Posted on 11/05/2009 10:29:44 AM PST by GodGunsGuts
“The theory of evolution has no stance on the validity of reliable dating methods,”
Since when?!
“unless it has to do with mating and beneficial traits getting an individual more dates,”
Oh I see you’re trying to conflate age-dating practices with mating practices. My aren’t you clever - NOT!
“thereby increasing genetic fitness”
Evolution hopes and dreams restated once again.
Why do you spam the Georgia forum with your evo threads?
It’s not spam. CMI is located in Georgia.
Several different versions of evolutionary theory were circulating back then. Most of Darwins ideas came from his grandfather who had been a strong proponent of the idea that species had come into existence by means other than creation. Darwin was the one who wrote a book and tried to put some scientific examples behind the theory.
"Dating methods" is an entirely different scientific discipline than the theory of evolution. As such, ToE does not deal with dating methods or their validity. Why would it?
Evolution hopes and dreams restated once again
So you doubt the notion of genetic fitness? Such an omnipotent scientist you must be, wholly discounting entire fields of study with the flick of a limp wrist.
This is sheer ignorance. Genetic fitness exists whether you are too uneducated to know about it or not. It is the number of offspring of an individual that reach reproductive age (and reproduce) relative to the average number of offspring in the population that do the same. ANYTHING that affects your ability to produce viable children that also reproduce....affects your genetic fitness. Behavior, genetics, diet, level of medical treatment available, drug use, war famine, disease....
....but you know better....
Well I only know of 2 age-dating methods that support evolution. Can you name any other methods used?
And btw what is your scientific background?
I think that was RoadGumby from #37, but nonetheless, “endorsement” is your conclusion and I suppose you may conclude whatever you like. Of course slaves are treated differently than free men and a number of laws gave them protection. Despite your assertion an owner was not free to beat a slave to death. The law in the case of free men and slave recognized the intent involved just as our law does today.
But be honest, your complaint is with the Bible itself is it not? Hence your overwrought (”obvious atrocities”??) assertions as you say,
“But it comes from the j-c tradition so as much as all other beliefs must be false, you must twist logic and bend over backwards to defend obvious atrocities within your own.”
There are some on-line dictionaries, looking at what the terms “regulate” and “endorse” mean should be quite helpful to you.
While you're at it look up the meaning of “atrocity”, that way you can make a coherent statement instead of sounding like you're banging on for some petty atheist blog site.
Such a discovery would be the scientific breakthrough of the century. Where is it???
ONE.....(crickets thus far)
I don't actually expect the argument from you anyway, but don't waste your time trying to find something that doesn't exist.
Btw, here's the direct link.
Only looked at the first couple so far. Not very promising. But I did find a typical creationistic abuse of evidence. More on that below.
1. DNA in “ancient” fossils. DNA extracted from bacteria that are supposed to be 425 million years old brings into question that age, because DNA could not last more than thousands of years.
I could not get access to the full text of the cited research article, Recovery of 16S ribosomal RNA gene fragments from ancient halite, but I did read the abstract.
First, the claim by the compiling creationist, Don Batten, that this DNA was "extracted from bacteria" appears to be simply false. The researchers found DNA (ribosomal DNA) fragments in their samples, detecting them by DNA amplification. There is no indication that the presence of bacteria was confirmed, or even tested for, much less that the rDNA fragments were "extracted".
Although I'm not competent to analyze the particular case, I do know that, increasingly since this article was published in Nature in 2002, more and more living bacteria are being found in deep rocks. Just for instance, I stumbled on this article:
In recent years, a large body of evidence showing the occurrence of diverse and active microbial communities in the terrestrial subsurface has accumulated. Considering the time elapsed since Archaean sedimentation, the contribution of subsurface microbial communities postdating the rock formation to the fossil biomarker pool and other biogenic remains in Archaean rocks may be far from negligible. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: In order to evaluate the degree of potential contamination of Archean rocks by modern microorganisms, we looked for the presence of living indigenous bacteria in fresh diamond drillcores through 2,724 Myr-old stromatolites (Tumbiana Formation, Fortescue Group, Western Australia) using molecular methods based on the amplification of small subunit ribosomal RNA genes (SSU rDNAs). We analyzed drillcore samples from 4.3 m and 66.2 m depth, showing signs of meteoritic alteration, and also from deeper "fresh" samples showing no apparent evidence for late stage alteration (68 m, 78.8 m, and 99.3 m). We also analyzed control samples from drilling and sawing fluids and a series of laboratory controls to establish a list of potential contaminants introduced during sample manipulation and PCR experiments. We identified in this way the presence of indigenous bacteria belonging to Firmicutes, Actinobacteria, and Alpha-, Beta-, and Gammaproteobacteria in aseptically-sawed inner parts of drillcores down to at least 78.8 m depth. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: The presence of modern bacterial communities in subsurface fossil stromatolite layers opens the possibility that a continuous microbial colonization had existed in the past and contributed to the accumulation of biogenic traces over geological timescales. This finding casts shadow on bulk analyses of early life remains and makes claims for morphological, chemical, isotopic, and biomarker traces syngenetic with the rock unreliable in the absence of detailed contextual analyses at microscale.
Note that last sentence. The necessary "contextual analyses at microscale" was apparently (as it should have been at least mentioned even in the abstract) not performed in the investigation reported in Nature.
So, on to the next "evidence".
2. Lazarus bacteria—bacteria revived from salt inclusions supposedly 250 million years old, suggest the salt is not millions of years old.
Now this is far more interesting, because it claims not just to find some disembodied DNA fragments, but to actually revive an ancient bacteria, presumably from a spore. Stunning! Here's the cited article, actually only a letter, but in the prestigious journal Nature (Incidentally, the creationists at creation.com do NOT provide these links to the cited articles. I had to look them up.)
Isolation of a 250 million-year-old halotolerant bacterium from a primary salt crystal
Reviving a 250 million year old anything, even a bacteria, would be utterly, awesomely cool. But, sadly, this turned out to be a modern bacteria. See:
The Permian Bacterium that Isn't
The authors of this 2001 letter in Molecular Biology and Evolution found that the 16S rRNA gene sequence (widely used in interspecies comparisons) of this supposedly revived bacteria differed from that of a modern salt-loving bacteria "by only one transition and one transversion out of the 1,555 aligned and unambiguously determined nucleotides."
Equally important, though, is the first sentence of the letter (emphasis added):
There is growing evidence for the presence of viable microorganisms in geological salt formations that are millions of years old. It is still not known, however, whether these bacteria are dormant organisms that are themselves millions of years old or whether the salt crystals merely provide a habitat in which contemporary microorganisms can grow
As noted wrt to the first "evidence," it was only about this time that scientists first began seriously looking at the idea that bacteria might live in rocks and other subsurface environments. The above "or whether" has been dramatically borne out over the last decade of research, with scientists finding that such communities of bacteria do indeed exist.
Now notice that YEC Don Batten's 101 evidences ... was published in June of 2009, long after this question, about whether bacteria, and bacterial DNA, in ancient rock could be from modern bacteria living in them, HAS BEEN ANSWERED IN THE AFFIRMATIVE.
This -- apparently purposeful and knowning, or otherwise ignorant and incompetent -- utilization of superceded scientific results is absolutely characteristic of "creation science." One finds it again and again in the literature of this psuedoscience.
3. The decay in the human genome due to multiple slightly deleterious mutations each generation is consistent with an origin several thousand years ago. Sanford, J., Genetic entropy and the mystery of the genome, Ivan Press, 2005; see review of the book and the interview with the author in Creation 30(4):45–47,September 2008. This has been confirmed by realistic modelling of population genetics, which shows that genomes are young, in the order of thousands of years. See Sanford, J., Baumgardner, J., Brewer, W., Gibson, P. and Remine, W., Mendel’s Accountant: A biologically realistic forward-time population genetics program, SCPE 8(2):147–165, 2007.
I looked at the, "This has been confirmed by realistic modeling," reference (pdf file).
Incredibly -- wait, not so incredibly; this is creation "science" after all -- there was absolutely nothing in the article supporting this contention. It describes a very interesting computer program:
Mendel’s Accountant (hereafter referred to as “Mendel”) is a user-friendly biologically realistic simulation program for investigating the processes of mutation and selection in sexually reproducing diploid populations. Mendel represents an advance over previous forward-time programs in that it incorporates several new features that enhance biological realism including: (a) variable mutation effect and (b) environmental variance that affects phenotype. In Mendel, as in nature, mutations have a continuous range of effect from lethal to beneficial, and may vary in expression from fully dominant to fully recessive. Mendel allows mutational effects to be combined in either a multiplicative or additive manner to determine overall genotypic fitness and provides the option of either truncation or probability selection. Environmental variance is specified via a heritability parameter and a non-scaling noise standard deviation.
Presumably you COULD dial in parameters sufficiently severe, and/or population sizes sufficiently small, to drive populations to simulated extinctions. But, except for extremely small population sizes, the article doesn't ever describe this. Using remotely realistic parameters, what it actually shows is that, again excepting very small population sizes, natural selection is quite effective in removing deleterious mutations. Even with very small populations, where selection gets overwhelmed by genetic drift, the program shows that fitness levels recover very quickly when population sizes are allowed to increase.
O.K. The rest of the "biological evidences" are similar crap. So let's jump ahead to the "geological evidences." Right away we get a howler:
13. Lack of plant fossils in many formations containing abundant animal / herbivore fossils. E.g., the Morrison Formation (Jurassic) in Montana. See Origins 21(1):51–56, 1994. Also the Coconino sandstone in the Grand Canyon has many track-ways (animals), but is almost devoid of plants. Implication: these rocks are not ecosystems of an “era” buried in situ over eons of time as evolutionists claim. The evidence is more consistent with catastrophic transport then burial during the massive global Flood of Noah’s day. This eliminates supposed evidence for millions of years.
Anybody not catch the hilarious juxtaposition of claims? Here it is:
the Coconino sandstone in the Grand Canyon has many track-ways ... [this] evidence is more consistent with catastrophic transport then burial during the massive global Flood of Noah’s day
That's right, folks. Bazillions of tons of sand are transported, probably hundreds of miles, in great churning masses by a "catastrophic" global flood, and yet all sorts of critters, from scorpions and tiny millipedes, to lizards and salamanders, to fairly sizable pelycosaurs, all manage to say alive long enough in the midst of this choking abrasive mess to make, often quite delicate, foot print trackways, on multiple layers, during flood deposition. (And keep in mind also that there are YEC identified "flood deposits" both stratigraphically above and below the Coconino in the Grand Canyon sequence!)
“Another crucial point is that the purpose of the Bible is to point the way to salvation, not to reform society. The Bible often approaches issues from the inside out. If a person experiences the love, mercy, and grace of God by receiving His salvation, God will reform his soul, changing the way he thinks and acts. A person who has experienced God’s gift of salvation and freedom from the slavery of sin, as God reforms his soul, will realize that enslaving another human being is wrong. A person who has truly experienced God’s grace will in turn be gracious towards others. That would be the Bible’s prescription for ending slavery.” [excerpt]Case in point: John Newton, reformed slave trader and author of the hymn, Amazing Grace.
First I’d like to thank whattajoke for the link provided. It was very well written and very informative. Also the slowness of my response is mainly due to enjoying the weekend rather than dedicating time to being a bookworm.
The main reason old earth proponents have a problem with my views is simply because I tend to evaluate history from the closest concentric circles first. Since I see Jesus historically as who he claims to be (Son of God) and also as one who made numerous claims regarding the truthfulness and trustworthiness of all of God’s Word then my conclusions tend to be biased toward all Biblical claims and a YEC viewpoint.
The 40 radiometric methods (whether correct or not) I lumped into one method as all rely on uniform decay rates.
Of the non-radiogenic methods you listed only one allows for million/billions of years. Sorry I was unclear in my prior post - what I was thinking was for someone to show another method supporting millions and/or billions of years. Technically you have done that with Cosmic Ray Exposure Dating although I will need to research it further - appears to apply the same techniques as radiometric methods.
Now I know YEC sounds crazy to many of you except that:
- science still has many more questions than answers, and
- anything that does not conform to the OEC viewpoint is still largely ignored.
My two primary considerations for YEC are:
1) what changes would all the earth / universe undergo in the fall
(Earth as we never knew it for all recorded history or Earth 1.0), and
2) what additional changes occurred with a global flood
(Earth changes drastically again - might as well be called Earth 3.0)
Don’t you think a Bible believer has to conclude uniform conditions most probably do not apply for all our history?
Consider SCW - SuperCriticalWater - and what happens to it above 3,200 psi and 705 degrees Farenheit. What might this do to the radiometric clocks that are so heavily relied upon? Below is from creationscience.com...
The Hydroplate Theory: Key Assumption
Starting assumptions, as explained above, are always required to explain ancient, unrepeatable events. Only one starting assumption underlies the hydroplate theory. All else follows from that assumption and the laws of physics. Theories of past events always have some initial conditions. Usually they are not mentioned.
Assumption: Subterranean Water. About half the water now in the oceans was once in interconnected chambers about 10 miles below the entire earth’s surface. At thousands of locations, the chamber’s sagging ceiling pressed against the chamber’s floor. These extensive, solid contacts will be called pillars. The average thickness of the subterranean water was about 3/4 mile. Above the subterranean water was a granite crust; beneath the water was earth’s mantle...
Three Common Questions
Those not familiar with the behavior of high-pressure fluids sometimes raise three questions.
1. How could rock float on water? The crust did not float on water; water was trapped and sealed under the crust. (Water pressure and pillars supported the crust.) The crust was like a thin slab of rock resting on and covering an entire waterbed. As long as the water mattress does not rupture, the dense slab will rest on top of less-dense water. Unlike a waterbed’s seal, which is only a thin sheet of rubber, the chamber’s seal was compressed rock almost 10 miles thick. Pressures in the crust 5 miles or more below the earth’s surface are so great that the rock can deform like highly compressed, extremely stiff putty. So the slightest tension crack or opening could not open from below.
2. Temperatures increase with depth inside the earth. Subterranean water about 10 miles deep would have been extremely hot. Wouldn’t all life on earth have been scalded if that water flooded the earth? No. Today’s geothermal heat is a result of the flood. To understand why and to see why life was not scalded, one must first understand tidal pumping and supercritical water (SCW)—a very high-energy, explosive form of water that was discovered in 1822.38 One should also understand why continents and preflood mountains sank as the subterranean water escaped. [See Endnote 65 on page 215.]
Tidal Pumping. Tides in the subterranean water lifted the massive crust twice daily. At low tides, the crust settled, compressing and heating the pillars, so temperatures in the subterranean chamber steadily rose, generating some of today’s geothermal heat. As certain minerals dissolved, this hot, high-pressure liquid water, increasingly contained the ingredients for limestone (CaCO3), salt (NaCl), and quartz (SiO2). In a few chapters, you will see why, after the flood, this dissolved quartz petrified some wood and cemented flood sediments into sedimentary rocks.
SCW. At a pressure of one atmosphere—about 1.01 bar or 14.7 psi (pounds per square inch)—water boils at a temperature slightly above 212°F (100°C). As pressure increases, the boiling point rises. At a pressure of 3,200 psi (220.6 bars) the boiling temperature is 705°F (374°C). Above this pressure-temperature combination, called the critical point, water is supercritical and cannot boil.
The initial pressure in the 10-mile-deep subterranean chamber was about 62,000 psi (4,270 bars)—far above the critical pressure. After centuries of tidal pumping, the subterranean water exceeded the critical temperature, 705°F. As the temperature continued to increase, the pressure grew, the crust stretched, and the energy from tidal pumping increasingly ionized the water.39
SCW can dissolve much more salt (NaCl) per unit volume than normal water—up to about 840°F (450°C). At higher temperatures, all salt precipitates out.40 (In a few pages, this fact will show why so much salt is concentrated on the earth and how salt domes formed.)
Hot liquids cool primarily by evaporation from their surfaces.41 SCW consists of microscopic liquid droplets dispersed within water vapor. Most hot objects cool at a rate proportional to their total surface area. The smaller a particle, the larger its surface area is relative to its volume, so more of its heat can be quickly transferred to its surroundings. The liquid in SCW has an area-to-volume ratio that is a trillion (1012) times greater than that of the flood water that covered the earth’s surface. Consequently, the liquid in SCW cools almost instantly if its pressure drops. This is because the myriad of shimmering liquid droplets, each surrounded by vapor, can simultaneously evaporate. A typical SCW droplet at 300 bars and 716°F (380°C) consists of 5–10 molecules. These droplets break up and reform continually.42
This explains how the escaping supercritical liquid transferred its energy into supercritical vapor. How did the vapor lose its energy and cool? Rapid expansion. A remarkable characteristic of supercritical fluids is that a small decrease in pressure produces a gigantic change in volume. So, as the SCW flowed toward the base of the rupture, its pressure dropped and the vapor portion expanded and cooled. As it expanded, it pushed on the surrounding fluid (gas and liquid), giving all fluid downstream ever increasing kinetic energy.
Eventually, the horizontally flowing liquid-gas mixture began to flow upward through the rupture. As the fluid rose, its pressure dropped to almost zero in seconds, so the electrical energy of ionization was released. The 10,000-fold expansion was a weeks-long, focused explosion of indescribable magnitude, accelerating the mixture, including rocks and dirt, into the vacuum of space.43
In summary, as the flood began, SCW jetted up through a globe-encircling rupture in the crust—as from a ruptured pressure cooker. This huge acceleration expanded the spacing between water molecules, allowing flash evaporation, sudden cooling, and even greater expansion, acceleration, and cooling. Therefore, most of the vast thermal, electrical, chemical, and surface energy44 in the subterranean water ended up not as heat at the earth’s surface but as extreme kinetic energy in all the fountains of the great deep. As you will see, these velocities were high enough to launch much material into outer space—the final dumping ground for most of the energy in the SCW.
3. What Happens as a Fluid Becomes Supercritical?
Key Experiments. The following experiment was first performed in 1822 by Baron Cagniard de la Tour of France.38 A specific amount of liquid was sealed inside a strong glass tube. The meniscus (the boundary between the liquid below and the vapor above) was visible. As the tube was heated, some liquid evaporated and the pressure increased. The liquid’s higher density decreased slowly, but the vapor’s lower density increased rapidly. The two densities met at a temperature and pressure called the critical point. At that critical point, the meniscus disappeared. Was the substance a liquid, a vapor, or something else? For almost two centuries, no one knew.45
In 2005, the results of sophisticated experiments on supercritical water were published. That work by scientists in Germany, France, Sweden, the Netherlands, and the United States showed that both liquid and vapor were present. The liquid consisted of microscopic droplets dispersed throughout the vapor.42
A Thought Experiment. What follows is conjecture. To my knowledge, no one has described the microscopic behavior of supercritical fluids (SFs) as I will below, but based on the 2005 experiments, the physics now seems clear. If we could view the meniscus in microscopic detail as the temperature approached the critical point, I believe we would see the following:
The liquid below the meniscus becomes increasingly agitated and resembles a choppy lake on a windy day. The liquid and vapor are nearly in equilibrium, so about as many molecules evaporate from the liquid as enter the liquid from the vapor. At these very high temperatures, vapor molecules strike the liquid surface at a furious rate and splash droplets of liquid up into the dense vapor. As the vapor’s density becomes the same as the liquid’s, the droplets float in the vapor! This process continues until all the liquid below the meniscus is dispersed as tiny droplets in the vapor. Consequently, the meniscus disappears. The shimmering droplets, suspended in the vapor, are then bombarded from all directions by vapor molecules acting as bullets. When these “bullets” strike a droplet, they either fragment the droplet, stick to it, or bounce off the droplet. Sometimes droplets collide and merge.46
Would these microscopic droplets float to the top of the vapor? No, but let’s assume they did. It would mean that the vapor was denser than the liquid droplets. Vapor molecules would be closer to each other, on average, than liquid molecules. Therefore, vapor molecules would frequently bond with each other and become liquid droplets. The presence of liquid droplets throughout the supercritical vapor contradicts our assumption that all the liquid had floated to the top of the vapor. With a little thought, it should become clear that liquid droplets continually form throughout the equally dense vapor; then they quickly fragment, merge, and evaporate.
As temperatures rise, the vapor molecules travel faster and fragment more droplets. The droplets also collide and merge more frequently, so at each new temperature, an equilibrium is quickly reached between droplets forming and disappearing.
Energy is expended in fragmenting droplets, because work must be done in stretching and breaking molecular bonds in the liquid phase. Most of the energy expended in fragmenting a droplet becomes ionization (electrical) energy. If the pressure drops, electrical energy is recovered and surface energy is given up; the volume expands rapidly and enormously. The faster the pressure drops, the more explosive the expansion.
When the flood began, the pressure in the jetting SCW dropped in seconds from at least 62,000 psi (4,270 bars) to almost zero. The energy released was huge. Because the 46,000-mile-long fountains continued this release for several weeks, one should not think of it as a single explosion. Instead, the jetting water was a powerful, earth-size engine that launched considerable mass from earth.
Great Solubility. Today, SFs (usually water and carbon dioxide) are studied primarily because of their great dissolving power. In 1879, J. B. Hannay and J. Hogarth first demonstrated this. When they rapidly dropped the pressure in a SF, they observed the dissolved material precipitating as “snow.”47 Why was the solubility of SFs so great, and why did the solute precipitate so rapidly?
Supercritical liquid droplets impacting solids will break up and dissolve more of the solids than relatively stagnant liquid.48 Also, as described above, the liquid droplets quickly form and evaporate. When they evaporate, the dissolved solids precipitate as sediments onto a floor. When new droplets form from merging vapor molecules, they contain no solute and can then dissolve more of the solid they encounter. As the flood began, the escaping subterranean waters swept most of these loose, precipitated sediments on the chamber floor up to the earth’s surface.
For these reasons, supercritical fluids can dissolve large quantities of certain solids.49 If the pressure in the supercritical fluid suddenly drops, the liquid evaporates explosively and the solid precipitates as “snow.” Three common precipitates from the subterranean water were limestone (CaCO3), salt (NaCl), and quartz (SiO2).
Sorry, I did quote a different poster.
No where does it say-slavery is wrong, but if you’re going to do it, do it this way. ‘god’ says it’s o.k.to beat your slave to death if the slave survives the beating for a few days. This justification for this is because the slave is your property.
If a slave owner in 19th century America said that he did not endorse slavery because he had rules by which he had to treat his slaves, we would call him out on his intellectual dishonesty.
If this exodus quote instead came from the koran, we would not be having this discussion-there is no need for christians to split hairs when it cones to de-bunking other opposing impossible to prove beliefs. The mental gymnastics only ensue when your unprovable beliefs are under examination.
I have no problem with the bible. I have a problem with people making outrageous claims(the bible is the word of god) and then being intellectually dishonest in attempts to defend the undefendable. As for atrocities- how bout telling a parent to kill his own child? how about all the innocent children in S&G? how about all the innocent 1st born of Egypt? infanticide is an atrocity, yes? and what about a group of men, almost 500 years removed from an event that has no other credible written witness, subject to the same human issues of power and control, cobbling together books written on hearsay and excluding others on a whim to propagate the biggest farce in mankind’s history? As science tries to explain our great mysteries, they at least have the decency to hold themselves to some standard-But if modern science based its beginnings and modern scientific process on the same foundation as the 3 desert religions have, they would hopefully be called out for their outrageous atrocity.
“that way you can make a coherent statement instead of sounding like you’re banging on for some petty atheist blog site.” please isn’t what we accuse the leftist/statists of doing? attack the person and not the argument?
“Hope this helps”
sure does. I just hope you have much mental-motrin available. This is the exact type of mental gymnastics I’m referring to. Please refer to my post to count-your-change.
“Another crucial point is that the purpose of the Bible is to point the way to salvation, not to reform society.”
Really? This is o.k. with you? If you can’t build a toaster, I can’t trust you to build the airplane I fly in. If you can’t efficiently run the post office or amtrak, then I can’t trust you anywhere near my health care.
If you can’t get obvious simple things right about civilized society and human dignity, then how can I trust you on intangible (and supposedly the most important) issues of the soul & salvation?
I’d say we just don’t have the same standards of proof and intellectual honesty.
By the way, why doesn’t god outright condemn slavery?
Is Thoreau and other 19th century abolitionists just smarter or more in-tuned to the dignity of the individual than god?
I don't know of ANY age-dating methods that support evolution. Age-dating methods have nothing to DO with evolution. I know of age-dating methods that support an old Earth.....and if you only know of 2, then you should increase your knowledge of age-dating methods.
And btw what is your scientific background?
BS Biology UMASS
Sc.D. Immunology HSPH
....and that matters because......?
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