Oh gosh…you really need to take notice of the replies that you are getting. I told you less than two days ago on this very thread precisely why Mount St Helens is not the problem for radiometric dating that you are making it out to be and it seems it’s just gone in one ear and out the other.
Specifically, I said this:
Adam, why are you still blindly repeating falsehood and misinformation hard on the heels of being told that it is falsehood and misinformation?
IS the universe limitless and infinite? I have not heard that before.
Is the universe infinite, T?
Mike, I’ve explained this to Adam and I think I need to give you a refresher too.
One of the most basic, fundamental principles of measurement is that unreliability must be quantified. One does not simply point to one or two janky results and claim that all measurements made by the same method can be discarded in their entirety.
The errors in the Mount St Helens measurement indicate that that specific radiometric method can potentially be in error by up to 2.8 million years and no more. 2.8 million years may sound like a lot, but as I said it is less than one thousandth of the measured age of the oldest rocks on Earth (which, for what it’s worth, were dated by a completely different method.)
As I said, what Adam is doing is like taking one set of bathroom scales, seeing that it reads 0.1 kilograms when he isn’t standing on it, then when he stands on a completely different set of scales and sees whatever figure he sees – whether it is 70, 80, 90 or 100kg – concluding that he could therefore plausibly weigh nothing.
This is simply the basic rules and principles of how accurate and honest measurement works. Rules and principles that apply to every area of science, whether “operational” or “historical,” and to everyone, whether they are a Christian or an atheist. Neither “scientism” nor “secularism” nor “atheism” nor “materialism” nor “evolutionism” nor any other weasel word ending in “ism” has anything whatsoever to do with it.
Show me evidence, warrant for divine intervention in nature and I have no option but to accept it. I don’t have to opine that a creator isn’t necessary. I don’t have to dismiss God from nature. I don’t need to be a-theist. It, He, doesn’t, They don’t arise.
Dawkins is talking about our cognitive bias, that order in human affairs bespeaks meaning, intent; we primitively, childishly, falsely project that on self-tuned, autonomously increasingly complex nature. We are so desperate to believe that we are significant, that death is not the end of us, that we all turn a blind eye to the elephant in the room of rationality. Pretending that empiricism entitles us not to think. So we see patterns that aren’t there therefore Fauci caused Covid.
Even if we were to accept the premise that the Biblical creation account was borrowed from other cultures, an account that is not concerned with how the world began certainly wouldn’t include a chapter on how the world did begin.
This logic is faulty.
I appreciate your acknowledgment that claims of AI successes “jump the gun”. Any such claims will always “jump the gun”, because only God can create a mind. AI is a pipedream.
Interesting that the people who disagree with you are wrong/mistaken. Is it possible that you are the one who is wrong/mistaken?
Even more interesting that you imply you have calculated every possible explanation and have falsified all of them except for the Big Bang idea.
I ask again… is movement away from the observer the ONLY cause of redshift?
As for corresponding to galactic distance, we are standing on earth looking at lights in the sky. We have zero actual clue about “galactic distance”. Is it possible that there is a little bit of circular reasoning involved? After all, Arp was “mistaken” because his observations didn’t align with the approved narrative, right? What if it was Arp who was right all along? How were you personally able to falsify Arp’s conclusions? Or are you just reading claims from other people and believing the things that fit into your own desired worldview, while dismissing the others?
The surface of a sphere would be a 2D universe. Maybe it’s time to scrap the “balloon” analogy, and use foam housing insulation instead.
So, the contractor squirts a little drop of the foam insulation in the empty space between two studs. The drop of foam is the singularity. The foam then expands equally in all directions from the drop. The universe includes not only the outer skin of the expanded, solid ball of foam - but also all of the foam that fills the space within the outer skin.
We can then determine the distance from anywhere on the outer skin to the center of the expanding ball of foam. So even long after the foam ball had begun to expand, we can determine the point of origin… the singularity from which the expanding ball inflated equally in all directions.
Now, which is a better analogy of our universe? The outer skin of a balloon/sphere - with absolutely no part of our universe within the body of the balloon? Or the foam in which our universe is not only the 2D outer skin of the foam ball, but also everything that fills the interior of it?
Thank you for sharing that Popper did indeed say what I said he did. The fact that he “changed his mind” later (no doubt under extreme pressure from Scientism zealots who were experiencing daily the harm his truthful words did to their cult) has no bearing on the truthful facts he previously stated.
History is full of scientists who publicly spoke the truth in a moment of honesty - only to have their own words used to hinder the paradigm in which they believe on blind faith. I believe Stephen Gould (whom you mentioned earlier) has had a similar “retraction” after his own truthful words were found to be doing harm to his religion. And I know for a fact that Colin Patterson (whom I quoted earlier) did a “yeah I said that, but the evil creationists are using my own words against me so I take it back” announcement later on in his life.
There have been many such “recantations”, T. And the ones who don’t come out and announce that they “misspoke” or “changed their minds” are dismissed as “quote mines” anyway.
But facts don’t care about recantations under pressure - or about people shouting “Quote mine!” in an attempt to undo what one of their heroes has said. And the fact is that unique historical events (big bang, abiogenesis, common descent evolution, cosmogony of the sun, earth, moon and stars, the history of England, etc) are NOT a part of empirical science because they CANNOT be observed in real time, tested, and repeated.
Popper and Patterson spoke the truth the first time. Their later recantations carry little weight for truth seekers. Your personal opinions on the matter carry even less.
But let me finish with this quote, since it leads us back to the topic of the thread…
“People need to be aware that there is a range of models that could explain the observations….For instance, I can construct you a spherically symmetrical universe with Earth at its center, and you cannot disprove it based on observations….You can only exclude it on philosophical grounds. In my view there is absolutely nothing wrong in that. What I want to bring into the open is the fact that we are using philosophical criteria in choosing our models. A lot of cosmology tries to hide that.”
Will George some day “recant” this statement? Will he be pressured to add some context, like, “Yeah I said that, but everyone knows that the earth is certainly NOT the center of the universe!” ?
And if he does, will it matter? Not to truth seekers.
I can also show you statements from Edwin Hubble, Stephen Hawking, Paul Davies, and even God-hating Lawrence Krauss saying that the evidence suggests that the earth just might be the center of the universe.
And with that, we’re back on track with the topic. How can the “scientific evidence” point to the earth being the center, while at the same time the “scientific evidence” says there is no center?
But more importantly, I’m still waiting for a valid answer to WHY a universe expanding out equally from a single point (like insulation foam) would not have a center.
And that is only my first question of many that I want to ask the members here about BB.
How can they hear these “specific measurable characteristics” through the static? And where can I read about the “precise numerical aspects” they were looking for before they allegedly discovered them?
Have you personally heard the cosmic microwave background with your own ears, James? Or are you simply believing things you’ve been told?
Also, how can the universe not have a center? Thanks.
All I heard was “unreliable”. 
How many tests have been done on rocks of known ages? What is the percentage of those tests that accurately determined the correct ages of these rocks?
I read this one years ago, and it has always stuck with me…
Anyway, this thread is about the big bang. Cheers
Hi Adam, I’ve enjoyed your posts, and agree with most of what you’re saying. But this thread is about BB. Do you have any comments or questions regarding that?
What exactly would such evidence look like? If the intervention is supernatural, yet you only allow for natural evidence/interpretations, how could anyone possibly meet your requirement?
Why would we have this “cognitive bias” in the first place? Where did it come from?
When you see Stonehenge and conclude that it exists by means of intelligent design, is that a case of you primitively, childishly and falsely projecting your cognitive bias onto something that is more likely to have been a random natural accident?
And when someone who believes that Stonehenge - despite all appearances to the contrary - did come into existence via purely natural causes calls you out for your primitive, childish and false projection of intelligent design onto this complex natural phenomenon, would you take their comments toward you as valid, and bow your head in shame for thinking that something that appears to have been designed actually was designed?
Or would you feel a sort of pity for this poor soul who easily recognizes the appearance of design, yet concludes that no designer was necessary after all?
If by chance your reaction would be the latter, you will have a good indication of how I react to comments such as yours concerning the clear and abundant appearance of design in our world, and in the living things that occupy it.
Well…this remark was picking up on what an earlier blogger here said. The only One who knows if the Universe is truly infinite and limitless would be the One who has been all over it —and is still going. That is actually not me…or you. If it is expanding, then I suppose we cannot say it is infinite…yet at least, but we will never know for an expanding infinity can never have “an end” that would be reached…ever.
Oh dear!! Good thing he is retiring, eh??
As for Dawkins and all the rest — perhaps the reason we believe in our significance (against all odds) and that death is not the end (etc) and that order “bespeaks meaning” – or at least Someone with a broom …perhaps this is because we innately know that these various pieces of data do mean just that.
Good for whom Robin?
Our cognitive bias does not change how rationality, reality, works. Our cognitive bias evolved, because it had survival value @MikeBoll. It is now worse than redundant, the cost outweighs the benefits politically, economically, morally, socially, environmentally.
What a bizarre non-sequitur.
My cognitive bias is rationality.
Actually, scientists have great concerns over that and over the accuracy and correctness of their findings. While we may suffer a little loss of pride and self -esteem if we misquote something on a message board, researchers results are scrutinized closely by experts well trained in their field, and their careers and livelihoods are at stake if they make mistakes and especially if they cook the data and intentionally misrepresent their findings. That is not to say it never happens, but when it does, the truth always comes out eventually, and if they are still working, their careers are essentially over.
When the results are discordant, they look for determining why. Of course, if a rock is known to be young, they would probably not use an inappropriate method to date it in the first place. If they didso anyway, they would look to see why it dated that way as their research depends understanding why it did that to avoid introducing error in their other research.
There’s also such a thing as bias blind spot
No-one who takes science seriously does so because they are “simply believing things you’ve been told.” That might happen if you’re being spoon-fed by Answers in Genesis, but it does not happen when you learn science properly.
When you study science at university, you spend about half your time in something called a laboratory. This is a place where you learn, through hands-on experience, that (a) science has rules, (b) the rules work as described, and (c) you are not at liberty to disregard them. If that isn’t enough to convince you, you are then sent out into the workplace where you have to put the rules into practice in situations where disregarding them could get you fired, or in some cases possibly even result in people getting killed.
And scientists do not use their ears to listen to the cosmic microwave background. They use electronic
sensors, which are far more precise and reliable, and that result in measurements. The measurements can then be plotted on graphs such as this one:
This is a graph plotted from measurements taken from the cosmic microwave background by these electronic sensors. The cosmic microwave background is made up of a whole spectrum of different electromagnetic waves with different frequencies, and the sensors measure the strength of the contribution that each frequency makes to the overall background signal. The x axis of the graph represents the frequency, and the y axis represents the strength of the contribution that that frequency makes, or in other words its intensity.
The resulting curve has a very precise and specific shape called a black body radiation spectrum. It is exactly the same as what you would get if you took similar measurements from a totally black object at a particular temperature. In the case of the cosmic microwave background, this temperature is 2.7 Kelvins, which is exactly what you would expect from a Big Bang occurring about 13.8 billion years ago.
And bear in mind that this is just one set of measurements that scientists can and do take. These measurements are precise; they are detailed; they are numerous; and they have demonstrable extensive cross-correlations between them that are exactly what would be expected from a Big Bang.
Sigh. Yet another young earthist attack piece on radiometric dating that overlooks one important piece of information.
There is a difference between “doesn’t always work” and “never works.”
The only thing that this article manages to demonstrate is that some radiometric methods don’t work properly when applied to some types of rock. Scientists know that fine, they have never claimed otherwise, and they take it into account. But there is a massive difference between that and demonstrating that all radiometric methods could be consistently out by a factor of a million when applied to every type of rock.
The studies concerned were all conducted in the 1960s and 1970s when radiometric dating was still a relatively immature discipline. There have been a lot of advances in the past fifty years that manage to work round the assumptions that were required back then. Isochron dating, AMS spectrometry, argon-argon dating, higher-precision techniques, and a whole lot more.
The article’s claim that scientists only use “evolutionary presuppositions” when identifying rock samples that have been subjected to contamination, alteration or weathering is a straight-up lie. There are a lot of other ways that scientists can tell when samples are likely to have a more complex history. Such as, for example, actual physical damage. Or a chemical composition showing that they were formed from mixing of two different minerals. Or nearby environmental features such as groundwater, volcanic hotspots, metamorphism or folded and fractured rocks.
All in all, this is simply another attack piece that attempts to discredit an outdated and oversimplified cartoon caricature of radiometric dating that does not accurately reflect what real scientists actually do in reality in the present day.
In any case, even if radiometric dating really were as unreliable as Answers in Genesis makes it out to be, that still wouldn’t reduce the age of the earth down to six thousand years. Why? Because some radiometric techniques set lower limits on the ages of the rocks that they are measuring. One example here is uranium-lead dating of zircon crystals. This works because it is physically impossible to get lead into a zircon crystal through any route other than nuclear decay from uranium. On top of that, if the zircons were disturbed in any way (in particular, through being heated up), the lead would escape faster than the uranium, making the clocks look younger than they really are. And if nuclear decay rates ever had been high enough to get millions of years’ worth of lead into the zircons in a much shorter time, they would have released enough heat to destroy them altogether.
“Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.” -Colossians 4:6
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