Posted on 03/31/2007 1:48:09 PM PDT by EveningStar
Oh, please, you are the one who digs himself deeper and deeper into a hole...its quite amusing to watch...keep talking lets see how far down you can go...
When Moses took the Jews out of Egypt to escape the growing oppression, he gave the Jews the Torah, the core of the Old Testament. Sure, the penalties for crimes were sever. So what. It was a code by the Jews for the Jews. So they muscled in on some inhabitants in the Promised Land. So what. That is the human way. Hordes have swept through Asia, Europe, and the Americas from the beginning of history.
The Jews (and their God) had no intention of world conquest. Their religion is peculiar to themselves in a tiny little place, Israel. Now comes Christ to spread the truth as a Universal truth, albeit through persuasion by peaceful reason. And, now comes the cutthroat Mohammad brandishing the sword to forcefully convert the world to his Allah.
For you to find equivalence in the God of the Jews with that of Mohammad's numbs me.
Radiometric Dating: A Christian Perspective, by Dr. Roger C. Wiens.
This is not an area I know well, but the article appears to be well-reasoned and I have no cause to mistrust it.
You should be able to find other articles from a google search, but use caution. The creationist sites seem to be outnumbering the science sites for most forms of dating I have searched.
The bit of Coulter that I quoted claimed that Gould and Eldredge's "Punctuated Equilibrium" entails that evolution can happened really fast and then "stop happening at all for 150 million years"!
I'm sorry, but that simply IS stupid, by any measure.
The punctuationists posited that most evolution occurs in association with speciation events. Punctuationists note that the average species (which is long-lived, widely distributed and numerous enough to be represented in the fossil record in the first place) survives, I forget exactly, but something like 2 million years.
Even if you take the most extreme, dogmatic, simplistic or stereotypical version of punc eq -- for instance ignoring the fact that the vast majority of evolutionists think that both punctuated and gradual patterns of change occur and can be found in the fossil record, and that even punctuationists admit that some evolution occurs between speciation events -- you still can't get anything like "150 million years" of evolution "stopping" out of the theory.
Coulter's depiction gets even stupider if you continue the quote:
Basically, what happens is this: Your parents are slugs and then suddenly--but totally at random--you evolve into a gecko and your brother evolves into a shark and your sister evolves into a polar bear and the guy down the street evolves into a porpoise and so on--and then everybody relaxes by the pool for 150 million years, virtually unchanged.
My comparing Coulter to Rosie O'Donnel was actually restrained. Even Rosie has yet to say anything quite this stupid.
As to the Taliban comment, it was not mine and I noted that I thought it over the top. I just thought it was funny/ironic that another Freeper responded to it with Talibanesque rhetoric. Not to mention in a manner that denied central Christian doctrine (e.g. treating beliefs about evolution as a salvational matter).
You keep digging.
All I did was agree with your own remark...which was...
"And that observation and a buck will get you a cup of coffee at McDonald's, at least for the short term."..
That was your comment about your own observation, your own opinion...and I merely agreed with that...
So you get upset when someone agrees with you?...
Keep digging.
Evolutionary theories for the origin of the Moon are highly speculative and completely inadequate.You do realize that the theories for the origin for the moon are not a part of the theory of evolution, don't you? The theory of evolution deals with change in genomes of living critters. Don't you even read the passages you cut and paste?
But I can figure out how you mistook the two. "Evolutionist" and "Darwinist" are terms used by creationists to include all scientists who disagree with them.
My quest it to keep seeking and enjoy the journey.
What is the error factor(for lack of a better term) in radiocarbon dating? Does it depend on the age of the material? Qaulity of the material?
Sure, I am enjoying this...
Mine too! I have found that most scientists live for the increases in knowledge that they hope to produce.
(Some of the greatest discoveries have come not from "Eureka!" but from "Hmmmmm. That's funny!")
That last part is what irks the H-E-double hocky sticks out of me.
Also, the archaeologist(?) I was thinking of has a hyphenated last name and she was working along with U of AZ down in Mexico. I think her name was Steen or something. She caused quite a stir and a controversy with some dating she did in the 70's and I want to delve into it further. If any of that jogs your brain and you have a link send it. (I've read the articles on the ID/Creation sites and want to see more of why her methods were crucified) I'm sure there are some papers out there waiting for me to find them.
Radiocarbon dates come in two parts, a measured (or conventional) age, and a range. The range is usually expressed as plus or minus two sigma. That is a statistical measure of the accuracy of an age measurement at about 95%. (One sigma would be about 67%.)
Calibrated ages are generally expressed as a calendrical range, such as AD 1350-1550. This represents two sigma on either side of the intercept.
The math is complicated, and this is a simplified explanation, but no radiocarbon date should ever be expressed as a fixed date (such as AD 1450), but rather as a range at two sigma (such as AD 1350-1550).
Hope this helps. Here are a bunch of links for more details:
ReligiousTolerance.org Carbon-14 Dating (C-14): Beliefs of New-Earth CreationistsRadiometric Dating: A Christian Perspective by Dr. Roger C. Wiens.
This site, BiblicalChronologist.org has a series of good articles on radiocarbon dating.
Are tree-ring chronologies reliable? (The Biblical Chronologist, Vol. 5, No. 1)
Tree Ring and C14 DatingHow does the radiocarbon dating method work? (The Biblical Chronologist, Vol. 5, No. 1)
How precise is radiocarbon dating?
Is radiocarbon dating based on assumptions?
Has radiocarbon dating been invalidated by unreasonable results?
Radiocarbon WEB-info Radiocarbon Laboratory, University of Waikato, New Zealand.
Well, you are rather easy to amuse for a reason, but you still are "on your way to China". Keep digging.
Go read God in American by Newt Gingrich or I could name you about six other books about Americas Christian beginnings. I've run into you before on these threads (like almost all of them) and you are one of the wooden heads that has your mind already made up and history is not about to change that. There is about 5 of you hard line Evolutionist that hit every thread with the same old blah blah blah and send me pages of what "theory" means which is a waste of my time as I and every one else knows that "theory" is not fact nor is it even science. It is faith, the same thing you put Christians down for. A soul is a terrible thing to waste!
The archaeologist you are thinking of is Virginia Steen-Mcintyre. Try a google search.
I did a search and found this article: Hueyatlaco Site--"Extreme Dating Controversy".
Some of this does not sound right to me. The first archaeologist at the site, Cynthia Williams, is someone I knew some decades back. She struck me as entirely reliable.
Also, a site in the Americas would normally be dated using radiocarbon dating, and that has an upper limit of about 50,000 years. What method of dating produced dates several times this age? And why was that method used instead of the normal method?
There are a lot of questions I would have, but at least, from the clues you provided, I have found the name you were looking for and possibly the site. The rest is left as an exercise for the student! ;-)
Sure....yes, I am easily amused.....
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