're ever in Houston (or wherever I end up in the future), drop me a line and I'll buy you a beer, at the very least.
Yeahbut....that observable fact didn't stop the vast majority of humanity from not getting the point. That's all I'm saying. Scripture says round, the mortal authors may have been just as surprised as anyone else.
(Grin) Yeah, the vast majority of humanity have always been very unobservant -- the religious and secular alike. I always remind myself of that when I see some idiot trying to text while driving.
OK, I did a quick search for Christian teachings about the shape of the earth. Apparently Bishop Isidore of Seville, who lived from 560-636 A.D., was the big authority here; he claimed the "round" meant disc-shaped. It wasn't until the next century that Bede the Venerable said, "no, you idiot, it's round like a BALL."
Of course, Eratosthenes made a very close estimate when he calculated the circumference of the (assumed spherical) Earth in 240 BC.
Apparently, knowledge is gained and lost and gained again; this is true of Christians, Muslims, Pagans, and nonbelievers alike.
As both a Catholic and enthusiast of science (can't say I'm a scientist myself, though. Just a mere economist, which I guess makes me somewhat of a scientific astrologer), I've always held the view that Science is there to find out the "How", and Religion to find out the "Why".
Thus I never ask science to tell me why we exist, just like I never ask religion how we came to be.
As for creationism: I believe both that God was the source of it all, and that it would make a pretty bad Christian of me if I thought God couldn't have created an internally consistent universe capable of functioning by its own rules.
I've always interpreted a particular passage of the Bible to lean in that direction (can't remember exactly where in the Bible it was. New Testament, though), where a tower crumbles and kills many of its occupiers. So the men ask Christ "Why did God punish them?", to which He responds "God did not kill them. These things are not His doing, and thus do not punish the sinner nor reward the virtuous".