Young Earth v. Old Earth

[rossum]

No one C-14 dated fossils until 1979 when — Oh dear me, how dreadful, a biblical archaeologist — shameful, and a nuclear scientist teamed up to date a burnt fossil tree branch at Dr. Libby’s lab in CA; it was partially imbedded in Cretaceous limestone which is 100 million lyears old

Reference please.

Like our team has done and many others are starting to do: If you want to know the approximate age of a dinosaur fossil C-14 date the organic materials and/or the bioapatite of their bones

You are assuming the existence of organic materials in the fossil. A fossil has had some or all of its organic materials replaced by inroganic rock. If no original organic material is left then C-14 dating is useless on that sample. At most you can measure the level of contamination the sample has suffered.

Have you decided whether or not C-14 dates are correct yet? Those dates you quoted for the La Brea remains were in the range 12,000 years old to 25,000 years old. Are those dates correct or not?

rossum

 

[hecd2]

hecd2:

                            If Ratzinger really did write this, then it was not the cleverest thing that he could say. In fact, it was rather dumb. What doesn't exist at all? "Nature" or "evolution" as an active subject? But obviously they do - nature brews hurricanes, creates offspring, cuts canyons. Evolution results in the diversification of species.

Maybe it’s a language problem - I don’t know any German or Italian, so perhaps “nature” and “evolution” cannot be active subjects in those languages. But sure as eggs is eggs, they can be in English, in the same way as a curtain can be (as in “the billowing curtain knocked the glass off the shelf”) or gravity can be (as in "gravity pulled pockets of matter together to form stars) or electrostatics (electrostatic attraction moved the two charged particles together).

Of course we can say that nature or evolution did this or that (provided that there is evidence for it). It’s nonsense to suggest otherwise

…active subject? …as dumb as that may sound the text is stating that there’s no intelligence in nature or evolution to create by design;

Apparently Ratzinger wrote:

“Popular and scientific texts often say ‘nature’ or ‘evolution’ has done this or that. But who is this ‘nature’ or ‘evolution’ as an active subject? It doesn’t exist at all!” Pope Benedict

And it is nonsense. Of course all sorts of inanimate objects can be active subjects in English. If he wanted to make the case that there must be an intelligent agent behind all the natural effects that we assign to nature such as thunderstorms, earthquakes, diversity of species or reproduction, then he’d have to do better than asserting it using an obviously fallacious linguistic argument. So it really wasn’t very clever.

yet, you are so enamored with haphazard chance copulating with time and chaos to give birth to order and defined diversification… how intelligent is “just so” or “just right” or “single-celled microbe aspiring to be a monkey who’s aspiring to be a scientist?”

What on earth are you talking about?

Alec
evolutionpages.com

 

[hecd2]

Talk about impugning someone’s motives! You are a master at it.

Hi Philippp,

Who talked about impugning anyone’s motives? Not me. I think you need to look up the difference between ‘impute’ and ‘impugn’. They mean quite different things (although they sound rather similar, so you have a tiny excuse for this particular confusion). I haven’t impugned anyone’s motives, but I have impugned Snelling’s competence. Rightly so.

You also missed the point too by assuming, as usual that mainstream science has all the answers and that anyone who tries something new is a “dolt.”

I didn’t assume anything. Anyone who uses carbon dating on fossils that are a) mineralised and b) clearly much older than the limit of carbon dating is either a dolt or involved in a deliberate deception.

No one C-14 dated fossils until 1979 when — Oh dear me, how dreadful, a biblical archaeologist — shameful, and a nuclear scientist teamed up to date a burnt fossil tree branch at Dr. Libby’s lab in CA; it was partially imbedded in Cretaceous limestone which is 100 million lyears old [Who is the dolt, pray tell???. Now everyone is finding C-14 in fossils world-wide.

Can you give us a link to the scientific papers that have been published on this subject? Ah - I’m sorry, there aren’t any. Carbon dating Cretaceous material was utterly stupid in 1979 and it’s still utterly stupid. And to say that everyone is doing it is a gross exaggeration of the truth. A few benighted young earth creationists might be doing it, but it is a very silly thing to do.

Like our team has done and many others are starting to do: If you want to know the approximate age of a dinosaur fossil C-14 date the organic materials and/or the bioapatite of their bones

*Your *team? If it’s your team you should be able to direct me to the scientific journals where can I find reports of all this C-14 dating of Cretaceous and earlier material. If you can’t see the fallacy in using C-14 dating to date Cretaceous material then I am very sorry for you.

Perhaps you would explain why we don’t find T rex, Triceratops, Pteranodon or Ankylosaurus above the iridium anomaly at the K-T boundary. Or T rex and P leo remains side by side. Now that would be truly fascinating.

Alec
evolutionpages.com
[/quote]

 

[Philipp]

You’ll excuse my ignorance, but I was told that C-14 dating is not accurate as as soon as you unearth the fossil it was already changed as to render c-14 inaccurate.

Are there any worthy arguements?

Here is a quick discussion as I understand C-14 I hope that it helps:

If you are near a major university they would have the bound journals of “Radiocarbon” where scientists have listed their radiocarbon dating results on10’s of thousands of samples of wood, salt and fresh water shells, bone, linen, seeds etc.

Labs can make mistakes like with the Shroud of Turin by poor sampling, not knowing the history of the sample etc.

However in normal specimens they have developed purification methods using mild acids and sodium or potassium hydroxide to pretreat and remove both modern and old organic contaminants. They can also remove young and old carbonates from bones using hot dilute acetic acid and then extract the original bone carbonate [called bone bioapatite] that has replaced the bone phosphate component of bone. The samples are generally placed into plastic containers or wrapped in aluminum foil using metal holders althouth generally fingering s specimen is not a contamination sourse as pretreaments eliminate such ontamination. The weight of C-12 to C-14 is what is measured. many grams are required sample size for conventional C-14 dating systems. Only milligram samples for the more accurate and precise Accelerated Mass Spectrometer.

I think a good place to start would be to read Dr. Snelling’s paper on the dating of fossil wood from Australia. The wood was supposedly 225 million years old based on evolutionary assumptions yet the age obtained was the same as for most dinossaur bones we have RC dated. He explains the process so that the average lay person can understand C-14 dating. Dr. Snelling has a Ph.D. in geology. I have a BS in chemistry and worked three years as a lab technician preparing and pretreating fossils for C-14 dating on a scintillation counter that counts beta decay as C-14 reverts back to N-14. The accelerated Mass Spectrometer is the choice for today’s labs as this instrument counts each isotope of carbon namely C-12, C1-3, and C-14.
C-14 in plant and bone alive today is one part per trillion. The half life of C-14 is about 5,650 years so if you had one ounce of C-14 then at the end of 5,650 years you’d have only 0.5 ounces left.
The date would then be 5,650 RC years.

Like in many sophisticated sciences the 150 or so million dollar labs world-wide have calibration curves so as to provide their customers in archaeology, geology, paleontotolgy etc. with accurate radiocarbon ages with good precision based on Dr. Libby’s assumptions. Whether or not they are “real ages or dates”
will be aragued and more research will ontinue to be performed.
They use blanks and standards for comparision.

That’s why I’d encourage folks to read Dr. Snelling’s paper. You get the origins and age debate in one article. I believe the 28 church fathers and church couoncils were correct including St. Augustine.

Snelling, Andrew, 1999 Dating dilemma: Fossil wood in ancient sandstone

answersingenesis.org/creation/v21/i3/fossilwood.asp

A radiocarbon date of 33,720 +/-430 years BP was obtained for a piece of wood allegedly 225-250 Million years BP based on evolutionary dogma.

 

[hecd2]

That’s why I’d encourage folks to read Dr. Snelling’s paper. You get the origins and age debate in one article. I believe the 28 church fathers and church couoncils were correct including St. Augustine.

Snelling, Andrew, 1999 Dating dilemma: Fossil wood in ancient sandstone

answersingenesis.org/creation/v21/i3/fossilwood.asp

A radiocarbon date of 33,720 +/-430 years BP was obtained for a piece of wood allegedly 225-250 Million years BP based on evolutionary dogma.

Snelling’s paper is utterly worthless. Remind me of what journal published it? Can you give us a little more detail about the provenance of the so called piece of wood that was allegedly embedded in the Hawkesbury sandstone? The paper says that the wood sample was petrified - so what half decent scientist would attempt a C-14 dating on a fossilised sample? Do you know what the lab manager that dated the so-called wood said about it? He said:

"I remember this sample very well. So they called it “wood’? It wasn’t wood at all and more looked like the iron concretion with the structures lightly similar to wood. I have told about that to submitter, but anyway they wanted to date the sample.”

The whole exercise is completely specious.

Alec
evolutionpages.com

 

[rossum]

That’s why I’d encourage folks to read Dr. Snelling’s paper. You get the origins and age debate in one article. I believe the 28 church fathers and church couoncils were correct including St. Augustine.

Then Dr Snelling is incorrect with his date of more that 33,000 years in the past because that date disagrees with the ECFs and Councils.

Snelling, Andrew, 1999 Dating dilemma: Fossil wood in ancient sandstone

answersingenesis.org/creation/v21/i3/fossilwood.asp

Comprehensively refuted at gondwanaresearch.com/hp/crefaqs.htm#who

A radiocarbon date of 33,720 +/-430 years BP was obtained for a piece of wood allegedly 225-250 Million years BP based on evolutionary dogma.

A radiocarbon date of 33,720 +/-430 years BP was obtained for a piece of wood allegedly 6,000 years BP based on YEC dogma.
You have just disproved either YEC or Dr Snellings result.

rossum

 

[atmmgraves]

The earth is old. Very old.

A coworker went to a symposium held at his church (Baptist) by someone - don’t remember the name - about 18 months or so ago. He was telling me about this, and I listened. After my coworker was finished, I asked about dinosaurs. My coworker replied that the speaker said that they existed, and that Noah had dino eggs - and I assume some species of dino - on the Ark. Hmmm…

We talked more about this a week or so later. Again I listened and then commented. Besides telling him that I was very skeptical about the dino eggs and such, I informed him that I believed that this entire argument boiled down to one thing: Fundamentalists despise science.

Fundies have hunkered down in their opposition against evolutionary theory to the point that they are now trying to mount their own offensive against “established” science. Personally, I like science - overall. I like flying, medicine, computers, etc. These are all good, and make my life infinitely more enjoyable and productive than it would otherwise. Science has its obvious downside, as well. I do not like the discounting of creationism, reproductive manipulation, cloning, stem-cell (embryonic), etc. There is good, and there is bad. The bad should be opposed, the good encouraged.

Fundies and their opposition is reflexive and childish. It is in the same vein as the folks who don’t take their children to the doctor as they feel their faith and God will heal their child’s illness. They fail to see the forest for the trees: God gave man the ability to create science for the good of man. Science, therefore, is God’s gift to man. We must oppose the 'bad" science in prayer, in church, in our schools, and in the voting booth. To turn away from science is throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Kinda Luther-ish, as well, eh?

I informed my coworker that if the earth is only 6000 years old, then in my lifetime the Grand Canyon must have deepened a few inches, maybe a foot or so. Certainly a measurable amount. He did not really know what to say to that. I then told him that I no more believed that than the whole “missing link” issue, noting that surely, in all these years, another “missing link” would have “evolved” by now, wouldn’t it have? (How convenient that it is “missing” in the first place). Of course, neither of these myths are true.

Have a good evening!

 

[Deconi]

There is no unanimity in the science field about C-14. All there is, is the adoption of which finding is logical in the sense, which of the 3 or more results makes the most sense?

If you date any subject using C-14 and compare it to a similar sample, you get 3 - or more different results. You then ‘adopt’ the one that repeats the most out of the number of tests, and cite that as your conclusion. All who have read or researched know the implications of such tests.

The majority of science adopt the mainstream view for various reasons. One is that it is the most likely correct conclusion. Another is because that is the view of the majority and an individual does not want to be ostracised. Does it happen??? Read these threads!

The one thing that mainstreamers have in unison is the method of argument they use; discredit the messenger and attack his/her credibility They rarely stick to the message and discredit or overcome the actual finding.

I can see who exhibits ‘fear.’

A parallel can be drawn from the religious arguments between Catholics and Protestants.

You do the maths

 

[Philipp]

There is no unanimity in the science field about C-14. All there is, is the adoption of which finding is logical in the sense, which of the 3 or more results makes the most sense?

If you date any subject using C-14 and compare it to a similar sample, you get 3 - or more different results. You then ‘adopt’ the one that repeats the most out of the number of tests, and cite that as your conclusion. All who have read or researched know the implications of such tests.

The majority of science adopt the mainstream view for various reasons. One is that it is the most likely correct conclusion. Another is because that is the view of the majority and an individual does not want to be ostracised. Does it happen??? Read these threads!

The one thing that mainstreamers have in unison is the method of argument they use; discredit the messenger and attack his/her credibility They rarely stick to the message and discredit or overcome the actual finding.

I can see who exhibits ‘fear.’

A parallel can be drawn from the religious arguments between Catholics and Protestants.

You do the maths

You make some good points; I’lll only discuss the first one. The others are self evident.

(1) Which RC date makes the best sense? There are many such examples within the ranks of the C-14 dating labs. One author, Dr. Thomas Stafford likes to extract and purify bone collagen and the oldest C-14 age is his choice for the “absolute age”. For example the “Domebo Mammoth” gave ages ranging from 5,000 to 11,600 years BP for fractions “a” through “k” The “aboslute age” he chose was fraction k that was XAD purified collagen hydrolyzate at 11,600 years BP and was the oldest date which he also feels is needed.

However, the other methods used by many labs without going through the extensive and expensive purification step were very close to the date he preferred. These other quality methods gave ages of 9,500 to 11,000 Rc years BP. The latter three were (a) weak acid insoluble collagen and (b) total carbon, HAc-treated bone (c) HAc treated bone apatite. The dates for our dinosaur bones were performed with a,b,c relativley inexpensive methods and we obtained concordant dates around 30,000 RC years BP with good +/- precision, no more than 2000-3000 years difference among the three methods. We obviously did not need to look for “absolute dates” as the point we were making was that dinosaur bones tested positive for C-14 and therefore are NOT 65 or more millions of years old. Dinosaur bones are testable for C-14and the tests have all been repeatable. I hope other scientists will someday see fit to check it out on other dinosaur bones and I think they will be pleasantly surprised to find that dinosaur bones are C-14 datable.

So in conclusion Dr. Stafford likes to get aboslute RC dates for his pet projects which is all fine and good and even necessary perhaps. But, who needs to do that with dinosaur bones when RC dates are well below the limits of the AMS equipment and are essentially concurrent RC dates for two or more nethods???

 

[Orogeny]

You make some good points; I’lll only discuss the first one. The others are self evident.

(1) Which RC date makes the best sense? There are many such examples within the ranks of the C-14 dating labs. One author, Dr. Thomas Stafford likes to extract and purify bone collagen and the oldest C-14 age is his choice for the “absolute age”. For example the “Domebo Mammoth” gave ages ranging from 5,000 to 11,600 years BP for fractions “a” through “k” The “aboslute age” he chose was fraction k that was XAD purified collagen hydrolyzate at 11,600 years BP and was the oldest date which he also feels is needed.

However, the other methods used by many labs without going through the extensive and expensive purification step were very close to the date he preferred. These other quality methods gave ages of 9,500 to 11,000 Rc years BP. The latter three were (a) weak acid insoluble collagen and (b) total carbon, HAc-treated bone (c) HAc treated bone apatite. The dates for our dinosaur bones were performed with a,b,c relativley inexpensive methods and we obtained concordant dates around 30,000 RC years BP with good +/- precision, no more than 2000-3000 years difference among the three methods. We obviously did not need to look for “absolute dates” as the point we were making was that dinosaur bones tested positive for C-14 and therefore are NOT 65 or more millions of years old. Dinosaur bones are testable for C-14and the tests have all been repeatable. I hope other scientists will someday see fit to check it out on other dinosaur bones and I think they will be pleasantly surprised to find that dinosaur bones are C-14 datable.

So in conclusion Dr. Stafford likes to get aboslute RC dates for his pet projects which is all fine and good and even necessary perhaps. But, who needs to do that with dinosaur bones when RC dates are well below the limits of the AMS equipment and are essentially concurrent RC dates for two or more nethods???

So what journal were your results published in? Has anyone had access to the samples to see if they can duplicate the results? Can you take other non-YEC researchers into the field to split samples? Have the lab calibration data been thoroughly reviewed by a third party?

If not, you are wasting your time. No one will take you seriously.

But I suspect that you already knew that.

Peace

Tim

 

[D_M]

Hi, D M!

…we did opted to continue in tangent–but it was not so far removed from the original topic; still, since the OP called it, out of respect we can drop it here (or pause it, since we can open a different thread if you so desire).

Consider this:

Creation was good – Does that unequivocally mean eternity and perfection? Could it not mean that it fulfilled the required parameters of the Design?

Sin and Death – The Bible’s definition of these two are different than what we may want to attribute them to be; so since animals do not sin should not die? Yet, Adam and Eve sinnned but they did not die, well at least not physically. So would it be fair to say that animals that did not sin died but Adam and Eve that did sin remained unaffected?

Yet, Adam and Eve did die due to their sin: 1st., they were removed from the presence of God; 2nd., they were ejected and kept out of the Garden of Eden to prevent them from eating of the tree of Life (immortality); 3rd., they died a spiritual death–one that they passed down to every human being.

What I find interesting is that plan life, which sustain us, is, for the most part, extremely gifted with regenerative power and longevity.

Maran atha!

Angel

Hi jcrichton,
You are quite right about the bible’s non-literal understanding of death… you may be correct in the assertion that it does not necessarily mean biological death.

I think you are also right that fulfillment of the design is in itself a form of perfection… but consider what Genesis says about man’s fall:

Genesis 2:14-19 The Lord God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this, cursed are you above all cattle, and above all wild animals; upon your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life. I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.” To the woman he said, “I will greatly multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children, yet your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you.” And to Adam he said, “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, ‘You shall not eat of it,’ cursed is the ground because of you; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth to you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

Now consider these things… pain in childbearing, having to labour to get food, toiling for survival, etc… all of these things are present among other species and would have been in the world before humans were even created, and certainly before they could have committed a sin that caused their imposition,

if these things were inherited through biological evolution, then how does one account for the fact that we are told that we have them because we sinned and not because we were born with them as evolutionary biology would dictate?

These are the sorts of problems that I mean when I say that theologians have not really thought this whole thing through… there may be an explanation out there, but I haven’t seen any in the arguments that are usually made and the ones I can imagine seem like I need to do some degree of uncertain theological gymnastics in order to make it all fit together

In terms of the question as to why the animals should have such things, I think again of the book of Enoch and what it referenced about the angels coming down from heaven and corrupting creation…it is also possible that the animals could have been given such things in an original design and that humans were not, which would certainly seem to contradict the evolutionary appraoch*

 

[juliamajor]

on c14-, K-ar etc- see anthro.palomar.edu/time/time_5.htm

 

[Philipp]

on c14-, K-ar etc- see anthro.palomar.edu/time/time_5.htm

I’ve had to take a week off and came back today and took a quick gander at the above web site regarding C-14.

Accepting C-14 dating at face value with maximum ages of about 50,000 RC years in the above reference, then direct radiocarbon dating of dinosaur bone organics and bone apatite is a perfectly logical research project. The actual RC dates are in the range of 23,000 to 30,000 +/- RC years as I have repeatedly stated. This is well below the the alleged Cretaceous/Jurassic assumed ages of 65 to 150 million years BP.

What’s even more interesting is that these tests show that dinosaurs and mega fauna [mammoth, mastodon, saber tooth tigers, giant bison and sloths] all lived at the same time with man, as their RC dates are in the same range as the dinosaurs.

Let’s do the math. 70,000,000 to 150,000,000 years for the Cretaceous/Jurassic time periods divided by say 30,000 RC years means (1) that the assumed long ages for these alleged Cretaceous/Jurassic time periods just don’t exist and
(2) that our lovable dinosaur friends are 2300 to 5000 times younger than evolution and the media claimed they are.

When you look at the many dinosaur depictions world wide that are only 100’s to a few thousasnd years old it suggests several other anomalies: (a) perhaps there is something we don’t know about the C-14 method. Could it mean that the RC dates that we are getting for dinosaur and megafauna bones are way too old due to old (primordial) carbon (very low in C-14 content) that have contaminated the bones while the critters lived causing old unreal ages and/or (b) C-14 was building up slowly since the time of creation thus making all these critters seemingly much older than they really are.

What then does this say about evolutionary claims of 600 M years to form the sedimentary geologic column and even the age of the earth in the billions of years based on long age radiometric dating which is more often than not in conflict with C-14 dating? Maybe we need to go back to the drawing board and open up the book on chronology and restudy our methods of dating. Perhaps “Abrupt Appearance” could be a better scientific theory of origins than evolution.

Why not an international conference on chronology as suggested by one Ph. D. in physics who has performed his dissertation on Einsteines theory of relativity.

Meanwhile scientists should be carefully RC dating dinosaur bones and not flipping off the data as if it just can’t be because it just doesn’t fit the evolutionary paradym; or because one lab guy makes disparaging remarks about the data but refuses to RC date dinossaur bones himself; that’s not science The leading C-14 dating specialist and a major lab know of this data and the technical paper as the lab performed the testing. I rest my case.

 

[rossum]

Accepting C-14 dating at face value with maximum ages of about 50,000 RC years in the above reference, then direct radiocarbon dating of dinosaur bone organics and bone apatite is a perfectly logical research project. The actual RC dates are in the range of 23,000 to 30,000 +/- RC years as I have repeatedly stated. This is well below the the alleged Cretaceous/Jurassic assumed ages of 65 to 150 million years BP.

If I stand on a set of kitchen scales that tell me I weigh 30 pounds, does that mean that I actually weigh 30 pounds or that the scales can weigh up to 30 pounds and no more? Carbon dating a dinosaur fossil will only measure the limits of accuracy of the lab doing the measurement and the contamination in the fossil. For an excellent explanation of what this sort of test is actually measuring see RATE’s Radiocarbon: Intrinsic or Contamination? This piece is from the ASA site:The American Scientific Affiliation (ASA) is a fellowship of men and women in science and disciplines that relate to science who share a common fidelity to the Word of God and a commitment to integrity in the practice of science. In matters of science and Christian faith, we offer Christian scholarship, education, fellowship and service to ASA members, churches, educational institutions, the scientific community, and society.

Another piece from the ASA cover the other methods of radiometric dating, such as Argon-Argon and Uranium-Lead: Radiometric Dating - A Christian Perspective. These are the methods used to date dinosaur fossils. You do not use a kitchen scales (Carbon-14) to date dinosaur fossils, you use a weighbridge (Potassium-Argon and others).

Let’s do the math. 70,000,000 to 150,000,000 years for the Cretaceous/Jurassic time periods divided by say 30,000 RC years means (1) that the assumed long ages for these alleged Cretaceous/Jurassic time periods just don’t exist and
(2) that our lovable dinosaur friends are 2300 to 5000 times younger than evolution and the media claimed they are.

You really need to do a lot more research before you post rubbish like this. Let us indeed do the maths. Some wood from Pompeii was carbon dated to around 79 AD. You say that carbon dates are out by a factor of at least 2,300 so according to your figures, that puts the eruption of Vesuvius that buried Pompeii (2008 - 79) / 2300 = 0.83 years ago, that is about ten months ago! That is obviously ridiculous so we can be sure that your figures are wrong. Garbage in, garbage out in this case.

I have already pointed out that if the radiocarbon dates are wrong (as you assert) then it is unsafe to draw conclusions from them. If the radiocarbon dates are correct, then the claim that the earth is only 6,000 years old is shown to be false.

rossum

 

[Orogeny]

Why not an international conference on chronology as suggested by one Ph. D. in physics who has performed his dissertation on Einsteines theory of relativity.

Why not do what I suggested and have someone like the ASA make a trip to the field with you to collect samples and have them analyzed separately? Then, upon completion of the study, the results could be submitted for publication in a scientific journal.

Of course, doing so would put your work at risk. If you are right, you should be begging people to what I have suggested. Instant fame in the scientific world would be the very least that you would gain. More importantly, you would be forever known as the man who overturned the idea of an old-earth. Probably have a place set aside in heaven just for that!

Meanwhile scientists should be carefully RC dating dinosaur bones and not flipping off the data as if it just can’t be because it just doesn’t fit the evolutionary paradym; or because one lab guy makes disparaging remarks about the data but refuses to RC date dinossaur bones himself; that’s not science The leading C-14 dating specialist and a major lab know of this data and the technical paper as the lab performed the testing. I rest my case.

Unfortunately Philipp, you are not in a position to cry about what is science and what is not because you have refused to have your “science” be closely checked by real scientists. Once you either do what I have repeatedly suggested or get published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal, you have participated in science. Otherwise, you haven’t done any science at all.

Peace

Tim

 

[Philipp]

Hi guys:

Don’t look now but your arches are falling!

answersingenesis.org/articles/2008/08/16/news-to-note-08162008#th
ree

Have you guys had enough or do want some more?

Moses sizzles while Darwin fizzles

 

[The_Barbarian]

This bit of foolishness from AIG on the collapse of a stone arch:

This simple math, which corresponds with other calculations, indicates that—even starting with uniformitarian assumptions—the facts just don’t support millions of years of earth history.

The error of course, is to assume that “Uniformitarian” means “always at a contant rate.” That’s not what it means. So, there are times when such things form faster than they fall, and other times when they fall faster than they form.

Presently, there are places on earth where sand erosion is creating new forms faster than they can collapse.

Silly creationists.

 

[Orogeny]

Hi guys:

Don’t look now but your arches are falling!

answersingenesis.org/articles/2008/08/16/news-to-note-08162008#th
ree

Have you guys had enough or do want some more?

Moses sizzles while Darwin fizzles

Well, what do you expect from an organization that requires its “scientists” to ignore any evidence that doesn’t support their literal interpretation of scripture.

Peace

Tim

 

[Philipp]

Well, what do you expect from an organization that requires its “scientists” to ignore any evidence that doesn’t support their literal interpretation of scripture.

Peace

Tim

Thank you Oh Mighty Tower of Darwinian Knowledge. And your response is what one might expect from a born again fundamentalist evolutionist who DISMISSES all recent peer reviewed discoveries in (1) sedimentology, (2) RC dating of contamination free dinosaur bone organics as well as other fossils in the same strata; (3) distinct dinosaur depictions world-wide only 100’s to a few 1000 years BP and (4) fossil and human footprints in alleged dinosaurian ages and beyond.

Of course the mega years of the many and varying evolution hypotheses are crashing along with the “stone arches in an interesting commentary and story by AIG. However Orogeny can’t seem to handle it so at his suggestion: ---- his torpedoes, full speed ahead. Thus I’ve copied the article for those who might be intimidated by his response and so won’t examine the evidence OR haven’t the time to search the AIG news items and editorials.

1. MSNBC/AP: “Stone Arch Collapses in Southern Utah Park”

If an arch collapses in a desert and no one is around to hear it, does it still shout “millions of years”?
Utah’s famous Arches National Park is one arch short this week, after the collapse of one of its largest and most photographed arches—Wall Arch.

No one was around when the arch collapsed sometime early last week, the forces of gravity and erosion finally bringing down the natural spectacle. “They all let go after a while,” commented Paul Henderson, the Arches National chief of interpretation.

And it’s exactly the interpretation of Henderson and others that we disagree with! The popular view of the park’s 2,000 or so arches is that they were formed through millions of years of slow erosion carving out each arch. (For example, the park’s website reads, “Throughout the park, rock layers reveal millions of years of deposition, erosion and other geologic events.”)

As one News to Note reader pointed out, if these arches take millions of years to form, but collapse at a rate of several in a century, there’s no way there would be any remaining for us to see! (According to the Wikipedia article on Arches National Park, 43 arches have collapsed since 1970; however, no source is cited for the information and we could not verify the number—or any other number—elsewhere. The AP article names the (partial) 1991collapse of Landscape Arch as the most recent.)

This simple math, which corresponds with other calculations, indicates that—even starting with uniformitarian assumptions—the facts just don’t support millions of years of earth history.

Folks, just imagine that you are in the “Temple of Darwin” and its “arches and columns” are starting to fall all about you and you stand there hearing Orogeny saying, “Almighty Darwin the omnipotent one, this is not happening."

I’ve just reproduced AIG’s commenary for the reading pleasure of at least some of the folks who read this thread.

Now here is the next news item. 4. ScienceNOW: “Stem Cell Lines Mark Birth of New Field”

The case for embryonic stem cell research has weakened even further after the successful creation of pluripotent stem cells out of patient’s existing cells.

Scientists at Harvard and Columbia announced the news, which was quickly followed up by another report from Harvard—the generation of disease-specific stem cell lines for ten diseases.
The stem cells used to generate these lines were “induced pluripotent” stem cells—iPS—created by reprogramming adult cells. Among the diseases covered are two types of muscular dystrophy, Parkinson’s disease, Type 1 diabetes, and Down syndrome.

“[This] opens the door to a new way of studying degenerative diseases,” explained Douglas Melton, a diabetes researcher at Harvard. Using induced pluripotent stem cells avoids many of the ethical problems with stem cell research (specifically embryonic stem cell research).

As research in this field continues, scientists are discovering increasing potential in creating and manipulating stem cells without crossing ethical boundaries. By supporting morally sound stem cell research, we can look forward to treatments that don’t predicate the healing of a life on the taking of a life.

Philipp comment: AIG is a fundamentalist museum group in Northern KY, with its support of literal interpretation of Genesis 1-11 which Orogeny and others trash not scripture but the the science backing the literal interpetation. But AIG also support ONLY "morally sound stem cell research and believe that life begins at conceptioin. That happens to be my beliefs also having been activie in the pro-life movement since 1970; I wonder if Orogeny as a geologist believes in the fundamental right to life of an unborn child? After all, whether God created life through evolution over billions of years as he believes I guess, or as I believe in a six literal 24 hour days maybe we can at least agree on life begins at conception and needs to be protected. Can we agree life begins at conception and needs to be protected from conception on?

How do others on this thread feel about the need to protect unborn humans from conception on? . It does deal with origins and the concept that “Only life can beget Life”

 

[D_M]

I recently came across this and I wanted to share it on this thread for anyone’s interest of what at least one father of the church thought about the interpretation of this part of Genesis:

City of God Book XI chapters 6-8

"The world was in fact made with time, if at the time of its creation change and motion came into existence. This is clearly the situation in the order of the first six or seven days, in which morning and evening are named, until God’s creation was finished on the sixth day, and on the seventh day God’s rest is emphasized as something conveying a mystic meaning. What kind of days these are is difficult or even impossible for us to image, to say nothing of describing them.

1. Of the nature of the days when there was ‘morning and evening’ before the creation of the sun

In our experience, of course, the days with which we are familiar only have an evening because the sun sets, and a morning because the sun rises; whereas those first three days passed without the sun, which was made, we are told, on the fourth day. The narrative does indeed tell us that light was created by God, and that God separated that light from the darkness, and gave to the light the name of ‘day’, and to the darkness the name of ‘night’. But what kind of light that was, and with what alternating movement the distinction was made, and what was the nature of this evening and this morning; these are questions beyond the scope of our sensible experience. We cannot understand what happened as it is presented to us; and yet we must have believe it without hesitation.
For either there was some material light, whether in the upper regions of the universe, far removed from our sight, or in the regions from which the sun later derived its lights; or else the word ‘light’ here means the Holy City which consists of the holy angels and the blessed spirits, the City of which the Apostle speaks, ‘Jerusalem which is above, our mother, eternal in the heavens.’ [Galatians 4:26] He certainly says in another place, ‘You are all the sons of light, sons of day: you do not belong to night and darkness.’ [1 Thessalonians 5:5] But this latter interpretation depends on our being able to discover some appropriate meaning for ‘the evening and the morning’ of this day.
Now the knowledge of the creature is a kind of twilight, compared with the knowledge of the Creator; and then comes the daylight and the morning, when that knowledge is linked with the praise and love of the Creator; and it never declines into night, so long as the Creator is not deprived of his creature’s love. And in fact Scripture never interposes the word ‘night’, in the enumeration of those days one after another. Scripture never says, ‘Night came’; but, ‘Evening came and morning came; one day.’ Similarly on the second day and on all the rest. The creature’s knowledge, left to itself, is, we might say, in faded colours, compared with the knowledge that comes when it is known in the Wisdom of God, in that art, as it were, by which it was created. For that reason it can more appropriately be described as evening than as night. And yet that evening turns again to morning, as I have said, when it is turned to the praise and love of the Creator.
When the created light so acts in coming to the knowledge of itself, there is one day; when it comes to the knowledge of the firmament called heaven, between the lower and upper waters, there is the second day; when it comes to the knowledge of the earth and sea, and of all growing things, whose roots stretch into the groun, there is the third day; when to the knowledge of the luminaries, the greater and the lesser, and of all the stars, there is the fourth day; when to the knowledge of all the living things that come from the waters, creatures that swim and those that fly, there is the fifth day; when to knowledge of all land animals and of man himself, there is the sixth day.

1. How God’s rest on the seventh day is to be understood

When ‘God rested on the seventh day from all his works, and sanctified that day’, this is not to be understood in any childish way, as if God had toiled as his work, seeing that ‘he spoke and they were made’ [Psalms 148 5:33, 9]by a word which was intelligible and eternal, not vocal and temporal. No, the ‘rest of God’ means the rest of those who find their rest in him, just as ‘the joy of a house’ means the joy of those who rejoice in that house- even if it is not the house itself but something else which is responsible for the joy. How much more appropriate it would be if in fact the house itself were to make the inhabitants glad by reason of its beauty. In that case the house would be called joyful not by the figure of speech in which the container stands for the contens (as in ‘the theatre applauds’, when it is the audience that applauds, or ‘the pastures are lowing’, when it is the cattle that are calling) but by the figure in which the efficient cause stands for the effect - as in ‘a glad letter’, meaning a letter which makes the readers glad.
And so it is most appropriate that when God is said, on the authority of the prophetic narrative to have ‘rested’, what is meant is the rest of those who find their rest in him, and to whom he gives rest."

-St Augustine of Hippo

That is what a doctor of the church wrote… I still nevertheless think that the current scientific evolutionary understanding comes into conflict with certain aspects of what we believe, most especially being the part about our fall from grace involving certain things such as pain in child-birth, having to toil from the ground, eating the plants of the field in the sweat of the face and returning to the ground from which we were taken

Genesis 3:16-19 To the woman he said, “I will greatly multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children, yet your desire shal lbe for yoru husband, and he shall rule over you.” And to Adam he said, “Because you ahve listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, ‘You shall not eat of it,’ cursed is the ground because of you; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth to you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

The problem that I see is that all of these things that we are told came to us as a result of our sin, we would have inherited from evolutionary ancestors that had all of these things already before the fall of man had ever occurred according to the evolutionary understanding, and we would have inherited these things at our conception and birth, and not at some later point in life at which we committed sin…if anyone thinks they can solve this problem they are welcome to try, otherwise I’m tempted to think that the current scientific understanding is not entirely compatible with what we believe.