Young Earth Creationists

[MLowe75]

Yes,I am familiar with Dalrymple’s back pedaling when it comes to
potassium-argon dating. And to me, as a very simple mechanical engineer,
the failure of a method or instrument to yield accurate results tends to
mean the method is usually flawed. Extra argon in pillow lavas? Why
assume this is the only case where a daughter element is present in
unexpected amounts? It seems to me the method didn’t work when it had a
chance to be tested.

Please re-read what you have written here: we see if methods work
correctly, by testing rocks of known ages.

What you are essentially saying is something I completely agree with. Which
is, we can’t know if a method is accurate unless it is confirmed by
independent tests. K-Ar failed to pass a test. But it seems as if K-Ar is
beyond reproach unassailable, because there are no independently known ages
for rocks beyond a few thousand years. We can also use other methods -
uranium-lead for example - and they can validate each other.

We are somehow able to categorize suitable and unsuitable dates for rocks
whose ages we assume cannot possibly be verified independently, because
they are assumed to be millions or billions of years old. Yet we accept
them nonetheless. We take dates like 0.5 mya and discard them, because
they don’t fit in the geologic column, or they don’t conform to index
fossils found in the vicinity, whose ages were derived via radiometric
dating. We pretend that agreement between two unverifiable methods somehow
equates to some degree of accuracy, despite “scatter” and a need for
judicious selection.

Sometimes I am boggled as to how modern science, and the public’s view of
scientific matters, is incredibly critical in some areas, but positively
fatuous in other.

 

[rossum]

Prior to radiometric dating, relative dating was used to say one thing was older than another. By dating the end of the Cretaceous Period to 80 mya, Charles Lyell was making claims beyond his ability to do so accurately, without any “exact technique” as you write.

I would need to see the reference to Lyell’s 80 mya to check how accurate he thought his estimate was. If there is no exact measurement available, then using an estimate is legitimate, providing it is clearly marked as an estimate, and the basis for the estimate is given.

Whatever you think of it, Lyell’s estimate was better than that of the Bible authors, who relied on a traditional tribal genealogy, not actual geological evidence.

Yes,I am familiar with Dalrymple’s back pedaling when it comes to potassium-argon dating.

There was no back-pedalling. Why do you think he dated rocks of a known date? Not to find out how old they were – he already knew that – but to check the dating method. K-Ar dating relies on all the old Argon out-gassing from the lava before it solidifies. Dalrymple was checking if that was the case in pillow lavas. It wasn’t, because some old Argon was trapped in the rock. Today, scientists do not use that method on pillow lavas.

You should read Wiens’ Radiometric Dating – A Christian Perspective for a lot more detail on this subject. A look at the Isochron method would help you understand how initial amounts of daughter produce can be measured.

rossum

 

[goout]

So let me make sure I understand. Lyell wasn’t simply guessing, he was
estimating, based on relative dating and rates of geological change - but
he didn’t have an exact technique, as you say.

When something is measured without an exact technique, I believe that is
called guessing.

Prior to radiometric dating, relative dating was used to say one thing was
older than another. By dating the end of the Cretaceous Period to 80 mya,
Charles Lyell was making claims beyond his ability to do so accurately,
without any “exact technique” as you write.

Relative dating can only determine the sequential order of things, not
their respective ages.

Again, I find it incredible that present methods of radiometric dating
basically confirm this man’s guess, when he had no accurate way of making
it. It seems very odd to me that scientists are today able to discard
certain rock samples because they do not fit into preconceived notions
about the layers where they were found.

We are lumping the word “guess” into a meaningless heap, just like we do with the word “mystery”.
Deduction.
A guess need not be a random opinion unhinged from data. Guess is not a very good word for what Lyell and others did and continue to do.

 

[MLowe75]

I believe K-Ar inaccuracies were discovered in 1968 when researchers
attempted to date rocks from an 1801 eruption near Hualalei. Was Dalrymple
aware of the limitations of K-Ar before this snafu? If he was, they should
have been mentioned in his PhD thesis, “Potassium-argon dates and the
Cenozoic chronology of the Sierra Nevada, California” (1963).

And I believe it was Dalrymple writing in 1969 who offered a reason for the
inaccuracies. From your last message, it appears you believe Dalrymple was
somehow involved with this study done in 1968 - is that your belief? It
seems his back pedaling as I call it did occur after the Funkhouser and
Noughton study one year earlier. Please correct me if this is a wrong
reading.

I’ll check out the link you provided, thank you. He is a link listing some
additional information about K-Ar dating.

"Excess Argon": The "Archilles' Heel" of Potassium-Argon and Argon-Argon "Dating" of Volcanic Rocks

For more than three decades potassium-argon (K-Ar) and argon-argon (Ar-Ar) dating of rocks has been crucial in underpinning the billions of years for Earth history claimed by evolutionists. Critical to these dating methods is the assumption that there was no radiogenic argon (40Ar*) in the rocks...

www.icr.org

 

[Spyridon]

But I find nothing innocent about YEC. It violated me

You’re nowhere near the first person I’ve heard this from.

It’s one of many reasons I vehemently oppose Young Earth Creation, and why I believe that especially brainwashing kids with the anti-science YEC propaganda is borderline psychological child abuse.

 

[rossum]

I believe K-Ar inaccuracies were discovered in 1968 when researchers attempted to date rocks from an 1801 eruption near Hualalei.

No, they were not dating the rocks, they already knew the date of the rocks: 1801. They were asking a different question: “Does this dating method work on this type of rock?” The answer turned out to be “no”, so scientists do not use K-Ar dating on that type of rock.

If he was, they should have been mentioned in his PhD thesis, “Potassium-argon dates and the Cenozoic chronology of the Sierra Nevada, California” (1963).

Erm… 1963 comes before 1968.

I’ll check out the link you provided, thank you. He is a link listing some additional information about K-Ar dating. http://www.icr.org/article/excess-argon-archilles-heel-potassium-argon-dating/

Do not trust anything from ICR, they lie to you. Here is an excerpt from their Foundational Principles:

All things in the universe were created and made by God in the six literal days of the Creation Week described in Genesis 1:1-2:3, and confirmed in Exodus 20:8-11. The creation record is factual, historical, and perspicuous; thus all theories of origins or development that involve evolution in any form are false.

They are not doing science, they are doing religion. All of their attempts at science are tainted by their assumptions about the correctness of their overly literal interpretation of Genesis. They lie to you, and those lies are obvious to anyone with even a little scientific education.

rossum

 

[William_Scott]

Those are strong words for ICR. While I am sure they make many mistakes–and perhaps egregious mistakes at times (as do those maintaining an old earth position), I see no evidence that they are engaged in a systematic campaign of lies.

I’m an attorney and not a scientist, but I do have a limited background in science (B.S. In Physics). I have found the articles I have read from ICR to generally be well supported and sound from a scientific perspective. That said, I believe the careful old earth critiques of the papers and positions of ICR and other YEC organizations can be very helpful and reveal the (often substantial) need for refinement and correction in current young earth creation hypotheses.

I have witnessed continued improvement in the quality of the science coming from those of the young earth persuasion. And while I am grateful to see this, I believe it still has a long way to go. Simply put, while the modern young earth creation science movement has been around since the 1960s, it is still in its infancy as far as research, etc. is concerned IMHO. This is the result of its far more limited resources in man-power and funding (vs. those of our old earth brethren). However, even with creation science in its infancy, I find the evidence for a young earth to surpass the evidence for an old earth.

[Disclaimer–I am not Roman Catholic and I am definitely biased toward YEC by the straightforward reading of the “eye-witness” words of Scripture and the essentially unanimous testimony of the Church for 1800 years (including Augustine–despite the claims of some of my old earth brethren). However, beyond this I find the YEC paradigm makes better sense of the available data than the uniformitarian paradigm.]

Merry Christmas to all–and if I have time in the next few weeks I may chime in again (if this thread isn’t already closed at that time).

 

[Arkansan]

I find that YECs are as a rule more educated regarding the arguments of their opponents than their opponents are regarding theirs. The hostility towards them comes from people who find their associated with Christianity embarrassing.

As I understand it, those (orthodox Catholics) who adhere to theistic evolution hold that at some point, God selected two humanoid animals and infused rational souls into them, thus they became Adam and Eve.

I find the arguments for the Earth being old to be fairly solid, although evolution is nonsense.

 

[William_Scott]

TK421:

But I find nothing innocent about YEC. It violated me

You’re nowhere near the first person I’ve heard this from.

It’s one of many reasons I vehemently oppose Young Earth Creation, and why I believe that especially brainwashing kids with the anti-science YEC propaganda is borderline psychological child abuse.

This is a great point. I experienced the impact as well of going through college classes that seemed to tear apart some of the YEC instruction I received in grade school. I still held to YEC through my undergrad years (although I generally avoided debates on YEC during this time), but I felt that my former instruction was woefully lacking when it came to dealing with many of the complexities of science as taught at the college level. There are a number of reasons for this “gap” (some of which I addressed in my prior post).

I have been glad to see that there are YECers that are working hard to provide relevant means of removing this common and scandalous “gap” between grade school YEC instruction and science instruction at the undergrad level and higher. I may check in on this thread in the next few weeks if my schedule permits. Have a great Christmas and New Years.

 

[rossum]

I have found the articles I have read from ICR to generally be well supported and sound from a scientific perspective.

I differ. Here is an excerpt from one of the better articles on ICR, dealing with the problems they found in the conclusions of their RATE project:

The Heat Problem

Of greater concern to both supporters and skeptics of the RATE project is the issue of how to dispose of the tremendous quantities of heat generated by accelerated decay during the Genesis Flood. The amount of heat produced by a decay rate of a million times faster than normal during the year of the Flood could potentially vaporize the earth’s oceans, melt the crust, and obliterate the surface of the earth. The RATE group is confident that the accelerated decay they discovered was not only caused by God, but that the necessary removal of heat was also superintended by Him as well. Dr. Russell Humphreys, a member of the RATE group, has suggested one possible mechanism that may explain this dilemma. He has found evidence, both scientific and scriptural, that cooling of the earth by the expansion of the cosmos may have occurred simultaneously with the heat produced by accelerated decay.

Source: RATE in Review: Unresolved Problems

In any normal scientific study, if your hypothesis would “vaporize the earth’s oceans, melt the crust, and obliterate the surface of the earth” then you reject that hypothesis. However, ICR cannot reject their hypothesis for religious, not scientific, reasons so they are forced to introduce a literal deus ex machina: “The RATE group is confident that the accelerated decay they discovered was not only caused by God, but that the necessary removal of heat was also superintended by Him as well.”

That is not science, that is theology. Would you accept a ‘scientific’ paper that required the direct intervention of Vishnu to make things work?

ICR do not do science, they let their theology distort their science to such a degree that it is no longer science.

rossum

 

[William_Scott]

Hello Rossum, I’ll get one in this one last post before heading off for a few weeks. I don’t find the cited article to be one of the “better” articles produced by ICR. The article almost comes across as though a natural explanation was being jettisoned in favor of a supernatural one.

However, to my knowledge the RATE project paper proposes purely natural explanations for the transfer of this heat (albeit very preliminary ones). That said, the question of heat related to accelerated decay is a well known one for anyone familiar with this issue. It is certainly a question that calls out for extensive additional research.

As an aside, here’s an interesting article written by a YEC fellow rebutting critiques from an old earther relating to radio metric dating. While I can’t vouch for everything contained in the article, it’s an interesting read.

Refuting the Critics: Radiometric Dating | Biblical Science Institute

biblicalscienceinstitute.com

 

[stupidisasstupiddoes]

Totally agree, i have many extended family members who are YEC, having grown up protestant. They are an intellectual embarrassment. Some of them have told me “God put dinosaur bones on earth as a test”, yeah because that’s the God we all know and love, one who messes with science just to confuse us. YEC are incredibly arrogant people who believe that nothing more than an English bible is necessary for understanding something as complex as religion. They make cannon fodder for the new athiests who in turn characterise all religious people with their particular brand of stupid.

 

[Arkansan]

FWIW, I’m not aware of any apologists for YEC who adhere to the “test” theory. They generally question the reliability of radioisotope dating, in my experience having researched their arguments.

 

[rossum]

As an aside, here’s an interesting article written by a YEC fellow rebutting critiques from an old earther relating to radio metric dating.

Have you read Wiens’ article on radiometric dating? Radiometric Dating - A Christian Perspective. That gives a lot more of the science than your Biblical Science Institute link.

You also need to resolve the problem with birds in Genesis. Genesis has birds (day 5) appearing before land animals (day 6). There is no evidence at all of any bird before or contemporary with the first land animals. There is much evidence of land animals before the earliest birds. That is definite evidence against the order of events described in Genesis.

rossum

 

[Spyridon]

Either one is unacceptable.

YEC is utterly incompatible with modern science, period.

 

[goout]

I have witnessed continued improvement in the quality of the science coming from those of the young earth persuasion. And while I am grateful to see this, I believe it still has a long way to go. Simply put, while the modern young earth creation science movement has been around since the 1960s, it is still in its infancy as far as research, etc. is concerned IMHO. This is the result of its far more limited resources in man-power and funding (vs. those of our old earth brethren). However, even with creation science in its infancy, I find the evidence for a young earth to surpass the evidence for an old earth.

The quality of science from young earthers is of no consequence. The idea is un-scientific non-sense akin to superstition.

Urging them on to do better science is like asking an earth-o-centric to get a better telescope. (of course, it is possible that advances in the quality of their science may bring them to discover they are way off base, so in that sense it could be good)

It’s like asking a blood-letter to get better techniques so that he can better heal someone by blood-letting.
And since scripture is mentioned, it’s like asking for better science to discover the hammered dome mentioned in Genesis. It’s gotta be there somewhere, it’s in scripture.

It’s nonsense looking for better methods that lead to nowhere.

 

[goout]

Either one is unacceptable.

YEC is utterly incompatible with modern science, period.

It’s also incompatible with the Church’s exhortation to integrate faith and reason.
Freedom to believe something is not a license to ignorance, or more precisely, license to proselytize ideas that are inimical to reason and science.

Freedom has to be employed reasonably.

 

[MLowe75]

The original intention of this thread which I started was to find out why a
good number of Catholic apologists were keen on opposing young earth and
creationist views. I’m still not sure where the animosity comes from with
regard to this position.

The overriding reason seems to be that we are absolutely certain the earth
is very old, because modern science has proved this. If the Catholic
Church has people in it that don’t agree with modern science, well, we all
look stupid. In fact, we are back in the position of opposing Galileo.
Major embarrassment for the Church, let’s move on and not make that mistake
again shall we.

My response: the embarrassment came about during and after the days of
Galileo precisely because the church took sides in a scientific issue. And
in the Church’s wisdom, it has decided NOT to take sides on issues related
to evolution or the age of the earth. The Church basically says it won’t
be dogmatic on the issue.

Why is this such a bad position to take?

As for not publicly believing in things which might be at odds with modern
science, what about transubstantiation? What does modern science think
about that? I’ll tell you what they think. If they are well-mannered,
they will say “Oh that, well it’s a matter of faith I wouldn’t presume to
comment.” If they were up front and honest they would say, “It’s absolute
non-sense.”