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.
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?
That is not an objective fact. That is an objective half-truth masquerading as a fact and repeated ad nauseam by people who have been told repeatedly that it is a half-truth.
And using that same logic, nothing in the past happened at all. The only way to say anything about the past, whether it existed, whether it had properties, etc., is to assume some level of continuity with the present.
Then why do they agree with each other so well?
YES. Because they use exactly the same methodology and the same assumptions–that the detector is accurate, that properties of the universe and of matter did not magically change in the past without leaving evidence. And since the detection was made in the past for the modern material, the same logic has to be applied to both: if we can’t know anything about the distant past, we can’t know anything about the recent past, because they use the same assumptions.
They are not “denigrating”, they are accusing. And if anyone is willing to use accelerated nuclear decay, then no, they cannot appeal to natural laws, since the same constants govern both.
Assuming a person is about 60 kg, then something like 50 kGy per day is about right.
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 .
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.
Again, this is nothing but measurements and math. And as to fossils of soft tissues:
The purportedly surprising “soft” tissue in fossils has been addressed several times. First, it is an argument from incredulity. Early geologists in the 1500’s had to argue that well-preserved fossil shells really might be at least a few thousand years old. But what evidence is there against occasional long-term preservation of such material? The world is a big place with many things happening, including cases where “soft” material is preserved better than average. Conversely, neither soft nor hard tissue could survive the heat and radioactivity that would be produced by speeding up physical processes to fit a young-earth timescale or by making a global flood.
Secondly, contrary to both old-earth science headline writers and young-earth claims, various examples of “soft” tissue preservation have been known since the 1800’s. Finding such preservation in a new setting is noteworthy but not too surprising. The field of taphonomy studies “death, decay, and destruction”, or to give greater technical precision, the processes involved in going from a live organism to a fossil.
The “soft” tissues are not in fact all that soft. Again, there are three main categories. One is where the chemical processes associated with decay and burial create minerals associated with the soft parts. The actual soft tissue is gone, but the mineral replica remains. Another is the preservation of tough but flexible organic material. Wood, hair, fingernails, scales, insect skeletons - many familiar examples show that such material can last a long time. If it’s buried under anoxic conditions, this can last indefinitely. Late Ice Age natural mummies (like the freeze-dried animals occasionally present in tundra areas), stuff trapped in amber, and similar cases may preserve some altered softer tissues under special conditions.
But nothing about those pise any problem for an ancient earth. Conversely, a young-earth model does not handle the evidence listed with the original posts in this thread. It’s not a matter of bringing up random purported problems for the other side, but the fact that the geological record clearly records a vast history. Cramming all the events into a young-earth timescale does not work, unless you go with an observer traveling at close to the speed of light.
Burrawang:
But as for science, there is no problem whatsoever with real operational science , however, when forensic science is used to make claims of dates that clearly cannot and do not have all the required information, then the results need to be taken with a grain of salt. That is, the results of such analysis for say the age of a fossil is not objective science with the same degree of certainty as the operational science that makes our phones work, or satellites, or medical advances; operational science should never be confused or conflated with forensic research with regard to the confidence or accuracy placed upon findings regarding age dates for samples.
“Real operational science” is exactly what is used to make all of the measurements that are needed to calculate dates from isotope ratios, again, here (for the third time) is the actual mathematics required in the situation where there can be certainty that there was no daughter isotope present and there has been minimal entry or exit of material from the sample (e.g., U-Pb dating of zircons or U-He dating or K-Ar dating):
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.
Paraleptopecten:
It relies on the assumptions that reality is real and is objectively knowable, that our senses give an accurate view of reality, and that measurable physical constants with observed effects on properties of the universe do not magically change with no evidence.
jammycakes:
Burrawang:
As a consequence any measurements provided for events that allegedly took place millions of ears ago are fraught
Complete and utter patent nonsense.
Measurement and guesswork are the exact polar opposites of each other.
Measurement is completely independent of your worldview. It works according to strict rules that are exactly the same for Christians and atheists alike.
And you CANNOT just cry “assumptions” as if it were some sort of magic get-out-of-jail-free card to let you fob off any and every scientific fact thjat you don’t like. In order to challenge a scientific finding by questioning its assumptions, you MUST do ALL THREE of the following:
State exactly, in precise mathematical terms, what those assumptions are.
Make sure that it really does make the assumptions that you are claiming that it makes, and that there isn’t any newer corroborating research that has found a way round the assumptions in question.
Explain how the assumptions could have been violated in such a way as to give the exact same measurements and patterns in the data, including such factors as cross-checks and correlations between them.
Anything less is lying.
Burrawang:
Unfortunately, and I sincerely wish it was not so, but there are some on this website, that will contort and make self-serving claims about hermeneutics of the Holy Scriptures, invoking atheist secular ideas of ANE culture to justify their secular worldview
Again, complete and utter patent nonsense.
The rules of mathematics and measurement have nothing whatsoever to do with atheism. As I said, they are exactly the same for Christians and atheists alike.
Burrawang:
but as for me, the Holy Scriptures were written being inspired by God Himself as His Holy Word for honest, simple, unpretentious people from all generations to know Him, be they from the past, present or future. The Holy Scriptures are profound proceeding forth from God.
The Holy Scriptures say this:
13 Do not have two differing weights in your bag—one heavy, one light. 14 Do not have two differing measures in your house—one large, one small. 15 You must have accurate and honest weights and measures, so that you may live long in the land the Lord your God is giving you. 16 For the Lord your God detests anyone who does these things, anyone who deals dishonestly. — Deuteronomy 25:13-16
If you want to deny that evolution is an indisputable fact, or that the Earth is 4.5 billion years old, your justification for doing so MUST obey these verses. Accurate and honest measurement is non-negotiable, for the simple reason that anything else is lying.