YECers are more interested in proselytizing than in discussions of their ideas. They like to use scientific sounding language to support their position, hoping to convince “atheistic” people who accept science that theYEC position is more scientific than mainstream science One claim made frequently by creationist groups is that mainstream scientists no longer really believe in evolution. That statement was almost true 100 years ago, when Mendelian heredity seemed to invalidate the idea that creatures could change other than in very minor ways. in Darwin’s time, it was believed that offspring represented a blending of their parents traits. With one of Darwin’s major assumptions shown to be false, his whole theory seemed to have fallen apart.
Laboratory experiments showed very few variations from a starting population. However, field studies showed that’s wild populations exhibited tremendous variation. These two positions were finally brought together in the modern synthesis of the 1940s.
Creationist groups exploit every misstep of science over the centuries to cast doubt on any scientific conclusion about the world, therefore keeping the Bible just as valid an explanation of how the world came to be as the findings of science.
I hate to think of how much ink has been spilled and how many hours of argument have resulted from people who say they believe in the Bible, but have no idea what it means.
Perhaps I should have asked you a much more direct question.
The researchers got a conclusive result that showed that there were much more helium atoms present than should have been for a given constant rate of decay and the measured rate of escape from the crystals. Now since the concentration of helium inside the crystals were much higher than outside and the crystals were intact[meaning that helium [or Uranium, Thorium and lead for that matter could not have come from the outside], just what conclusion would YOU have drawn from the research data?
A multidomain model is both more consistent with the wide body of helium diffusion in zircons and with the Fenton Hill data. Using this better model results in an age of 1.5 B years for the Fenton Hill zircons. (Technical paper and follow-up)
In addition, any attempt to apply the RATE methodology to other zircon formations yields vastly inaccurate predictions. (link)
Given these detailed rebuttals by highly qualified geologists, I don’t feel I can accept the RATE conclusions on the basis of scientific reasoning.
If I started out convinced that the earth cannot be more than 7000 years old, that atheist scientists cannot be trusted, and that Christians who agree with those scientists are compromisers, then I might accept the RATE conclusions anyway. But I don’t start with that conviction.
The first thing I would do would be to seek peer review by independent diffusion chemistry experts, and reproduction of the results by other teams. Without this, we simply can not consider the results to be conclusive. This is standard practice in science.
This is doubly the case for helium diffusion in zircons. Diffusion studies are very complex, both theoretically and practically, and very complex studies mean that there is a lot of scope for error or experimenter bias to creep in. Unrealistic diffusion models, incorrect assumptions about the thermal history of the rocks, and even basic errors such as misidentification of rock samples and arithmetic errors can all drastically affect your interpretation of the results, while experimenter error can affect the results themselves.
As Chris has pointed out, not only have expert peer reviews of the RATE results been uniformly negative, but other teams have obtained results from similar studies that contradict them.
In any case, the conclusion – massively accelerated nuclear decay – is, as I’ve said, an extraordinary one, strongly contradicted by theoretical considerations, multiple other lines of experimental and observational evidence, and the RATE team’s own admission of serious unresolved problems with the idea. You do not introduce radical new laws of physics on the basis of a single set of disputed studies by a single team working with a predefined agenda.
I stand corrected. My source for that claim was this blog post by @Joel_Duff – I may have misunderstood it slightly. However, it doesn’t affect his central point: soft tissue and DNA preservation in ancient fossils is very rare—far more so than we would expect if the earth were just 6,000 years old. There is also a correlation between DNA preservation and radiometric dating, which needs to be explained by anyone who believes radiometric results to be invalid.
Try finding a denomination on high side of your chart that takes Biblical sexual morals seriously. For example, uncompromising disapproval of sex outside of marriage. Going a bit farther, I have commented elsewhere in this forum that the LGBTQ agenda does not leave room for a recognizable Biblical sexual ethic. The church closest to my house has no problem with evolution, and is also on the LGBTQ bandwagon. In Denver, the UMC just ordained an openly homosexual female pastor.
For some of us, a figurative dimension to some Old Testament history does not imply elasticity of Biblical ethical commands. We would rather not take our children to a church where this world’s view of sexual morals is advocated–they can pick that philosophy up anywhere.
@Darek_Barefoot, I recommend you read up on the history of sexual morality. It’s not as black and white as you seem to think it is.
The Old Testament made working on the Sabbath a death offence. When you are willing to take the Sabbath laws as seriously as concern over sexual morality, I will be moved to consider the totality of these views.
I find it interesting that you started with sex and ended with much broader ethical commands.
I find the selectivity of literalism fascinating, especially when it is applied to the OT over the NT. Do any of the denominations with stands on sexual morality that are acceptable to you take the words of Jesus Himself in Matthew 25 seriously and literally with respect to legal and illegal immigrants?
DNA in 4,000-6,000 year old remains is abundant, easy to extract, and fully sequenceable.
DNA in 1 million+ year old remains is rare, difficult to extract, and badly fragmented.
The whole point is that if the earth were only 6,000 years old, we would expect DNA in dinosaur fossils to be very, very common, and in some cases very, very well preserved. But it isn’t.
An upper limit on survival time means that there is a correlation between preservation and date. In fact, the article you cite assumes throughout that there is a correlation, and that DNA degrades gradually.
You have put your finger on a big problem in the American church. The denominations that tend to support a literalistic heremeneutic of Genesis 1- 3 tend to have conservative ethics, and those that tend to support a literal hermeneutic (which in the case of Genesis 1 - 3 means you interpret it figuratively) tend to have liberal ethics. There are plenty of exceptions to the rule, of course.
What is someone who has strong convictions about moral and academic integrity to do if one of those exceptions is not within driving distance? According to @Eddie we could just move across the pond to England, but that’s not realistic for me. My solution is to hang out with a church with a conservative moral ethic, and slap a “What if God created evolution?” bumper sticker on my vehicle.
Chris - England calling (and it’s not all sweetness and light here, as even Eddie knows!). But it seems to me that the knee-jerk US linkage between non-literal interpretations of bibilcal events and liberal interpretations of biblical ethics (and the antithesis, of course) is a huge problem in American Christianity.
That it is exhibited even on this thread shows that it involves even educated believers - but that many govern their theology along party lines rather than the Rule of Faith. As you say there are exceptions (you and Darek being representative) - maybe their unhappiness with either camp is the best sign of life: the Gospel of Jesus, after all, is an offence to all human systems, and to all party-spirit.
It is not a hard limit. DNA preservation can be affected by many factors, not all of which are known. By contrast, radiometric dating is very well established and is based on processes that are strongly resistant to external influence.
In any case , it still doesn’t affect my point that ancient DNA is rare, difficult to extract, and badly degraded. Which is not what we would expect in a young earth.
according to the paper the limit is about 2500 years in 20c. so its not so easy to extract DNA even in a 4000 years fossil.
again, if in some point in the earth\universe history we can get a plasma temp, we can never know if the radiometric dating effected by this process. before the earth was formed.
Sorry, I missed your original reference to the supposed Miocene plant DNA. Basically, no one in the field believes that result. Early efforts at sequencing DNA from millions of years ago yielded lots of positive results. Some turned out to be obvious cases of contamination, though, and others couldn’t be replicated. Eventually, specialized labs developed the techniques required to reliably extract and sequence ancient DNA, and when they did, they couldn’t find any genuine DNA from anything that old. The field as a whole therefore concluded that the early results from really old material had been spurious, without investigating why every single one was wrong.
The study you’re citing wasn’t done in one of the specialized labs and the authors were not experts in ancient DNA. No one cites the paper as anything but an example of how the field went wrong.