You know which methods succeed and which ones fail by looking at the data in bulk.
Let’s say, for example, that you have five dating methods, A, B, C, D and E. A and B give the same results as each other 95% of the time. C gives the same results as A and B 90% of the time; D gives the same results as A and B 80% of the time. The results from E are all over the place.
You would then conclude that A and B work most of the time; C and D somewhat less often; and E is useless.
So you wouldn’t use E at all. But you’d use at least two of whichever of methods A, B, C and D were available. You would also study the samples that fail in detail to see whether they had anything in common that could shed light on why they failed.
There’s no circular reasoning involved in that whatsoever.
Contamination is no mere “rescuing device”; it is a systematic error. Systematic errors have to be accounted for and eliminated before any conclusions can be drawn: this is one of the first things that you learn in a first year undergraduate physics practical class. To dismiss contamination — or any other kind of systematic error — as a “rescuing device” or a “hackneyed defence” in this cavalier manner encourages Christians to adopt a sloppy and indisciplined approach to science that, in any other area of scientific inquiry, would kill people. (The pharmaceutical industry is just one example that comes to mind here.)
How do we know that it was contamination rather than intrinsic radiocarbon? Simple. Scientists have measured how much contamination gets introduced by specific contamination vectors. They do this, for example, by measuring the amount of carbon-14 in a particular sample, repeating one or more steps of processing (for example, by combusting it to CO2 and then reducing it back to graphite), taking a second reading, and calculating the difference.
The amount of contamination introduced by processing samples will vary, but measured values of 0.14-0.25% modern carbon are typical for a single processing step. Many samples require two or three processing steps (for example, to separate collagen from bone or cellulose from wood) and accordingly levels up to 0.5% or so at least must be considered to be contamination unless there is strong evidence to the contrary. Poor experimental technique or in situ contamination can push the levels even higher.
The levels of carbon-14 reported by the RATE team were completely consistent with these levels.
The contamination vector for diamonds is also well known: it comes from being bombarded with neutrons from nearby uranium deposits. How do we know this? Because there is a measurable correlation between the presence of nearby uranium deposits and levels of reported carbon 14. In fact, scientists need to be able to use this information to predict where they can find deposits of oil that are extremely low in carbon-14 in order to be able to build detectors for solar neutrinos. This article contains some useful details: Carbon-14 in Coal Deposits
That they are doing their jobs. (Forgive me for playing catchup with this thread this morning!) It is intuitive to us if we have a yardstick that it will measure my cat or my height or my living room reasonably well, but that if I try to measure the width of a hair or the height of a mountain with it I probably have the wrong tool for the job. It will state that the hair is either 0 or 1/16 of an inch if I insist upon an answer; both are wrong. The error bar of the yardstick is about 1/16th of an inch. Each radiometric dating method has its own range of dates which it is best suited to measure, and as one gets the the edges of these ranges, the error bars become larger. Trying to date something recent where the error bars are larger than its age is measuring a hair with a yardstick, and the lab had clearly stated this upfront. That is why nobody is impressed with the YEC game being played.
Only when they get close to the sun. There are presumed to be many more without extreme orbits that nearly burn them up than we can see; there is no reason to assume that those we see represent most of the comets that exist, especially when we look statistically at the population. There are always a few orbit-changing dynamics at play so that new comets get shot toward the sun out of the many, many small objects orbiting the sun at distances near and far.
Here you go. Tip: clicking the up arrow in a quote will take you to that post, so you can use it to skip backwards in your conversation with a single person without rereading the whole thread.
When I first read the article, I saw it as circumstantial evidence that things are not always as cut and dry as some make it out to be. I will ponder your arguments more fully.
The creation of the universe, and life itself, is mathematically impossible. No amount of time can explain either. I suppose a deistic theory could easily explain the origins, whereby a divine being created the universe and the beginning of life, and turned it loose. But that would not explain the fulfillment of prophecy, nor even the written word of God, itself. Did you ever consider the possibility that the laws of Physics are putty in the hands of him that made us?
What methods are used to detect oil?
You are assuming your methods are cut in stone.
Are you kidding? The frauds do not cost anything; rather, those who write the textbooks that promote them make lots of money. When anyone exposes evolution frauds, for example “whale evolution” pictorials, the fraud is either explained away, or it lingers in the education system for years, even a century in the case of Haeckel’s drawings; and our children are still fooled by them. I was.
Even today, years after the Rodhocetus “fraud” was revealed, there is little mention of it in the mainstream. Nor has there been barely any mention (except by ID’ers) of the tens of thousands of “transitional” animals required to morph, for example, a Pakicetus into a modern whale. Yet, the slighest hint of intelligent design by an educator, in a positive sense, will instantly blacklist him/her. And that is not even creationism? Most ID’ers are old-earthers.
Look at the plight of the BRILLIANT ID’er (not creationist), Jonathan Wells. He, and his book, Icons of Evolution, are still smeared on a continuous basis by the establishment, 18 years after the book was first published.
And what is the secret of Dawinism? Time. Given enough time, matter, which magically appeared, will organize itself into an enormous universe of unimaginable size and mass, and eventually life magically appears out of magically appearing inorganic materials. That Is a pretty neat trick.
Perhaps. But anytime a scientist uses words like “absurd”, my antenna pops up. I saw enough fraud during my time in two graduate schools to convince me there is a lot of bad science masquerading as “settled”. Besides, there are many geographical features that question an old earth, not to mention “where are all the graves?” No offense intended, but label me a skeptic.
That is a gross oversimplification. You expect those blacklisted from the peer review process, and locked out of the deep pockets of the state, to compete on a timely basis? Think about it this way. Why would well-established educators and researchers risk their careers to promote something that could be easily disproved? Obviously they think they are on to something, and so do I.
Look at Alfred Wegener’s plight on his Plate Techtonic hypothesis? The “scientific” establishment black-balled it for about a half-century. Science should open doors; not shut them.
Again, I understood his article to be a statement that things are not always as cut and dried as claimed.
I will check that out.
Point taken.
I must be old-school. I thought oil was located with seismic testing and core sampling.
That seems to be a straw man. Perhaps that would be better stated as, “How did the world survive before the days of Lyell, Hutton and Darwin?”
Okay, I get your point, but how does the recognition of the biblical narrative and a young earth kill people? How does the rejection of evolution kill people, or even hinder science? You will find in all creation research one goal: to eliminate evolution, and the notion of “time solves everything”, from our education system, and to bring back the our culture’s time-honored tradition of teaching the Bible in public schools.
What is the context? Does it not mean that God is outside of time? But, for the sake of argument, let’s assume God meant to say, “the evening and the morning were the first thousand years”, and that he created the earth in 6,000 years, rather than 6 days. How does that help your narrative? Are you insinuating that if God said one thousand, he meant one billion? If that is true, we may as well clip out Matthew 7:12, and throw the rest in the trash.
The notion of an “appearance of age” is fairly new in biblical circles. And which historical events mentioned in the Bible are you claiming never happened? The Flood? The destruction of Sodom? The crossing of the Red Sea? The battle of Jericho? The Babylonian captivity? The resurrection of Christ?
That is “scary”. That is almost exactly the way I used to believe. However the arguments that Noah had dinosaurs on board, and the notion of hyper-evolution, are red herrings. There is a strong possibility the dinos were some of the corrupted flesh the Lord spoke of (hybridization is implied in extra-biblical Hebrew text). All extinct species – those found only in the fossil record – were most likely corrupted (e.g., hybrids of more than one species or kind). Hyper-evolution was not necessary to create many species from the thousands of kinds on the ark. Hidden within each kind were many species.
God did tell us that he created the fossil record, in a manner of speaking. He clearly stated all land flesh was destroyed by a flood that rose above the mountain tops; and if it was a regional flood, Noah could have simply walked to the highest mountains, rather than spend many years building a massive boat. Similar world-wide folklore implies a common origin, for example, from Noah and his children.
Simple sedimentary fluid mechanics explains how rising water, with massive tides, could easily create the kinds of stratification we see, world-wide. The existence of fossilized marine life in high mountain regions also presents one of two options:
the waters were much higher than creation scientists theorize.
there are or have been plate tectonic forces powerful enough to push up the Himalayas.
I have never heard a reasonable “no flood” explanation for Polystrate Fossils. Have you stumbled across one?
And you are quote mining. Where does it say you will ever understand his works? And, if so, for what purpose? To teach our children that the Bible cannot be trusted? That seems to be the purpose of many. Should we not be giving God the glory, rather than undermining his written word that he intentionally left us?
But I must confess, I was an agnostic, yet I have always thought the world and the universe are beyond beautiful. When I was younger, I routinely set up my telescope to show friends and neighbors the wonders of the universe. I was similarly fascinated with the wonders of life itself. In fact, I always had this comeback to those witnessing to me for Jesus: “If this is not heaven, I don’t want to go.”
Without realizing it, this was one of my prayers:
“Make me to understand the way of thy precepts: so shall I talk of thy wondrous works.” – Ps 119:27 KJV
And this also was a prayer – one I knew. From my earliest days of childhood I was hoping for a way that everyone could live happily ever after. I simply didn’t know it is predicted in the bible:
“And he shewed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb. In the midst of the street of it, and on either side of the river, was there the tree of life, which bare twelve manner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month: and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.” – Rev 22:1-2 KJV
Notice there are still nations (and, there are still kings - Rev 21:24-26). I take that to mean that after the defeat of Satan, everyone lives happily ever after, which explains this passage:
“One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth for ever.” – Eccl 1:4 KJV
How does that go? “Man shall not live by bread alone?”
“O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out!” – Rom 11:33 KJV
Anyway, my goal (maybe my mission) is to get our children to read and study the bible, not to leave it on the shelf to collect dust.
That would be great… but exactly how does a worldwide flood account for fossilized strata we see today? You know that only certain types of animals are seen together with only certain types of plants. In certain layers there are no plants with flowers or pollen and the animals are always much simpler in these layers. The radiometric age of strata always decreases as we go down except when there’s an obvious fault line.
We never seen the animals mixed and the lowest layers only contain the simplest organisms. The old myth that somehow the “more intelligent” creatures ran uphill is a very ad hoc and completely unreasonable explanation, let alone the sorting that occurs not only with land creatures but also sea creatures. It is a very tough explanation to reason this out in a single event but makes perfect sense in an old earth framework.
Here’s a nice quote from a geologists who explained how some polystrata trees actually formed (i.e. not in a worldwide flood):
“Patient observation and thought may enable us in time better to comprehend these mysteries; and I think we may be much aided in this by cultivating an acquaintance with the Maker and Ruler of the machine as well as with His work.”
Dawson has no theological problems with the conclusions he drew, which are basically similar to the ones drawn by geologists now. Many other geologists of the period were devoutly religious, and clearly expressed the fact in their publications.
Let’s stop here. There is absolutely no evidence for this to be the case. As they themselves admit, accelerating the decay rate would increase the temperature of the Earth to be 22,000 C. That IS A SERIOUS PROBLEM. No explanation of where that heat went. It just didn’t occur. If they were actually right about this, it means that the weak nuclear force and quantum tunneling and the electromagnetic force AND the strong force were all different for one week or one year. With no reason whatsoever, they parade this around as if it was scientific.
If you actually cared about how reliable this technique is, then I would explain additional techniques like the isochron method (which is also misused in misleading ways by YEC geologists who should know better). That is a powerful method that is not dependent on any initial conditions and you can tell if something happened to the rock in between when it solidified and today because the measurements will not lie on a straight line.
You know what. Forget this. This is ridiculous. I give up and whatever man. I’d suggest taking a break from YEC science garbage for a month or so. Try to learn some real science. I used to be a YEC until I actually tried to learn some real science myself. It took a loooong time, but I learned of the broadnetwork of connected ideas, not just some lone ad hoc explanations for everything with some hand waving magic that God supposedly did even making it look like billions of years of stuff has happened.
It’s probably already linked so I won’t relink it to @jammycakes 's blog on C14. Again a misleading claim by YEC scientists. The amount of C-14 isn’t above the contamination levels that cannot be eliminated, but either they don’t care to learn or know about it and lie. I don’t know what they do. I don’t care anymore.
Feel free to respond but it’s probably a waste of both of our time at this point.
So, if I tell the lab a rock is old, it will be radio-dated as old, and vice versa? How do I know the rock is old, unless it is first dated? I am not playing games.
That is a reasonable hypothesis. I will store that one away for future use.
Cool. Thanks.
Technically, no. Geology comprised a major part of his hypothesis. You didn’t answer my question.
Lynn pointed me to this post, and I examined the article by Joel Duff. One of the problems with extrapolation is uncertainty of conditions. For example, squid are known to exist in tight-knit schools. About 45 years ago, off the coast of Ensenada, Mexico, we ran into schools so thick we used a dip net to fill up a couple of coolers in a matter of minutes; and they were everywhere, as far as the eye could see. These were not as large as those in the article – maybe averaging 6 inches, like you might see in a fish market – but there were a gazillion of them.
There was a different environment prior to the flood. Additionally the Lord said that all flesh had been corrupted. That could very well have included their reproductive systems if their gene pools have been tinkered with, which I believe to be the case in all species that went extinct by the flood, and not afterward. A similar claim(s) has been addressed in creation literature:
“Another claim of bibliosceptics is that there are ‘too many fossils’. If all those animals could be resurrected, it is said, they would cover the entire planet to a depth of at least 0.5 metres (1.5 feet). So they could not have come from a single generation of living creatures buried by the Flood. Not surprisingly, the substance disappears when the detail is examined. The number of fossils is calculated from an abnormal situation—the Karroo formation in South Africa. In this formation the fossils comprise a ‘fossil graveyard’—the accumulation of animal remains in a local ‘sedimentary basin’. It is certainly improper to apply this abnormally high population density to the whole earth. The calculation also uses incorrect information on today’ animal population densities and takes no account of the different conditions that likely applied before the Flood.” [Tasman B Walker, “Geology and the young earth: Answering those ‘Bible-believing’ bibliosceptics.” Creation Ministries International, 1999]
It depends on what you think of as “old.” One million years, set against 4.6 billion, is really not very old at all. The sample was dated towards the young end of the lab’s range. The people who sent in a sample they knew could not be accurately dated by the techniques used in the lab were playing games. Most samples it is easy to have some rough idea how old they are based on where they are found, what layers of rock they came from, and the lab results just fine-tune the dates. None of this depends on only one kind of measurement.
Technically, your question wasn’t addressed to me. But if you’d like me to:
Hutton was 1700s. I think @pevaquark may have meant 19th century, i.e. 1800s, but Hutton still doesn’t qualify. Lyell was certainly Christian and Playfair was a (Christian) minister. Darwin, as I said, was not a geologist.
gbrooks9
(George Brooks, TE (E.volutionary T.heist OR P.rovidentialist))
112
At posting #43, you wrote this, which I have read before:
What you have here is a string of nice words describing, like a magic act, what you would do with the animals if you were in control of a global flood.
The discussion is totally devoid of any evidence that any of your wishful thinking would or could ever occur like you describe.
In the meantime, you have zero explanation for why pigs or cows could avoid drowning longer than giant plant eater dinosaurs, or why marine reptiles almost immediately drown, while proto-whales survive longer in the flood and so are never found down with the marine reptiles. And you don’t have any explanation for why humans (especially those in the Nile Valley) are not available (even to a minor degree) as fossils, just like all the other animals in the Nile Valley were.
Thanks for the link, as I admit I was wondering too! I’m really confused by the leap of logic in the video at 7 minutes: how does removing the flukes and flippers let you remove the rest of Rodhocetus, which is still intermediate between Pakicetus-like creatures and modern whales in all the bones we do have? Why does saying a fossil form was probably not a direct ancestor, just closely related to one, justify removing it completely from the diagram? They never even explain why they’re taking some of those forms out!
Right. And if he explained that the tail and flippers were extrapolated or interpolated in his scientific presentations and also when asked about it, then this is him being honest, right? That’s called science. I don’t see it as disingenuous. It’s only natural, when you find a certain number of bones and you know it’s a separate species and let’s say the nostrils are intermediate between two other species, to want to make an artist’s rendering. As long as you’ve clear that it’s an artist’s rendering, this isn’t lying or pulling the wool over somebody’s eyes.
What if I picked up a rock and had no clue how old it was? What kind of results could I expect?
What if I picked up a rock that I believe to be many millions of years old, but it was in reality only 6,000 years old? What kind of results could I expect?
LOL! I apologize. I am still trying to get the hang of this board.
I stand by my original statement, that “The purpose of uniformitarianism was to remove God (the Bible) from the picture.” It was a crystal clear attack by all of those mentioned (even Playfair) on the Genesis account of the flood, and Moses generally.
LXX
gbrooks9
(George Brooks, TE (E.volutionary T.heist OR P.rovidentialist))
117
Marty and I had a big discussion on just this point.
Marty, representing the creationist view, wanted to know how “transitonal” species were identified. He thought they should be based on known relationships.
But in truth, the scientists of today follow the methods of the scientists of old when it comes to anatomy.
Transitional forms are based on their form not any specific known genetic relationship. There are cases
where a transitional form is known to actually come after other forms. But because it shows a Real Example of a population with these transitional traits, they are used to show the “transitions”.
Creationists howl like crazy over this … because they want everything neat and tidy … with known transitions being precisely fit into family trees at the right point of time and so forth.
But reality is more messy than that.
gbrooks9
(George Brooks, TE (E.volutionary T.heist OR P.rovidentialist))
118
I actually disagree here, George. Uniformitarianism is everything. All scientific theorizing (both “historical” and “observational”, to borrow Ham’s spurious dichotomy) relies on it.
But what those who reject uniformitarianism typically don’t realize is that when you assume uniformitarianism, literally many millions of pieces of data from dozens of discrete methods of inquiry all fall together and corroborate the big picture that mainstream science is telling of an ancient universe. They typically don’t realize just how well it all falls together once you assume uniformitarianism.
Your question was, “then perhaps you can explain to me how the global flood managed to arrange all sorts of fossils to be only below the K/T boundary… and all sorts of other kinds of fossils to be only above the K/T boundary?”
I gave you my hypothesis. If you have a problem with any part of it, please explain why.
I thought I explained it.
The dinos were most likely hybrids, and not as genetically adept at survival as those who were from a single kind. They may also have been “herding” in low lying plateaus.
There is no such thing as a “proto-whale”, that I am aware of.
How do you know there was a Nile valley prior to the flood?
Humans were probably the last to drown, making them the least likely to fossilize. Those that did fossilize were most likely swept away onto the continental shelf or into the ocean basins when the flood waters rapidly receded, taking a large segment of the top layer(s) with it.
There is another alternative: perhaps the animals ate the humans when their normal food supply became scarce.
There is even one more alternative: maybe the giants killed most of them. This is from extra-biblical Hebrew literature:
“And when men could no longer sustain them, the giants [hybrid children of angels and women] turned against them and devoured mankind.” — Enoch 7:3-3
“And to Gabriel said the Lord: ‘Proceed against the bastards and the reprobates, and against the children of fornication: and destroy (the children of fornication and) the children of the Watchers [angels] from amongst men (and cause them to go forth): send them one against the other that they may destroy each other in battle: for length of days shall they not have.” — Enoch 10:9
“And against [the angel’s] sons went forth a command from before His face that they should be smitten with the sword, and be removed from under heaven . . . And He sent His sword into their midst that each should slay his neighbour, and they began to slay each other till they all fell by the sword and were destroyed from the earth . . . And He destroyed all from their places, and there was not left one of them whom He judged not according to all their wickedness.” – Jubilees 5:7,9,13
There are presumed to be many more without extreme orbits that nearly burn them up than we can see; there is no reason to assume that those we see represent most of the comets that exist, especially when we look statistically at the population. There are always a few orbit-changing dynamics at play so that new comets get shot toward the sun out of the many, many small objects orbiting the sun at distances near and far.