Are these the false prophets God warned us about?

[Paraleptopecten (Timothy Campbell)]

@Burrawang

Yes, of course the majority of the world has overwhelmingly agreed that ‘deep time’ is real and evolution is real, but that is hardly surprising, given that the world hates the Truth. Most of the mass media and most of academia perpetuate these two myths.

Okay, then why did Michael Tuomey say this in 1848?

@Paraleptopecten

…

"
This is from Michael Tuomey’s Report on the Geology of South Carolina (pp. 58-59), from 1848. The immediately prior pages argue against Lamarkian evolution, and for the best-fit model of the time, individual creation of species, but note that there are some components of the fossil record that look somewhat like Lamarkian-style evolution. [To avoid a bad counter-argument for a third time, the geologist who died in 1857 was not the same person as the Tammany Hall politician who was still active in the 1870s.]

@Burrawang

All over the planet there are enormous fossil graveyards where many different types of animal remains have been washed away from disparate ecosystems and buried together in mass fossil graveyards, where terrestrial plants and animals and marine creatures have been rapidly buried together

This falsely implies such deposits to be common. They are not. Most deposits have precisely determinable water depth range or elevation, come from specific environments, and have a few specimens mixed in from other areas (e.g., a few terrestrial vertebrate bones or freshwater shells in an otherwise marine deposit).

@Burrawang

I say ‘rapidly’ only because of the exquisite preservation of detail in the fossil remains.

Which is rare, not universal.

@Burrawang

If the burial wasn’t rapid, then decay, from bacterial and fungal action and oxidation and of course scavenging would have utterly destroyed the remains leaving nothing, but the reality is that even jellyfish and skin textures are beautifully preserved in the fossils, thus a very rapid sediment laden watery burial is a rational explanation as to why billions of fossils are so sharply defined in the field

Most deposits are not lagerstaetten that preserve soft tissues. The majority of global fossil deposits and the majority of global macroscopic fossils preserve hard parts of shallow marine organisms.

@Burrawang

The remnants of soft tissue and actual bones of dinosaurs that have been discovered sticking out of the surface of the ground in locations where the mean temperatures often exceed 25 degrees C, and not been mineralised

That’s been pointed out to you to be untrue repeatedly. They are mineralized.

@Burrawang

contain osteocytes

Remnants of them.

@Burrawang

More and more dinosaur soft tissue is being added to the literature every year.

Yes, and none of it makes any difference to dating of the specimens. No supposed “physical laws” governing decay of organic molecules are as fundamental as the ones that govern radiometric decay (plus, they would be radically altered if radiometric decay rates changed). Proteins decaying is incredibly dependent on conditions. Decay of atoms depends on fundamental constants that would either make all atoms fall apart, irradiate everything and turn every planet into a ball of plasma, or require a deceptive and pointless miracle to fix everything.

@Paraleptopecten

Assuming a person is about 60 kg, then something like 50 kGy per day is about right.

@Paraleptopecten

Note too that the related sped up radioactive decay would give Noah a beta-radiation dose (from the 40K atoms inside his own body, which for these purposes is basically all of the radioactive atoms inside a person) of about 50kGy per day (adding the background rate from the crust would up that to about 70kGy). Either way, that’s a fatal dose every few seconds.

That is an insane amount of radiation–10 times the dose inside the worst-contaminated parts of the Chernobyl reactor immediately after the meltdown. Except this lasts for 6 months.

That’s actually enough to kill Thermococcus gammatolerans.

@Paraleptopecten

Given that Uranium, Thorium, and Potassium are the most common radioactive elements, we can get an estimate of the energy released by looking at them. Both Uranium and Thorium require about 1 half-life to go by in six months, and Potassium-40 about 4 to produce the measured ages. Given their abundance in the earth and earth’s mass, that is roughly 6x10^44 becquerels. Alpha decays emit about 10 MeV each. Hence, 4.5x10^32 joules get poured into the earth in that time. For reference, that is slightly more than Earth’s binding energy, or about the amount of sunlight that hits the earth every billion years. That is also enough to raise temperatures at 1000K/s, re-melting the crust in about a second and vaporizing the earth in 10. By the end of six months, the ball of plasma once known as earth would be (assuming that it stayed the same size) about 22.5 kK and shining as brightly as a small star.

@Burrawang

What we find all over the Earth are billions upon billions of exquisitely preserved fossils, which is exactly what we would expect to find if the whole planet was submerged under water as faithfully and accurately described in the Holy Bible.

Given that we could theoretically find quadrillions of fossil shells from deposits that show precisely measurable depth ranges and environments of life and deposition, that wouldn’t be very informative even if it were perfectly true.

@Burrawang

What I do know is that 14C is found intrinsic within diamonds purported to be hundreds of millions of years old. And before you claim contamination, no contamination was ruled out by following standard procedure to avoid as best possible any contamination of the samples.

Contamination cannot be completely ruled out. Ever. And the levels detected there are in the range that is considered “as close to 0 as can be measured”.

@Burrawang

The interpretation that x mass = n years is based more on philosophy than it is on empirical measurement of age, simply because there is absolutely no irrefutable way to accurately calibrate your equations that convert an elemental isotope concentration in a sample into an age in years.

They are calibrated based on directly measured decay rates.

@Paraleptopecten

@Burrawang

What is wrong is the belief that radiometric dating dating is a reliable, accurate methodology to determine ages of samples from the distant past.

If it were wrong, then atoms fell apart (magically) without leaving any evidence; the earth turned into a ball of radioactive plasma, again (magically) without leaving any evidence; or God performed a deceptive and pointless miracle.

@Burrawang

those measurements are not ages, they do not provide a result in units of time.

@Paraleptopecten

And if the worldview demands honesty, it will not dismiss how measurements work. He’s the math for how a parent/daughter isotope ratio is converted to a date, for situations where the daughter isotope is actively excluded from the parent material (e.g., U-Pb dating of zircons); additional calibration steps are needed for places where the daughter isotope may have been present:

log2(Observed proportion of parent) * (calculated half life based on direct measurements of decay rate of a sample)

Measuring the decay rate generally is using something like energy release from a sample and converting that to decays/time. Decays/time can then be divided by the known number of atoms of the isotope in question in the sample to give the probability of decay of each atom in a given short amount of time, and then that can have its base 2 logarithm taken to give the half-life.

Here’s a paper describing how this was done for 209Bi: chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://arxiv.org/pdf/1110.3138

In other words, it’s just measurements and math, and completely independent of worldview, so long as the worldview demands honesty.

@Burrawang

. Making assumptions that the initial starting concentrations of parent and daughter isotopes can be reliably based upon mineral analysis is all honesty a clear situation where that analysis does not adequately demonstrate the assumptions made from them, because to much needed information is missing.

And what if the mineral crystals are directly observed to actively exclude the daughter, like zircons with lead or anything with noble gasses?

[jammycakes (James McKay)]

@Burrawang

The interpretation that x mass = n years is based more on philosophy than it is on empirical measurement of age, simply because there is absolutely no irrefutable way to accurately calibrate your equations that convert an elemental isotope concentration in a sample into an age in years.

Oh come on Jon. That is completely untrue and you know that as well as I do.

The “interpretation” that “x mass = n years” is an equation and a very simple one at that. N(t) = N_0e^{-\lambda t}. It has been determined and verified by numerous experiments using methods that are observable, testable and repeatable, even by young earthists’ unrealistic standards of “observable, testable and repeatable.” Methods that have nothing whatsoever to do with “philosophy,” that work exactly the same way for both Christians and secularists alike, and that assume nothing whatsoever about the age of the Earth.

@Burrawang

But as you would very well know, the instruments do not provide an age at all, they only provide a mass of the element isotope being analysed for.

I’m sorry, but plugging a mass into an equation does give an age. Plugging one unit of measurement into an equation to get another is common to every area of science, both “operational” and “historical.” It’s how we measure temperature. It’s how we measure pressure. It’s how police speed cameras work. If you could dismiss a conclusion out of hand just because it involves plugging one measurement into an equation to get another, you would be able to challenge speeding tickets as “just an assumption” or “just an interpretation” or “more philosophy than empirical measurement.” IANAL but good luck getting that one to stand up in court.

@Burrawang

If the isotope percentage in the sample returns an age that is too young or too old for the preconceived belief of the age, it is discarded as unreliable or contaminated, just as you are doing here regarding the 14C found within diamonds. I’m sure you will disagree.

Well of course I disagree, Jon. I disagree because it is simply factually untrue. I disagree because it demonstrates a wilful ignorance of the most basic fundamentals of accurate and honest measurement.

Nobody cries “contamination” just because they don’t like the results. Contamination is a real and quantifiable source of error that CANNOT be eliminated entirely and MUST be fully accounted for before any novel conclusions can be drawn. This has already been stated to you at least twice in this thread alone.

This is experimental science 101, Jon. It is beginner stuff. It’s what I learned in the very first practical class of my A level physics course when I was sixteen. It’s fundamental to every area of science, whether “operational” or “historical.” You MUST fully and correctly account for ALL possible sources of error before you can make any novel claims about anything, and especially before you can claim that hundreds of thousands of other measurements must also be wrong.

And it has to be that way. If it weren’t, you would be granting a free pass to astrology, homeopathy, feng shui, cold nuclear fusion, reading tea leaves, and tobacco companies claiming that smoking is good for you. By treating contamination as if it were some sort of hand-wave excuse to let people throw out results that they didn’t like, you are insisting that the most basic rules and principles of accurate and honest measurement do not apply to you. And I’m sorry, but they do.

[Argon]

@Burrawang

Dear Argon and James,
no one is attempting to blackmail anyone.
The Holy Bible is clear and concise about the creation and the Global Flood

Hi. Thank you for this discussion. I appreciate that we can communicate differences in our opinions and ideas in good faith and with sincerity.

[Argon]

@jammycakes

You MUST fully and correctly account for ALL possible sources of error before you can make any novel claims about anything, and especially before you can claim that hundreds of thousands of other measurements must also be wrong.

Pedantic point: We can account for many sources of error but rarely all. However, we often can detect deviation and error in results even if the immediate source is not known. That’s why people also run orthogonal control experiments to see if whatever deviation appeared continues to appear in a different measurement method. Cross validation.

[rsewell (All Truth is God's Truth)]

@Burrawang

If the isotope percentage in the sample returns an age that is too young or too old for the preconceived belief of the age, it is discarded as unreliable or contaminated, just as you are doing here regarding the 14C found within diamonds.

You are misrepresenting by conflating. Even the YEC reported results for 14C in diamonds are below the accepted thresholds for valid measurement. You have done chemical analysis and should know as well as anyone that you cannot go all the way to zero.

@Burrawang

there are rules and proper lab protocols and procedures to be strictly followed, that is a given always.

It is not a given, and protocols and procedures vary. That is why claims need to be supported by the lab reports.

Some labs allow tracer measurement, others refuse.
What was the sample prep?
What was the ionization technology?
What were the 13C numbers?
How was the instrument zeroed?

You have nothing.

[Burrawang]

@mitchellmckain

The false prophets are the ones whose predictions do not come to pass.

Dear Mitchell,
thank you for your thoughts and i agree wholeheartedly with this Biblical truth.
Time will indeed distinguish the false teaching from the true teaching…
God Bless,
jon

[jammycakes (James McKay)]

@Argon

Pedantic point: We can account for many sources of error but rarely all. However, we often can detect deviation and error in results even if the immediate source is not known. That’s why people also run orthogonal control experiments to see if whatever deviation appeared continues to appear in a different measurement method. Cross validation.

Yes, and for that reason young earthists can’t just fob off contamination as a “rescuing device” even if the total known contamination vectors fall short. Unknown contamination vectors are still a possibility.

The fact is that contamination is the null hypothesis in cases such as this. It’s people who want to rule it out who bear the burden of proof. Especially if they’re trying to argue for something significant or extraordinary, such as that everyone else is wrong.

Once again, there’s nothing “secularist” or “materialist” about this whatsoever. It’s how things work in every area of science.

[Burrawang]

@Terry_Sampson

borrowing an atheist’s reasoning to hear your own belief repeated.

Dear Terry,
thank you for your thoughts on this.

The presenter is simply quoting a public statement from an evolutionary biologist and population geneticist, self confessed atheist, Cornell Professor William B. Provine.
I take your point, but I also see that what the late Professor stated is relevant to the topic being discussed in the video.

The reason I say that is because having death before Adam’s sin, is not only in conflict with the plain Truth revealed in the pages of Genesis, it removes the basis of why death entered into the creation and why Jesus through His incomprehensible Love for us ALL, permitted Himself to be crucified, although He was innocent and completely blameless. THIS IS THE HEART OF THE MATTER.
And that is why I was compelled to place the video on this site.
I don’t know if there is any gentler way of exposing the reality here, but it is abundantly clear to me that someone needed to speak up about this. I am truly sorry if this has offended anyone, that is certainly not why I started this post.

God Bless,
jon

[Burrawang]

@rsewell

Then show me some living, breathing, soft tissue on public display in zoos. I will take big dinosaurs or small, or any permian creature.

Dear Ron,
your reply here makes little sense to me.
Organisms become extinct all time. that is an observable reality.
As far as I know, all dinosaurs are extinct. There may be some still alive, in very remote locations and ocean depths, but I very much doubt it. It seems more likely to me that they are ALL extinct. Why they went extinct is not known, there are many theories, but I don’t think anyone really knows why.

@rsewell

That light has crossed the distance of the visible universe measured in light YEARS presents no scientific problem.

From my worldview perspective, distant starlight does present a conundrum that requires a logical explanation, which is why I mentioned but a few of the theories that explain the ability to see distant starlight on a young Earth.

@rsewell

Baumgardner has never released any lab report.

Have you ever asked Baumgardner for the lab report?

God Bless,
jon

[graft2vine (Ethan אֵיתָן)]

@Burrawang

death entered the creation for the first time from that point forward,

• Rom 5:14 Nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam’s transgression, who is the figure of him that was to come.

Adam was instructed to till the ground and make soil to prepare for planting. Soil is made out of a lot of dead things. In order for the trees to grow, they need nutrients from the soil. So there has to be death to grow a garden.

Paul clearly says that Adam is a ‘figure’, not a real person but a representation of whomever we want to define as the first man who was to come later. Was it homo habilis? or homo erectus? or perhaps neanderthal? Where ever we draw the line for the first human, death and sin came before it, so it passed upon all.

[Burrawang]

@graft2vine

Adam was instructed to till the ground and make soil to prepare for planting. Soil is made out of a lot of dead things. In order for the trees to grow, they need nutrients from the soil. So there has to be death to grow a garden.

Hi Ethan,
thank you for your post,
Plants were given by God in the beginning as food for all in the creation that God said ‘was very good’.
Soil nutrients from decaying vegetable matter, i.e., plants are sufficient for fertile soil.
The ‘DEATH’ that I speak of is the death described in the Holy Bible that entered the creation for the VERY FIRST TIME when Adam rebelled against God and sinned, thereby incurring the penalty of death, for the wages of sin is death. The whole of creation was cursed by God when Adam fell from grace and innocence. As a result of that action, death came about for creatures in whose nostrils was the breath of life. The Holy Bible refers to these creatures as ‘Nephesh’ creatures.

@graft2vine

Paul clearly says that Adam is a ‘figure’, not a real person but a representation of whomever we want to define as the first man who was to come later. Was it homo habilis? or homo erectus? or perhaps neanderthal?

You are misrepresenting Paul’s message here.

You say, “whomever we want to define as the first man”, now that lets the cat out of the bag!

Paul is clearly referring to the historic man Adam who is the Federal head of ALL humanity.
As for extinct apes, they are extinct apes. As for Neanderthals they are true Homo sapiens, indeed you and I both have Neanderthal DNA in us. Sure they were a small population in Europe that eventually became assimilated into the broader population, but make no mistake, the ancestors of all Neanderthals go back to Noah and his family and prior to the Global Flood all the way back to the man that God supernaturally created from the dust, Adam.

God Bless,
jon

[rsewell (All Truth is God's Truth)]

@Burrawang

Why they went extinct is not known, there are many theories, but I don’t think anyone really knows why.

There is no good reason why. 4,500 years is not a long time. The reason none are found alive, and no fossils above the KT boundary, is that they actually went extinct ~66 mya.

@Burrawang

From my worldview perspective, distant starlight does present a conundrum that requires a logical explanation, which is why I mentioned but a few of the theories that explain the ability to see distant starlight on a young Earth.

It may be more fruitful to evaluate your worldview perspective.

@Burrawang

Have you ever asked Baumgardner for the lab report?

Another poster replied he would try to run it down, but never got back. Other than that, Baumgardner is more that welcome to represent himself on this site.

[Burrawang]

@Paraleptopecten

They are calibrated based on directly measured decay rates

Dear Tim,
thank you for the time and effort you have clearly put into your response both today and from the multitude of links to other responses and papers, it’s much appreciated.

Yes, of course the instrument is calibrated to what many perceive the isotope decay rates are at present in accordance with a uniformitarian worldview and that is well and good, if that is your own personal worldview, though it does assume constancy which to be perfectly honest is in truth an unknown. It may be absolutely correct and of course all checks and balances performed within the constraints and known constants of that worldview will reinforce that belief, however, what occurred in the distant past is in truth not actually known, it may be inferred through very accurate measurements of precise instruments, and that data applied to an algorithm or equation that is once again created within the constraints and known constants of that worldview, so just like the student marking their own thesis, it will concur and appear irrefutable to those who hold to that worldview.

I do not hold to that worldview. I did once, but when I thoroughly looked into the actual things we know for certain, not the inferred data as described above, and when I read the Holy Bible, I realised that ‘deep time’ is an egregiously evil myth that has deceived millions.
Obviously if almost everyone agreed that the world was only 6,000 years old, as they did only two hundred years ago, then the entire deceit of evolution is exposed for what it is, an evil lie.
Thus, enter the deep time myth that gives the pseudo science of evolutionary biology a thin veneer of credibility, though one doesn’t have to dig to far to see the fallacies in it. When the assumed engine room of evolution’s diversity that is purported to create ever increasing complexity is identified as Natural Selection, that can only select from what information already exists, the false teaching of evolution becomes apparent. When the simple question of WHERE are ALL the Transitional forms? And I’m not talking about a couple of disputed fossils, I’m talking about what should be CLEARLY OBVIOUS to every single person on this site, there should be COUNTLESS TRILLIONS UPON TRILLIONS OF THEM IN THE sedimentary geology that is purported to show the ascension of life from the first living reproducing cell to mankind, so where are they?

i certainly do not pretend to have all the answers as I most certainly don’t, indeed the older I get, the more I realise how little we humans really understand at even a fundamental level. Yes, belief in what the Holy Bible so painstakingly informs us about the creation and the flood raises many questions, and many of them are as yet unanswered, but of course that is equally true for those that believe in ‘deep time’ and ‘evolution’. We are mere people and not everything has been revealed to us, but we have been given the Word, and we should respect that as devout Christians who Love the Lord Jesus.

The most egregious and damaging heresy that comes from the false teachings of ‘deep time’ of billions of years of evolution and Death is what it does to the Holy Scriptures and the atoning sacrifice of our Lord and Saviour Jesus.

6 For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly.
7 For scarcely for a righteous man will one die: yet peradventure for a good man some would even dare to die.
8 But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.
9 Much more then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him.
10 For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life.
11 And not only so, but we also joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have now received the atonement.
12 Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned:
13 (For until the law sin was in the world: but sin is not imputed when there is no law.
14 Nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam’s transgression, who is the figure of him that was to come.
15 But not as the offence, so also is the free gift. For if through the offence of one many be dead, much more the grace of God, and the gift by grace, which is by one man, Jesus Christ, hath abounded unto many.
16 And not as it was by one that sinned, so is the gift: for the judgment was by one to condemnation, but the free gift is of many offences unto justification.
17 For if by one man’s offence death reigned by one; much more they which receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness shall reign in life by one, Jesus Christ. Romans 5:6-17 KJV

Tim please consider the words of the Apostle Paul in his letter to the Church in Rome above in Chapter 5 verse 12.
How do you reconcile this abundantly profound truth with belief in millions upon millions of years of death and suffering of creatures in whose nostrils is the breath of life as claimed by evolution?

I’ve said enough,
God Bless,
jon

[Burrawang]

@jammycakes

I’m sorry, but plugging a mass into an equation does give an age.

Dear James,
what you appear to be missing are the enormous number of unknown variables that actually EXIST in REALITY, but which are basically assumed away as if we know precisely the conditions the sample has undergone from its creation until the present day.
How do we know what the initial concentrations of the isotopes being measured were at the time of formation? Answer in two words, WE DON’T; what do we do, we make an educated guess, an assumption if you like.

How do we know whether the sample underwent changes during its time in the ground, in terms of chemical action, temperature, for example: soluble compounds leaching into the sample, that or may not change the isotope ratios being measured.
Answer in two words: We DON’T; what do we do, we make an educated guess, an assumption if you like.

How do we know whether the sample underwent changes during its time in the ground, in terms of chemical action, temperature, for example: soluble compounds leaching out of the sample, that or may not change the isotope ratios being measured.
Answer in two words: We DON’T; what do we do, we make an educated guess, an assumption if you like.

And of course what you appear unwilling to admit here is that the above assumptions that are made, are made within the paradigm, the worldview of the academic believers of ‘deeptime’ and ‘evolution’ that are almost unanimously accepted as a given in some circles, and clearly by many I have encountered on this website.

When attempting to determine the age of a rock sample that although I have no doubt that you truly believe that the calibration of the highly accurate instruments and the tweaking of the isotope to age equation is utterly objective empirical science, the reality is that those procedures follow rules and concepts that are firmly rooted in ‘deep time’ and ‘evolutionary’ belief worldviews. That is just the plain and simple reality. Yes, I know you object, but what can I say except, that is the way I see it.

As I have asked others here, I will courteously ask you the same question:

12 Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned: Romans 5:12 KJV

James, please consider the words of the Apostle Paul in his letter to the Church in Rome above in Chapter 5 verse 12.
How do you reconcile this abundantly profound truth with belief in millions upon millions of years of death and suffering of creatures in whose nostrils is the breath of life as claimed by evolution?

God Bless,
jon

[Burrawang]

@Argon

Hi. Thank you for this discussion. I appreciate that we can communicate differences in our opinions and ideas in good faith and with sincerity.

Hi Argon,
yes, thank you also for being generous of spirit here, I must admit that your words took me by surprise as I have come to expect a torrent of attack, thus I am truly grateful for your kind words.
All the very best,
jon

[Burrawang]

@rsewell

You are misrepresenting by conflating. Even the YEC reported results for 14C in diamonds are below the accepted thresholds for valid measurement.

Dear Ron,
thank you for you thoughts on this.
It appears that you didn’t see my earlier post, thus copied below:

@Burrawang

Geophysicist Dr John Baumgardner, part of the RATE research group,6 investigated 14C in a number of diamonds.7 There should be no 14C at all if they really were over a billion years old, yet the radiocarbon lab reported that there was over 10 times the detection limit. Thus they had a radiocarbon ‘age’ far less than a million years! Dr Baumgardner repeated this with six more alluvial diamonds from Namibia, and these had even more radiocarbon.

@rsewell

It is not a given, and protocols and procedures vary.

Yes, of course their is some variation in protocols and procedures suitable to the diverse range of situations and sampling and analysis techniques employed, but what I was saying is simply that carefully following those protocols and procedures ‘is a given’, meaning sloppy lab work is not what is occurring here.

God Bless,
jon

[Burrawang]

@rsewell

4,500 years is not a long time.

Hi Ron,
well it all depends upon your perspective, your underlying worldview if you will.

If you are considering 4,500 years in terms of a ‘deep time’ worldview, then yes, I would most certainly agree with you, 4,500 years is a tiny speck on an enormous stretch,
however,
if I consider 4,500 years in terms of my physical existence here on Earth right now, then 4,500 years is a very long time indeed.

More importantly, it is the Holy Bible that informs us of the creation, the Global Flood, the consecutive genealogies that add up to the present time being approximately 6,000 years after creation.

Even though I do not understand all the ramifications, I know that trusting in the Holy Bible is both prudent and wise.
Trusting in the fallible beliefs or mere men is foolish if that trust means disbelieving what God has informed us through the Holy Bible.

@rsewell

@Burrawang

Have you ever asked Baumgardner for the lab report?

Another poster replied he would try to run it down, but never got back. Other than that, Baumgardner is more that welcome to represent himself on this site.

I did correspond with John Baumgardner once many years ago now, and he was most gracious and generous, and importantly he was not difficult to contact.

To be perfectly honest, I do find this website, very tiresome. I reluctantly place a post here on rare occasion when I am compelled to do so
I expect that John Baumgardner probably has the same attitude as I do regarding entering into forums on this Biologos website. They generally appear on the face of it at least to be unfruitful, though I do not know what the Spirit is doing in peoples lives who read these posts, but overall, for most of the time, all I see here in the main is false representation of Christians like myself who believe the Holy Bible and who Love and confess that Jesus is Lord of all.

If your interested a bit of a bio of John Baumgardner is at:

John Baumgardner

Every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.

God Bless,
jon

[rsewell (All Truth is God's Truth)]

@Burrawang

It appears that you didn’t see my earlier post

No, I saw your post. I stand by my statement that detectable intrinsic 14C has never been found in natural diamonds. That includes by Baumgardner or the RATE team.

[jammycakes (James McKay)]

@Burrawang

what you appear to be missing are the enormous number of unknown variables that actually EXIST in REALITY, but which are basically assumed away as if we know precisely the conditions the sample has undergone from its creation until the present day.

No I’m not missing that at all. What you are missing is the enormous amount of research that real scientists put in to identifying those variables and figuring out ways to take them into account. Ways that do not involve blind assumptions or “educated guesses,” that do not require you to have “been there to see it happen,” and that rely entirely on rules that are the same for Christians and secularists alike and that have nothing to do with anyone’s worldview.

First up:

@Burrawang

How do we know what the initial concentrations of the isotopes being measured were at the time of formation? Answer in two words, WE DON’T; what do we do, we make an educated guess, an assumption if you like.

Sorry Jon, but we jolly well do.

In some cases we can know the initial concentrations from the physical, chemical and crystallographic properties of the elements involved. Zircons are a case in point: they can contain uranium impurities when they form, but not lead, because lead does not fit into their crystal structure. The only way to get significant quantities of lead into a zircon crystal is by waiting for it to decay from uranium, and once you get more than one part per million, you’re talking millions of years. No worldviews, assumptions, guesswork or philosophy involved here whatsoever: just measurement and maths.

In other cases, we can eliminate it from the equation entirely. That is what isochron dating does, for example.

@Burrawang

How do we know whether the sample underwent changes during its time in the ground, in terms of chemical action, temperature, for example: soluble compounds leaching out of the sample, that or may not change the isotope ratios being measured.
Answer in two words: We DON’T; what do we do, we make an educated guess, an assumption if you like.

Once again, sorry Jon, but we do. Not all minerals are soluble. Not all minerals are easily susceptible to temperature changes. Coming back to zircons again: they are hard and strongly resistant to weathering. They have a melting point of 1,800°C and a closure temperature well in excess of 1,000°C. Even when they do have something leaching out of them, that will be lead, the daughter product, so even though the measured quantities don’t give an actual age, they will still give a lower limit. And that lower limit will still be far, far more than six thousand years.

Then there are other techniques such as isochron dating that include checks for contamination or leakage. If that had happened, then the points on an isochron plot would not appear on a straight line. Cross-checks between different dating methods can also add confidence in the results. Young earthists love to make a song and a dance about times when cross-checks lead to inconsistent results, but the fact of the matter is that those represent only a fraction of cases. They have no coherent and realistic explanation whatsoever for the overwhelming majority of the time there are no such inconsistencies. Only vague hand-waving about “assumptions” and unrealistic conspiracy theories about results being thrown away, which would have to be happening on an industrial scale at the cost of trillions of dollars over a period of more than a century if radiometric dating really were so unreliable that it couldn’t tell the difference between thousands and billions.

@Burrawang

And of course what you appear unwilling to admit here is that the above assumptions that are made, are made within the paradigm, the worldview of the academic believers of ‘deeptime’ and ‘evolution’ that are almost unanimously accepted as a given in some circles, and clearly by many I have encountered on this website.

When attempting to determine the age of a rock sample that although I have no doubt that you truly believe that the calibration of the highly accurate instruments and the tweaking of the isotope to age equation is utterly objective empirical science, the reality is that those procedures follow rules and concepts that are firmly rooted in ‘deep time’ and ‘evolutionary’ belief worldviews. That is just the plain and simple reality. Yes, I know you object, but what can I say except, that is the way I see it.

I’m not just “unwilling to admit” it, Jon. I’m stating as a fact that it simply isn’t true. It is not the plain and simple reality. It may be the way you see it, but what you see is not an accurate picture of what real scientists actually do in reality but a superficial, over-simplified and grossly outdated cartoon caricature of it that completely fails to grasp the extensive research that has gone into these things over the years and the numerous cross-checks that scientists make between different techniques, and even completely fails to understand how science actually works and what it is capable of.

@Burrawang

12 Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned: Romans 5:12 KJV

James, please consider the words of the Apostle Paul in his letter to the Church in Rome above in Chapter 5 verse 12.
How do you reconcile this abundantly profound truth with belief in millions upon millions of years of death and suffering of creatures in whose nostrils is the breath of life as claimed by evolution?

There are ways of reconciling the two. The Bible leaves a lot of things open to interpretation on questions such as that, and that gets discussed extensively on the more theologically orientated threads on this forum.

But when it comes to the science, the need for honesty and factual accuracy in how we approach it is the one thing that we should all hold completely non-negotiable. No matter how old the earth is, or who did or did not evolve from what, or how animal death before the Fall fits into the picture, it is never acceptable to try to debunk inaccurate and oversimplified misrepresentations of scientific disciplines that do not accurately reflect what real scientists do in reality. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: young Christians do not struggle in their faith because they learn about evolution itself. They struggle in their faith because they learn that their pastors and youth leaders and others in positions of spiritual authority had been lying to them about it. And if there is anything that makes someone a false prophet, it is misrepresenting and lying about objective facts.

[knor (Kai)]

@adamjedgar

What you are missing is that false prophets are those who present ANTI-BIBLICAL teachings!!!

A person claiming your science is wrong because it does not align with the bible is not teaching theological heresy, they are teaching mainstream scientific heresy. These are two very different things.

This comment goes towards the right direction but IMHO, not enough.

What are false prophets? OT prophets and the NT gift of prophecy is about telling inspired messages from God to people.
Differing opinions about the interpretation of biblical scriptures is a different matter.

Opinions related to the interpretation of Genesis are matters of interpretation, unless someone claims to be telling a message from God about how we should interpret the text. We may disagree about how the text should be interpreted but it is a heavy accusation to accuse that those disagreeing with my interpretation are false prophets or something worse. I would be very cautious about judging others, especially when it is completely possible that our disagreements are simply based on misunderstandings.

Bible is the key authority in disagreements about matters of faith. Yet, we should not put our interpretations about biblical texts above everything else. Our knowledge is imperfect and so are our interpretations. In addition, the Bible is not God, it only points towards God and His will.