Posted on 08/11/2003 8:57:56 AM PDT by fishtank
PDF file.
ABSTRACT
Given the short 14C half-life of 5730 years, organic materials purportedly older than 250,000 years, corresponding to 43.6 half-lives, should contain absolutely no detectable 14C. (One gram of modern carbon contains about 6 x 1010 14C atoms, and 43.6 half-lives should reduce that number by a factor of 7.3 x 10-14.) An astonishing discovery made over the past twenty years is that, almost without exception, when tested by highly sensitive accelerator mass spectrometer (AMS) methods, organic samples from every portion of the Phanerozoic record show detectable amounts of 14C! 14C/C ratios from all but the youngest Phanerozoic samples appear to be clustered in the range 0.1-0.5 pmc (percent modern carbon), regardless of geological ‘age.’ A straightforward conclusion that can be drawn from these observations is that all but the very youngest Phanerozoic organic material was buried contemporaneously much less than 250,000 years ago. This is consistent with the Biblical account of a global Flood that destroyed most of the air-breathing life on the planet in a single brief cataclysm only a few thousand years ago.
I've got a bridge in Brooklyn that I would like to sell. You interested?
It's a quibble, but that's a very tiny reduction factor where a great one is needed. (You just cut the original amount of C-14 in half 43 times.) I would expect a scientific paper to be proofread.
... organic samples from every portion of the Phanerozoic record show detectable amounts of C! 14 C/C ratios from all but the youngest Phanerozoic samples appear to be clustered in the range 0.1-0.5 pmc (percent modern carbon), regardless of geological ‘age.’
The short answer to what is going on here is "Abuse the instrument, measure noise." There's a preferred instrument for every date range, one for which the element half-life makes sense. C-14 is only useful for very recent objects because of the short half-life. With any physical measurement, as the thing being measured shrinks, the spike of signal tends to go down not to zero but into a fringe of noise. These guys appear to be lawyering on the noise.
I am a Scientific Christian (but not a Christian Scientist! ;) I believe that God created Man through a miracle. Some claim this was a quick one that ancient Heberews could understand, but I personally lean towards a long term one that science can understand. Although that is my belief, God will explain the correct answer to me in the afterlife, and probably then it will no longer be important to me.
However, some of my zealous, enthusiastic Christian brothers make Creation a tenent of the Faith that outstrips and replaces the real center of our Salvation, the personal sacrifice of Jesus Christ to erase our sins (if we come to Him and ask, of course.) With bulldog like intensity, they will bring it up at every opportunity. I believe this to be a liability, and I will now submit why:
We were counseled by one of the Apostles to "not eat meat offered before idols." He noted that while everything is made clean before God, not all things are good, and that to some Hebrews, to do this would be offensive. To Christians made clean, the act was not forbidden. But the very fact that it was offensive to the Hebrews actually harmed the witness for Christ, for those Jews could scoff at the Christians, and use the action to discount the witness for Christ.
I have a very Intelligent, Scientific Friend from college, and I would like him to understand that Christ died for him. Now, the free sacrifice by God Almighty might be, given the right conditions in my friend's life, something he could get his busy brain around. However, I have another friend, a dyed in the wool Creationist, who would go to this very Scientific Fellow, and insist:
"Hey! Everything you know is wrong! Carbon dating, atomic decay, silt, the rate hydrogen burns at, migration patterns, everything! Wrong, wrongo, wrongiest! Oh, and by the way, Christ died for your sins."
To this Scientific Friend, any creedece that the Salvation of Jesus Christ may have possibly had is now out the window. What he has experienced is not a loving explaination that there is sin in his live that God can remove, but an attack on all the facts that he knows are true. This scientific fellow is now convinced that Christians are deluded people who don't understand Science, and whatever "that spiritual thing" is that they believe can be discounted.
In summation, My Perception is that the Universe is probably older than some other people's by a factor of about a billion. It is no less aweinspiring or astounding for the fact that God took a lot longer crafting it. I may be wrong. God will straighten me out in the Debriefing. But beating a Cold, Rational, Scientific Person over the head with the literal interpritation of Flood and Pre-Flood Creation will place a unneeded barrier between them and Jesus Christ. And that is something I don't want to do. Our witness to the unchurched, to the Lost, to the sheep wandering outside of Christ's fold, should be about the Agape love that Christ has for them, personally, and the Salvation change that can make them new and better people. Beating the Creationist horse can weaken that witness among scientific-minded people.
(And boy, you should have seen the face of this Intelligent Fellow the night my wife tried to tell him that "everybody knows a Ouija board WON'T BURN!")
Should read: No one has been able to remove the "noise".
Every instrument I've ever seen has a noise level. This will be grabbed by the creationists to "prove" that everything ever done by scientists is wrong (ignoring, of course, that scientists designed the instrument the creationists are relying on in the first place).
Any first-year Creationist student would tell you that it is not in God's nature to lie, and God's nature never changes!
Clearly, it was the Devil who put all the fossils in the ground.
I know people who will tell you, straight-faced, that all UFO sightings and contacts are devil-orchestrated illusions designed to make us falsely believe that there is life outside of Earth. (I imagine if you asked further, they would ascribe to the theory that the Earth is at the center of several layers of glass globes with tiny lights in them and the planets and sun rotate around it. Hey, the idea worked fine for two thousand years, no need to change it!)
Like He said:
1. I put the fossils in the ground via a flood.
2. I spread the universe out like a scroll.
Being that God claims creative prowess over the entire universe, it wouldn't be hard for Him to spread light across vast reaches of space.
Youch, brother. The obivious rejoiner would be "do you have the education required to promote it?" No offense intended, but the above is a bad debating tactic, not greatly above the schoolyard "Oh yeah, well your're STOOPID!"
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