Posted on 06/18/2009 8:48:47 AM PDT by GodGunsGuts
Radiometric dating is often used to “prove” rocks are millions of years old. Once you understand the basic science, however, you can see how wrong assumptions lead to incorrect dates.
Most people think that radioactive dating has proven the earth is billions of years old. After all, textbooks, media, and museums glibly present ages of millions of years as fact.
Yet few people know how radiometric dating works or bother to ask what assumptions drive the conclusions. So let’s take a closer look and see how reliable this dating method really is...
(Excerpt) Read more at answersingenesis.org ...
Why do creation rationalizers rely on the tactics of the left? You are referencing two unrelated topics, one of which is bogus (GW), and claiming that the other is as well solely on the basis of your false equivalence.
You’re a closet leftie, aren’t you?
For the record, I’m agnostic on the young-earth theories, not finding it necessary to believe in a particularly short timeframe in order to believe the Bible is inerrant.
I do tend to dismiss the claims of extreme ages, but not for strictly religious reasons. My opinion is that a lot of the old-age “discoveries” happened after it was decided we needed a really old earth to make evolution work, so it makes it all a bit suspect.
—Actually, from all the polls I’ve seen, I’d say that Christian evolutionists greatly outnumber atheist evolutionists. And also, Christian evolutionists most likely outnumber Creationists.
Hmmm...you must have somehow missed these:
http://www.evolutionnews.org/2006/03/americans_overwhelmingly_suppo.html
Headline: “Americans Overwhelmingly Support Teaching Scientific Challenges to Darwinian Evolution, Zogby Poll Shows” From March 2006.
http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/filesDB-download.php?command=download&id=719
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Free Republic Poll on Evolution
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-backroom/1706571/posts?page=63#63
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Creationism makes a comeback in US
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1856224/posts
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Teaching creation and evolution in schools
Solid research reveals American beliefs
http://www.answersingenesis.org/tj/v13/i2/teaching.asp
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Survey Finds Support Is Strong For Teaching 2 Origin Theories
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B07E4D9143BF932A25750C0A9669C8B63
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Public Divided on Origins of Life
http://people-press.org/report/254/religion-a-strength-and-weakness-for-both-parties
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Americans Believe in Jesus, Poll Says (creation poll results included)
http://derekgulbranson.com/2005/01/17/americans-believe-in-jesus/
Thanks for the references.
It’s still Argumentum ad Populum and does nothing to support your position.
Truth is not based upon majorities or consensus.
“If a majority of Americans believe creation, it is certain that a majority of religious americans believe in creation.”
—Depending on the poll, I’ve seen results from 40-60% for America. So it’s a close call in America between Creationists and Christian evolutionists, with Creationists having a slight edge according to many poll. However, Creationism is unusually popular in America.
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/313/5788/765
In other countries, even those with a population with a higher percentage being Christian than in America, there aren’t the Creation/Evolution controversies as seen in America. And Roman Catholicism, which is a minority in America, but a large majority of Christians worldwide, for the most part has no problem with evolution. So if it’s a close call in America, I think it’s safe to say that Christian evolutionists outnumber Creationists handily world-wide.
“The fascinating thing about this particular poll was that while a large majority of both Bush supporters and Kerry supporters thought creation should be taught with evolution in schools, the democratic voters were MORE LIKELY to want to throw evolution out of school than the supposedly ignorant republican voters (37% vs 24%).”
—Actually, I think it’s 37% nationwide, 24% of Kerry voters and 45% of Bush voters. The formatting of the graph got messed up on the website making it a bit hard to read.
Which you repeated here and that I commented on. Or shall only you be allowed to respond to other’s posts?
And how would you construe “disengenuous, juvenile line of inquiry, inquisition”? (I may have missed one or two).
If you think I am stalking then shall we submit that question to the mods?
= blush =
Sorry, I mistook you for goodusername.
:)
I thought your post was goodusername posting popular support for his position, when it was actually you, tpanther, posting links to polls that negate his position.
“Please share those polls with us.”
See my post to CharlesWayneCT for the explanation.
“Argumentum ad populum. Meaningless. Truth does not depend on consensus or majorities.”
—I agree. Did I say anything to indicate otherwise? I was just responding to you. heh
“I don’t believe I’ve ever encountered references to Darwin in any of my studies of Capitalist theory.”
—Really? Social Darwinism doesn’t ring a bell?
http://www.icr.org/article/454/
“On the other hand, even the most cursory survey of letters, articles, and books by communists and fascists will encounter frequent references to Darwin in order to justify the ruthlessness with which they must act to foster their vision.”
—With Marx, in his thousands of pages of letters and hundreds of books and publications, I’ve found 2 or 3 brief references to Darwin. With Hitler, in his Mein Kampf, his speeches, and hundreds of pages of notes taken by stenographers, I have yet to find a single reference to Darwin (and have come across many anti-evolution quotes).
“Could that not be construed as being a disruptor?”
No, it cannot. However, persisting in demanding an answer when one has been given on another thread, reposted here by you, and then explained to you by yet another poster can be construed as stalking. Surely you can see the difference.
As long as we’re rehashing history, here are a few more posts from that thread over which you’re apparently losing sleep:
You to me:
I’m making no contention at all, you made a statement and I asked, “how so?”
I’m not trying to twist an arm, I just want to know what your thinking is on the matter that produced the statement.
And I’m not asking for some complicated answer, just
“how so”.
Me to you:
Then I find your question disingenuous. If you are making no such contention, then there is no inconsistency.
I think my characterization of disingenuity is apt, and your persistence here confirms that.
Looks like the evos hit the keyword list as per their SOP.
here’s an even better one explaining WHY varve dating is innacurate- and proving your link’s claims are false!:
“Varves
A common argument against the Bible involves varves—rock formations with alternating layers of fine dark, and coarse light sediment. Annual changes are assumed to deposit bands with light layers in summer and dark layers in winter. It is reported that some rock formations contain hundreds of thousands of varves, thereby ‘proving’ the earth is much older than the Bible says.[9] But the assumption that each couplet always takes a year to form is wrong. Recent catastrophes show that violent events like the Flood described in Genesis can deposit banded rock formations very quickly. The Mount St. Helens eruption in Washington State produced eight metres (25 feet) of finely layered sediment in a single afternoon![10] And a rapidly pumped sand slurry was observed to deposit about a metre (3–4 feet) of fine layers on a beach over an area the size of a football field (cross-section shown on the right: normal silica sand grains are separated by darker layers of denser mineral grains like rutile).[11]
When sedimentation was studied in the laboratory, it was discovered that fine bands form automatically as the moving water transports the different sized particles sideways into position (right).[12] Surprisingly, the thickness of each band was found to depend on the relative particle sizes rather than on the flow conditions.[13] A layered rock (diatomite) was separated into its particles, and when redeposited in flowing fluid, identical layers formed.[14]
Much is often made of the Green River varves,9 in Wyoming, USA. But these bands cannot possibly be annual deposits because well-preserved fish and birds are found all through the sediments.
It is unthinkable that these dead animals could have rested on the bottom of the lake for decades, being slowly covered by sediment. Their presence indicates catastrophic burial. It is often claimed that the fish and birds remained in prime condition at the bottom of the lake because the water was highly alkaline and this preserved their carcasses.[15] Yet highly alkaline water causes organic material to disintegrate, and that is why alkaline powder is used in dishwashers! Another problem for the varve explanation is that the number of bands is not consistent across the formation as it should be if they were annual deposits.[16]:”
http://www.trueorigin.org/walkergeo01.asp
I posted before seeing this. Now it makes, I was a little confused there. heh
Yeah, tpanther always posts that even when it’s clear that someone means the world and not America. I would try explaining it to tpanther again, but it doesn’t seem to make any difference.
And that's why we know about them. There was no one to quash the new discoveries because they didn't adhere to current scientific dogma, aka consensus.
(Now it makes sense, meant to say).
“Exactly my point. How do you know that the amount of Sr87 was in the original sample, and not added there later?”
—Because as I said in my original post, there are 4 sister isotopes of strontium and “there’s no chemical way to separate the isotopes or to add one of the isotopes preferentially over the others”. Even if nature added extra strontium from some means other than radioactivity, it would add (or remove) all 4 isotopes in the same ratio, and thus we’d still know how much of the Sr87 came from radioactivity.
As for the parent isotope, Rb87, it is very large and thus it’s extremely difficult (albeit not impossible) for any of it to enter or exit the rock.
But for sake of argument let’s say something did occur to cause wonky results - yes, it can and does occur. But should we suppose that the wonky results are the >99% of the time that the results are consistent, or the <1% of the time that some random result comes up? And while you’re thinking about that, consider that very often multiple different radiometric dating techniques are done on the same sample. Would they all have wonky results in precisely the same way? Take the K-T boundary date of 65.5 million years old, for example. The date comes from decades of countless tests of the boundary, worldwide, using many different dating techniques. Kinda hard to use “contamination” as a reason for such results.
I disagree. But I'll tell you what, you stop showing up on every (o.k., almost every) thread about creation and the Bible with the slogan, ‘Christanity and evolution is perfectly compatible’, and I'll stop asking how so.
Now what could be more reasonable than that?
I just love how the evos have to deliberately misread and misrepresent the article in order to attack it.
The article didn’t say that the decay rate of radioactive elements isn’t constant at this present time.
They are saying that it may have changed at one or maybe two different times in the past which would throw off the calculations.
And of course, the evos aren’t even addressing the point of the assumptions of how much parent material existed to begin with.
> Really? Social Darwinism doesn’t ring a bell?
Social Darwinism has nothing at all to do with Capitalism. It is strictly a social, not an economic, theory. It was promoted by Nazis and their Stateside shills, like Margaret Sanger.
However, “Survival of the Fittest” does apply to Capitalism, though it isn’t quite expressed that way. Besides, this principle existed in Capitalism long before Darwin.
Furthermore, “Survival of the Fittest” has the same effect in Capitalism as it does on animal populations.
The “fittest” Automobile maker emerges as the number-one seller, as long as it remains more fit than its competition. However, it’s still an Automobile maker. It does not “evolve” into a manufacturer of Televisions.
Likewise, the strongest and smartest of a feral animal population has a better chance at surviving and propagating its genetics. However, nobody has seen this principle cause a population of animals of one kind to “evolve” into a population of animals of a different kind, e.g. from dinosaurs to birds.
You’re retreating from the point (leftist tactic). Do what you want.
OK, tell us why they CAN be assumed to have been constant for all those millions or billions of years.
How do scientists KNOW for sure?
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