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So Heavenese, I take it you personally do not want to believe the majority of all those independent studies covering the fields he mentions in this excellent video?
Yes, the rates of decay could be "off", but a truely objective evaluation would also have to allow that perhaps they err on the side of conservatism, and therefore in fact the earth is EVEN OLDER? This is what an objective truly scientific review would take into consideration.
I.e.: look at both possible sides, not just the one you want to forward. That is called junk and biased science, my friend, and is easily caught and roasted alive by any modern peer review. So I'd judiciously avoid that single-sided approach if I were you!
You'd also have to prove, with a solid predictive hypothesis, that somehow the known and stable rates of atomic decay we have now determined were, oddly and inexplicably, different then, but only and conveniently for those ancient periods of time, and then, inexplicably they later conveniently settled, for the known period we've reviewed them, into an entirely different and stable rate? Huh?
Why so, pray tell? I mean it: why? Is this even wildly plausible?
Then there's all those other means, like the invariant speed of light which means the observable stars we see out there were formed literally billions of years ago (and still are forming and collapsing, btw, in a truly unfinished universe, versus what Genesis tells us, that God did it all, to full completion, in His very busy 6 day week ).
Or again, those truly pesky sedimentary varves which at the very least can be counted into the millions of years. All easily shown, to the objective and intellectually honest at the very least, to be annual.
How about all those other means that independently co-support the recent and updated radiometric decay methods? DNA mutation rates for example. And the simple but mathematically unavoidable facts of reproductive dynamics which precludes a single pair of individuals from re-populating the earth. Esp. one that was recently & completely ecologically devastated by an 18 mo fludd?
I mean, you surely don't possibly agree with the Noah's Ark nonsense, the possibility of Noah's kids producing a few hundred billion offspring, individuals all with unique genetics different than some Noahatically cloned outputs, but rather into grouped into recognizable, but cloned, genotypes that pretty much require the timeline of a long development? Not only that, a simple test of mitochondrial RNA and DNA, carried pretty much intact across the female population, clearly shows all of our hominid ancestry's ancient heritage out of Africa. Do you?
Or in getting all the necessary species onto Noah's unpowered, non-steerable & vastly too-small Ark? In numbers sufficient to guarantee subsequent reproductive success (which, my biologically illiterate friend, is FAR MORE than a mere two of each species. Esp. when we know there are well over 50, perhaps even 100 million, species on this planet.
Noah didn't just coldly leave, for instance, all the palm tree species, ferns and maple trees to just die off, did he? What about all the marine & fresh water species, which would have ALL died off due to rapid changes in oceanic and fresh-water (inland lakes & rivers) salinity? Where did he safely pot all of those plants where the elephants and giraffes didn't just eat them down to the root balls when they began to starve on about day 10?
But if that reproductive miracle work achieved by meare doublets of animal & plant species, is even wildly possible, why then are we credible professional biologists so terribly worried, for example about the mere ≈5000 remaining cheetah or Bengal tiger or white rhino populations, verging on extinction even at those seemingly high numbers?
So: only two elephants, let off, already starving, on the frozen slopes of Ararat? Or a nice but lonely and shivering pair of colorful Amazonian Parrots, similarly let loose to fend for themselves on a glacier @ the 13,000 foot elevation? WTF?
What sort of clogged mind can actually honestly defend that such moronic stuff was even wildly possible?
Answer: the fundamentalist-denialist & intransigent ones, those who apparently will now try to come up with some new age hypothesis to frantically "prove" their version?
I will tell you now, officially, Heavenese, that you will never come up with a means, demonstrable and falsifiable, to support and then prove such oddball ideas. Ideas that are assembled solely to prove what has been systematically and so thoroughly disproven now by millions of independent researchers, who do NOT all belong to a global conspiracy.
Sorry, even tiny little conspiracies of two or three people never work, not even thinking about a few hundred million scientists that are supposed to all be in on it! "Shhhhhhhh!".
So.. good luck to you. I won't hold my breath for your soon-to-be presented hypothesis.
Again, simply put: why do you resist all of the mountains of very convincing and easily reproduced results?
Are you that singularly and necessarily dedicated to such demonstrably inane mythologies?
I await your logical answer. Remaining: YrHmblSrvnt in Science: rifleman.
You do know that honest credible Christian scientists are rarer than a rock returned from Mars, right? And you do know that its not just radiometrics that have shown the age of our earth, right? nd you do also know that modern radiometrics are significantly more accurate than they were enen 10-15 years ago, let alone the usual Christian denials based on 1950s applications of first generation C14 methods?
I'm not the usual Christian denialist. My studies aren't looking for ways to judge what the dating methods tell us concerning the rates they measure, but if the rates can be affected by an event that is mentioned in the Bible. If I can change the decay rate within the rock, that would be evidence for the affects that event could have on rock.
Quote:
Originally Posted by rifleman
One of my own research areas was in varves, which accurately provide (if one can count & then conclude, that is...) easily countable layers of sediment for each year. Based on sediment size, inclusive (and often now extinct) pollens, plus dead fish and insects that settled to the bottom each year, and so on. ABSOLUTELY ANNUAL!
You remind me of some of my many conversations with others on Facebook. (When they had group discussions available) They talked about certain layers, that would have made it impossible for a global flood to have taken place. (Essentially these layers would have shown a calm atmosphere, whereas waters from a flood would show more chaotic type layers)
As of right now, I can't talk on this as my studies concerning the flood aren't complete. Many see the global flood as they would see any flood today (except on a global scale). However, this wasn't a pouring of water onto the earth. In fact, the earth pre-flood was very different than the world we see today, which "would be" post-flood. The world ran on a different water cycle pre-flood for instance, and many other systems that govern our world today ran different back then. What I'm doing right now, is working my way backwards. I know these words sound like a bunch of mumbo jumbo, but give me time with this. I want to give a specific layout of the Genesis account, so everyone can look and judge it. There I look to answer questions concerning varves and other areas.
Quote:
Originally Posted by rifleman
Not to mention that these varve layers are obviously still ongoing, and have a typical format and easily identifiable layering structure that, predictably, is identical back tens of thousands, if not millions, of years. Inarguable. Unambiguous and irrefutable. Except, of course, by stubborn Christian denialists who have been technologically cornered due to their massively obvious but oddly preferred scientific illiteracy!...
I have a question concerning that. You said these layers are laid down annually, for tens of thousands and if not millions of years. Are there millions of physical layers that can be seen?
Quote:
Originally Posted by rifleman
Varves alone, in Lake Baika in Russia, shows a minimum, so far, of several millions of years since that lake alone was formed. And in no way does anyone say it was formed right during Creation. So now, here's some additional reading if you'd care to expand your understanding of factual, objective evidence.
I'll also ref you back to my previous C-D discussions of this event and findings, in which an ardent but uneducated poster name of littlewitness defends the objective silliness of typical Chrisitan denials..
It's going to take me some time to look through those links. I think many people are throwing links at me right now. Please just give me time to read through them carefully.
Quote:
Originally Posted by rifleman
When we do find certain forensic evidence, we can and do find that "Joe killed Sally!". its called logical evidence-based conclusions. Ever hear of Sherlock Holmes, my good man? You are fishing for "outs" here, when all he evidence conclusively shows, to a rational individual at least, that the world is certainly ar older than a mere 6000+ years. Those varves alone show that.
Even Sherlock would have difficulty if there were major pieces of evidence that was no longer there. Think about the universe as a whole. We don't know what 96% of everything in this universe is made up of. Many physicists are starting to accept there might be many universes outside of our own, because of things like string theory and so forth. That would be a major problem if you were ever hoping to know exactly where we came from. All of these things say that we cannot come to know the full truth, based on our observations. That's true even concerning this earth and the stars we see. I'm not saying we can't know anything about them, but if you're talking ancient past, you have to be sure you are looking at all the evidence.
Quote:
Originally Posted by rifleman
So whatcha gonna do now for an encore, Heavenese? You've been logically & scientifically cornered, you know it, but rather than honestly accept facts and truth, you'll take on pretty much any level of obfuscation and lying to squirm out of the obvious. Well sorry: you lose.
Why do you guys consider me like an enemy of sorts? I've spoken a lot about my beliefs, but I have no where delve down deep into what I actually know. The most I've said concerning these things is that I'm studying and concetrating on making a model for the creation account. To test and experiment from. That is way more than what Answers in Genesis, and other creationist organizations have done. I've spoke on my frustrations with them.
Yet all of you are judging me, when I've yet to lay down the model. I've also said our observations are not enough, and explained why. Yet it seems everyone has utmost faith in our observations. So that is what I've spoken on in here. Wait until I've listed the layout of the Genesis account, and then you can judge that. Not that I'm prideful or nothing like that, but I'm definitely different than most Christians you guys have talked to. I can see it in our conversations.
Quote:
Originally Posted by rifleman
Nope. whenever such things are taken on by the so called scientific Christian "authorities, like Kent Hovind or Ray Comfort or the others who try to debate Hawking, Hitchens, Dawkins, DeGrasse Tyson, Sagan and others, they ALWAYS lose out because somewhere in their lopsided presentations they make a bunch of assumptions, and add in unsupportable claims, or debunk some well-supported finding with some very old circa 1960s for instance..) claim by one or two at best, denialist pseudo-scientists whose credentials are from, as in Hovind's case, self-appointed Doictoral degrees. Impressive!
All they do is try to find holes in scientists arguments. I want to show my own studies and tests to be peer reviewed.
Probably the only thing this man has ever said that I agreed with.
Creationism is finally dead.
I am no creationist and in fact, not even a Christian. However, it does say, specifically, in the bible...
"For a thousand years in your sight are like a day that has just gone by, or like a watch in the night."
Psalm 90:4
Therefore, it is reasonable to assume that the earth might be 6,000 years old in "god years" which would be considerably longer in earth years if 1 God Day = 1,000 earth years, and the earth is 6,000 God Years old, then well....that works out about right.
So Heavenese, I take it you personally do not want to believe the majority of all those independent studies covering the fields he mentions in this excellent video?
Yes, the rates of decay could be "off", but a truely objective evaluation would also have to allow that perhaps they err on the side of conservatism, and therefore in fact the earth is EVEN OLDER? This is what an objective truly scientific review would take into consideration.
It's not about decay rates being off, but what I'm testing for is if they can be affected using certain conditions that are mentioned in the Bible.
Quote:
Originally Posted by rifleman
I.e.: look at both possible sides, not just the one you want to forward. That is called junk and biased science, my friend, and is easily caught and roasted alive by any modern peer review. So I'd judiciously avoid that single-sided approach if I were you!
You'd also have to prove, with a solid predictive hypothesis, that somehow the known and stable rates of atomic decay we have now determined were, oddly and inexplicably, different then, but only and conveniently for those ancient periods of time, and then, inexplicably they later conveniently settled, for the known period we've reviewed them, into an entirely different and stable rate? Huh?
Why so, pray tell? I mean it: why? Is this even wildly plausible?
I won't get into it now, because again I'm still studying. Yet I'm up to the challenge here. I'm taking it one step at a time, working my way backwards. The first thing I look to do is see if I can affect the decay rate.
Quote:
Originally Posted by rifleman
Then there's all those other means, like the invariant speed of light which means the observable stars we see out there were formed literally billions of years ago (and still are forming and collapsing, btw, in a truly unfinished universe, versus what Genesis tells us, that God did it all, to full completion, in His very busy 6 day week ).
Or again, those truly pesky sedimentary varves which at the very least can be counted into the millions of years. All easily shown, to the objective and intellectually honest at the very least, to be annual.
How about all those other means that independently co-support the recent and updated radiometric decay methods? DNA mutation rates for example. And the simple but mathematically unavoidable facts of reproductive dynamics which precludes a single pair of individuals from re-populating the earth. Esp. one that was recently & completely ecologically devastated by an 18 mo fludd?
I mean, you surely don't possibly agree with the Noah's Ark nonsense, the possibility of Noah's kids producing a few hundred billion offspring, individuals all with unique genetics different than some Noahatically cloned outputs, but rather into grouped into recognizable, but cloned, genotypes that pretty much require the timeline of a long development? Not only that, a simple test of mitochondrial RNA and DNA, carried pretty much intact across the female population, clearly shows all of our hominid ancestry's ancient heritage out of Africa. Do you?
Or in getting all the necessary species onto Noah's unpowered, non-steerable & vastly too-small Ark? In numbers sufficient to guarantee subsequent reproductive success (which, my biologically illiterate friend, is FAR MORE than a mere two of each species. Esp. when we know there are well over 50, perhaps even 100 million, species on this planet.
Noah didn't just coldly leave, for instance, all the palm tree species, ferns and maple trees to just die off, did he? What about all the marine & fresh water species, which would have ALL died off due to rapid changes in oceanic and fresh-water (inland lakes & rivers) salinity? Where did he safely pot all of those plants where the elephants and giraffes didn't just eat them down to the root balls when they began to starve on about day 10?
But if that reproductive miracle work achieved by meare doublets of animal & plant species, is even wildly possible, why then are we credible professional biologists so terribly worried, for example about the mere ≈5000 remaining cheetah or Bengal tiger or white rhino populations, verging on extinction even at those seemingly high numbers?
So: only two elephants, let off, already starving, on the frozen slopes of Ararat? Or a nice but lonely and shivering pair of colorful Amazonian Parrots, similarly let loose to fend for themselves on a glacier @ the 13,000 foot elevation? WTF?
What sort of clogged mind can actually honestly defend that such moronic stuff was even wildly possible?
Answer: the fundamentalist-denialist & intransigent ones, those who apparently will now try to come up with some new age hypothesis to frantically "prove" their version?
I will tell you now, officially, Heavenese, that you will never come up with a means, demonstrable and falsifiable, to support and then prove such oddball ideas. Ideas that are assembled solely to prove what has been systematically and so thoroughly disproven now by millions of independent researchers, who do NOT all belong to a global conspiracy.
Sorry, even tiny little conspiracies of two or three people never work, not even thinking about a few hundred million scientists that are supposed to all be in on it! "Shhhhhhhh!".
So.. good luck to you. I won't hold my breath for your soon-to-be presented hypothesis.
Again, simply put: why do you resist all of the mountains of very convincing and easily reproduced results?
Are you that singularly and necessarily dedicated to such demonstrably inane mythologies?
I await your logical answer. Remaining: YrHmblSrvnt in Science: rifleman.
My layout will answer some of these questions. You also have that bedtime story about the flood. That Noah took giraffes, elephants, pretty much all the animals we see today onto the ark. The truth is most of the animals we see today did not exist back then. Their ancestors are the ones Noah took on the ark. You talk about the fresh water fish and how did they survive the flood? They didn't, fresh water fish weren't around back then. They evolved post-flood. So did every animal, and us. We can't place current day animals back at the time of the flood.
I won't get into the speed of light issue right now. This is one of the reasons I say, it is only in today's world of knowledge and growing scientific knowledge, that a model could be made for the Genesis account. At one point, people thought the universe always existed. The Bible pointed toward a beginning, and it wasn't until the 1900s did we come to that realization. The Bible stated many times about how God stretched out and is still stretching out the universe. We then found out the universe is expanding. So I predict we will later find out something new about the speed of light. Actually, not necessarily the speed of light itself, but something about the universe that would help explain the star-light problem as it were. It's only in this scientific age, can we understand Genesis on a realistic level.
Last edited by Heavenese; 12-02-2012 at 05:06 PM..
It's not about decay rates being off, but what I'm testing for is if they can be affected using certain conditions that are mentioned in the Bible.
I won't get into it now, because again I'm still studying. Yet I'm up to the challenge here. I'm taking it one step at a time, working my way backwards. The first thing I look to do is see if I can affect the decay rate.
My layout will answer some of these questions. You also have that bedtime story about the flood. That Noah took giraffes, elephants, pretty much all the animals we see today onto the ark. The truth is most of the animals we see today did not exist back then. Their ancestors are the ones Noah took on the ark. You talk about the fresh water fish and how did they survive the flood? They didn't, fresh water fish weren't around back then. They evolved post-flood. So did every animal, and us. We can't place current day animals back at the time of the flood.
I won't get into the speed of light issue right now. This is one of the reasons I say, it is only in today's world of knowledge and growing scientific knowledge, that a model could be made for the Genesis account. At one point, people thought the universe always existed. The Bible pointed toward a beginning, and it wasn't until the 1900s did we come to that realization.
Almost every culture in the ancient world had a creation myth, whether it's an ice cow or some other being. And in fact, the biblical creation myth doesn't have something coming from nothing, it was a universe of water and air and a spirit moving over that water. The chaos vs order myths were closer to the mark than the biblical story. And, where is all that water held back by the firmament?
If every animal evolved post-flood, then why are they in the creation story, and in many pre-flood stories? How was Abel a shepherd if sheep hadn't evolved yet?
6:7 And the LORD said, "I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, from man to animals to creeping things and to birds of the sky; for I am sorry that I have made them."
6:20 "Of the birds after their kind, and of the animals after their kind, of every creeping thing of the ground after its kind, two of every kind shall come to you to keep them alive.
7:2 "You shall take with you of every clean animal by sevens, a male and his female; and of the animals that are not clean two, a male and his female;
Genesis 8:1 But God remembered Noah and all the beasts and all the cattle that were with him in the ark; and God caused a wind to pass over the land, and the water subsided.
Last edited by Wild Colonial Girl; 12-02-2012 at 06:37 PM..
We had a newspaper message board back in Memphis that censored so many funny things. "Cracker" was one of them, so when there was a food article about cracker recipes or an article about Cracker Barrel Restaurants, the results here hilarious.
The SomethingAwful forums (I think it was them, anyway) once upgraded a swear filter, replacing such phrases as 'my a**' with 'I disagree'.
Shortly after the upgrade, someone posted the following message:
'I came in from outside, slipped on the frshly-waxed kitchen floor, and fell flat on I disagree'.
Quote:
Instead of creating a special way to date rock, as the video suggest, I must show a testable method of how decay rates can be affected.
You must do those two things simultaneously. Develop a method to test your assertions of a young earth, and then test to see if a decay rate can be affected.
Simply testing for one or the other doesn't provide any useful data. Testing for a 'young earth' alone leaves the results open to dispute, and testing for the possibility that a decay rate is wrong will only open you to skepticism over your motives.
Last edited by FredNotBob; 12-02-2012 at 10:29 PM..
I think that in discussions of physical problems we ought to begin not from the authority of scriptural passages but from sense-experiences and necessary demonstrations; for the holy Bible and the phenomena of nature proceed alike from the divine Word the former as the dictate of the Holy Ghost and the latter as the observant executrix of God's commands. It is necessary for the Bible, in order to be accommodated to the understanding of every man, to speak many things which appear to differ from the absolute truth so far as the bare meaning of the words is concerned. But Nature, on the other hand, is inexorable and immutable; she never transgresses the laws imposed upon her, or cares a whit whether her abstruse reasons and methods of operation are understandable to men. For that reason it appears that nothing physical which sense-experience sets before our eyes, or which necessary demonstrations prove to us, ought to be called in question (much less condemned) upon the testimony of biblical passages which may have some different meaning beneath their words. For the Bible is not chained in every expression to conditions as strict as those which govern all physical effects; nor is God any less excellently revealed in Nature's actions than in the sacred statements of the Bible.
The Bible is not a science book and wiser Christians don't try to make it so. Galileo knew that 400 years ago.
How I could walk around with my brain turned on in my medical science career, but turned off in the rest of my life, for so long, is beyond me.
Thank you for your honesty!!!
You are exactly the kind of person I want to have a conversation with because I need to understand it. How did you reconcile these opposite sides of your reasoning? Was your religious belief system fueled by emotions? A need for happiness? Upbringing? Habit?
If I can understand how a true believer could simultaneously hold conflicting logic, maybe I can personally be more accepting of it, but as it stands, I don't get it. It would seem to me that anyone who has a mind for medical science would be "wired" to require evidence before concluding anything like the existence of god.
It's not about decay rates being off, but what I'm testing for is if they can be affected using certain conditions that are mentioned in the Bible.
Quote:
Originally Posted by educational-rflmnâ„¢
Heavense, I'm going to take some of my already over-booked time today to try to explain some of this, just a bit, to you. It may save you some thought, though I also do fully encourage you and others to read and learn. To question and do your own thinking, but in some cases, we do, for instance, fully know from uncounted tests and results, that (for example) methotrexate does kill cancer dells, or that Bacitracin does speed the healing of open lacerations, or that our earth's gravity does indeed hold Atlas V rockets back, or that asteroids are inevitably inbound in our future. Or that rocks and some dino-fossils are indeed tens of millions of years old.
It's rather pointless to argue these "knowns", all while claiming you'll be diligently working to come up with a new defensible research paradigm solely to disprove it all and to show, categorically, that Satan, for instance, is the one and only activator of it all..... (just as a fantasy example...)
The rates by which isotopically unstable elements with suitably v. long half-lives can or do "decay" into their more stable metabolites is indeed slightly variable, primarily by altering temperatures. Unfortunately these changes make only the most minor of differences, and if the element is heated the decay rate is speeded up (so a rock with that element in it would appear younger... but only by perhaps 0.001% over very long periods of time) or older (if it were found in a perennially cold location, let's say under the Greenland Ice sheet...)
BTW, it's also curious, would you not agree, that all the elements which we know have much shorter half-lives, lives in the 1000 to 5000 yr range, are all absent in the natural remnant environment, they having "given it all up" long long ago, shortly after the original formation of our solar system. This is easily predictable, since these types of element been around far longer than the solar system has (i.e.: since the Big Bang!), and they're all "decayed out" by now. But if the world were only, say, 5000 - 10,000 yrs old, a lot of these would still be here, loitering around in 1/4 to 1/8 of their expected initial levels. But nope: all LONG GONE, due to the long passage of time since The BB!
But then, all that a truly objective and open-minded scientist would have to do is show those different rates from the same element, but dug up from different locations, and then he'd simply state in his peer-reviewed publication that "This artifact is therefore ≈X yrs old, ± a very overstated 5%" (or whatever... when the data would more directly support and point to, for example, a far lower possible spread of, for example, ± 1.5%).
By taking such conclusionary precautions, published ages of such artifacts remain within the most reasonable limits. We do know, hoeever, that they are NOT "off" by tens of thousands, or millions, of years.
But wait: then our careful and ardent researcher can apply additional aging methods that do not necessarily rely entirely on decay rates. They might rely on polonium halos, or on the very interesting fission tracking methods...
But, then a researcher combines several or all of these techniques to date the same artifact, and then conjoins those agreeing findings to confirm very similar outputs (which is a pretty good confirmation, would you not agree, Heavenese?) .
But then, when those essentially identical findings are coupled with the utter lack of ANY contemporaneous historical accounts of a flood by, say, the Egyptians, who were busy at the exact same time laying the foundations for their pyramids, yet somehow missed being inundated by a rapidly rising ocean, or the completely absent historical flood documentation by the very conservative and intellectually mature Chinese (esp. when compared to the far more distracted and frightened of the supernatural, Middle Eastern goat-herd mentality types of Jesus' cohort...), what then do we necessarily conclude?
stated differently: is there still a need to go out and re-do the study from some "new age" perspective, to try to debunk it yet again from some new but fully obfuscatory angle? Why?
The Chinese wrote literally everything down, but oddly didn't notice their entire country (not to mention the nearby 28k foot elevation Mt. Everest going "glub glub", and remaining totally inundated for well over 18 mo.) one can indeed come to a very rational conclusion about the probability of such a Great Fludd event, Heavenese.
And btw, there most certainly were fresh water species of fish a mere 6000 yrs ago. We have their fossils embedded in the varves in Lake Baikal's sediments. We have DNA tracks on their lineage and relationship to once-oceanic races & species, who were trapped by glaciation and/or tectonics and became land-locked versions (you perhaps enjoy Steelhead "trout", a freshwater race of the Pacific salmonids?), and indeed even Atlantic-based, oceanic Onchorynchus spp. salmonids? Or the landlocked B.C. Kokanee "trout", (yum, btw...) with a very similar mDNA lineage, but who do not go to the oceans, as Steelhead do, to spawn and live part of their lives?
For a good overview, read the Wiki article, esp. the paragraph on Evolution.: thusly:
(and also remember: While Wiki can on occasion be less than "expert", they usually do provide the actual published scientific article citations down below the article. Those are completely credible!)
Some of those visually ID-able varves are indeed easily counted with the naked eye or a small magnifying glsss, but others, from lesser sedimentary event years, do occasionally require a more effective microscopy, including the v. powerful electron microscope. Here:
(the point of this last one is to elucidate the extreme detail levels to which geological, mining & hydrocarbon resource development companies, in no way interested in proving the chronology of the bible, do see far past the assumed age and timing of some Genesis chronology. They just don't want to waste a lot of develoopment funding on zany finds, and thus they go to "Extreme depths" () to prove up possible resources long before they bring in this sort of pricy equipment. (And thus, quite rationally, we can and do trust on their findings!):
(NOTE: I worked with Exxon, Dome Petroleum, Shell Oil Canada, PetroCan and others on just such hyper-expensive sites such as these, which typically cost about ≈$5m/day just to have in place, staff and support by air cargo systems alone. All just to disprove Genesis or Creation? Not hardly! Rather, they do it just to find oil & gas for your new Camry... )
Such varve-sedimentary micro-evaluations are not generally necessary nor required in most cases however. For example. with a field lab microscope on about 25X, we easily counted down to, as I recall, 2500+ yrs minimum in our own drill shallow-depth cores, and we weren't even looking for age dating, but rather the strength of seasonal/annual debris and sediment flows in order to make a mine site safer. We wanted to be able to predict, based on past historical events, the typical range of spring freshet flows, and were easily able to do so. When an offshore oil drill goes to depth, it would easily prove minimum ages of well into the 100,000+ yr range and so much more.
Btw, annual events are easily confirmed by looking at the last few year's (nearest the top) type and content, since, hey: these drainage basins & lake or pond sediments accomplish this each and every year. They lay down the same sort of "fines", annual pollens, leaves, pine needles, micro-organisms (pond scum, as it were), and other clear identifiers that a one-time-only macro fludd by Noah's Theatrical Productions LLCâ„¢, a special division of Pixar Imaginariaâ„¢, would not have created. As well, we also find distinct but long-extinct species of pollen (pollens are v. distinctive in shape, size and now, X-Ray luminescence output! No errors there!)
When all these separate and independently reviewed evidentiary elements are combined, we get a VERY CLEAR and INARGUABLE picture of the age, chronology and long-term lineage of "us" and our ancestors, leading to the inescapable conclusion that we, and all of our ancient predecessors, have indeed been here for a heck of a very long time,. With ABSOLUTELY no fanciful "inundation interruptions" of the type the bible laid down (they were being entirely metaphoricial, btw... Only the most intransigent and escapist/revisionist intransigents still stubbornly fight all of the easily defended co-related and cross-supported evidence...)
What continues to confound and depress me is how all of that increasingly more potent and provable evidence is so easily and hand-wavingly dismissed by the ardently righteous but scientifically illiterate theists. Why? I ask you, Heavenese: why are you so driven to prove an event, series of events or chronology that so clearly did not happen, ever?
And btw: if you don't buy into the intense levels of evidence and research that has shown scientists "The Way, The Truth and The Light", how do you think some new-fangled angle of approach, some new off-tilt hypothesis of how it DID conveniently happen all in one week, will sell?
Do you anticipate the usual, typical SM approach of others testing your hypothesis (which, btw, Christian always refuse to do with our well-explained methods? Why don't they/you re-test using the logical methods we've so thoughtfully and carefully provided, if you distrust the findings, or consider them possibly tainted?)
Please, Heavenese, do give me just some tiny tidbit of an idea why it's so very critical that, given the logical and objctive facts as dropped in their laps, it's still so frantically denied? And they continue to try to find some alternate explanation ghat conveniently suports, but only for the one lone case, a completely inane hypothesis that is so easily disproven?
It's staggeringly incomprehensible to me personally: why, exactly, do Christians and the subset of frantic Creationists and YECrs not want to understand and thus know the truth behind their own pre-history?
I won't get into it now, because again I'm still studying. Yet I'm up to the challenge here. I'm taking it one step at a time, working my way backwards. The first thing I look to do is see if I can affect the decay rate.
My layout will answer some of these questions. You also have that bedtime story about the flood. That Noah took giraffes, elephants, pretty much all the animals we see today onto the ark. The truth is most of the animals we see today did not exist back then. Their ancestors are the ones Noah took on the ark. You talk about the fresh water fish and how did they survive the flood? They didn't, fresh water fish weren't around back then. They evolved post-flood. So did every animal, and us. We can't place current day animals back at the time of the flood.
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(Note: there were, at the very least, well over 50 to 100M different species alive at the time of that imaginary Fludd, all of which would have to have been represented on Noah's Ark, in quantities that could even possibly hope to re-populate the planet.
Which means, for example, a few hundred T-Rexs, and all the other dinos, ditto for the numbers of rhinos, serpents, grasshoppers, salmon, whales, octopi, snails and so on. All with the right thermal regime (temperature), the right seasonal timing, the right ecological niches, and so on.
Not disembarked on a frozen glacier @ 13,000 feet up on Ararat, and on the wrong continent! Anyone who innocently buys into all of this is sorely misguided. but then, those who have been politely shown the fallacy of it all, but still persist in believing it all, need some psychological help!
I won't get into the speed of light issue right now. This is one of the reasons I say, it is only in today's world of knowledge and growing scientific knowledge, that a model could be made for the Genesis account. At one point, people thought the universe always existed.
The Bible pointed toward a beginning, and it wasn't until the 1900s did we come to that realization. The Bible stated many times about how God stretched out and is still stretching out the universe. We then found out the universe is expanding. So I predict we will later find out something new about the speed of light. Actually, not necessarily the speed of light itself, but something about the universe that would help explain the star-light problem as it were. It's only in this scientific age, can we understand Genesis on a realistic level.
Or possibly, disprove all of it, once and for all?
Wait until I've listed the layout of the Genesis account, and then you can judge that. Not that I'm prideful or nothing like that, but I'm definitely different than most Christians you guys have talked to. I can see it in our conversations.
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Originally Posted by rflmn
[from my previous post...]
Whenever such things are taken on by the so called scientific Christian "authorities, like Kent Hovind or Ray Comfort or the others who try to debate Hawking, Hitchens, Dawkins, DeGrasse Tyson, Sagan and others, they ALWAYS lose out because somewhere in their lopsided presentations they make a bunch of assumptions, and add in unsupportable claims, or debunk some well-supported finding with some very old circa 1960s for instance..) claim by one or two at best, denialist pseudo-scientists whose credentials are from, as in Hovind's case, self-appointed Doictoral degrees. Impressive!
All they do is try to find holes in scientists arguments. I want to show my own studies and tests to be peer reviewed.
Not quite. The so-called holes to which you refer are simply the as-yet unsolidified and thus outstanding questions in our always improving world-view on the Universe and our place in it. Not to mention, as Neil DeGrase so elegantly and eloquently notes, we really have no "purpose" here. We simply "are", as are so many other organisms (all of them, on fact!). We are in no way on a higher plane of purposeful existence, nor are we some godly "chosen ones", destined for a later afterlife, leaving all the other relatively soul-less and btw "lesser" animals [how utterly arrogant!] behind to dis-associate into their etherial components. How convenient for us and inconvenient for them, huh?
I'd suggest that, like any good credible scientifically base study, you first really establish a firm and unbiased understanding of the basic Scientific Method (The SM from here on in), and all of its obvious logic-based process control systems that will go a long ways to guaranteeing your study's subsequent credibility.
Also know that you cannot go into any honest research solely with a lone predetermined outcome tucked under your intellectual belt. Your hypothesis may be "I will show that such and such a result proves there is a Godly entity" but you alsohave to accept the possible null hypothesis...
(i.e.: that the study may prove there is not such an entity!).
To discount or deny that possible outcome, or to fudge or "cook" any data in such a way as to bias your results, will, if subjected to subsequent rigorous peer review, shoot your entire study's credibility, not to mention you own, into Le Grande Toilette of logical doom. And no amount of "But.... but.... but...'ing denials and arguments will save you if your study ddsign is at once flawed, invalid, improperly designed to effectively prove anything, or rife with outright cooked data [you know, where someone tells us all, categorically and absolutely, that they recorded numbers that are obviously statistically impossible or out of the range of any reasonable meaasurement ["I accurately measured the speed of light with my kitchen yardstick and my new LED flashlight! Honest I did!"]
That has been the outcome of all the Hovinid, Comfort and others' mindless so-called studies. Whenever some Christian-based pseudo-university cites one of their own's studies, there is now a well-earned collective sigh, grunt and yawn, since the 100% to date failure of any of those "studies" to validate anything but without the simple application of The SM has pretty much left us with a special taste in our collective mouths. Where's the new improved Listerine mouthwash please!
Sort of like how we currently judge the quality of mass-produced Chinese toys for our kids. After the 10th toy we bought for our kids literally fell apart after a mere day or two of normal use, we came to realize that what they are producing over there is, for the most part, junk, and our opinions are pretty much then set. Not inalterably, but certainly it will take a pretty long time to change our minds. Well, ditto for those supposedly "scientific studies" done by the gangs of intransigent Christian pseudo-scientists...
Don't end up in that category. At least try to be personally honest. Else, if you choose to explicitly bias things simply to "prove" your point, such purposefully errant & obviously biased statements wil haunt you forever more. And will, in point of fact, serve to disprove your idea.
But also be aware that, if you are honest in your enthusiastic endeavors, you will most likely come to the same honest conclusions that literally millions of independent researchers, logically looking at all the biblical and spiritual fables and so-called facts (Noah's Ark; Evolution has never happened; an earth that, geologically, is only ± 6040 yrs old, maximum! etc.) have already come to:
That there is no supernatural force or entity operating in the universe.
As in: A God has never been, in any way, measurably detectable, and also predictably, not required. As well, there's no absolute need for us to know all the answers as of now. Yes, for many Christians, this is an absolute, but such a silly and stultified requirement by that eroding cult group is not universal, nor is it fact.
To require that answer simply limits any future enlightenment and also moves us inexorably backwards into the stone age of knowledge!
Last edited by rifleman; 12-06-2012 at 12:04 PM..
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Please just give me time to read through them carefully.
Pressing on with the point, but much shorter....
