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can we get a reference to these living molluscs. sealskins and 800 year old mortar being dated at thousands of years old? Because I haven't been able to find a thing.
True, C14 dating is nothing to do with radiometric dating of rocks, but I would like to challenge this claim. If it is wrong, then it totally discredits the poster, who repeated a false claim without checking. Never mind virtually guaranteeing that the input comes without any divine inspiration at all.
Last edited by TRANSPONDER; 12-12-2014 at 09:47 AM..
I don't know about the sealskins, but I do know the "living mollusks" thing has been debunked. It wasn't the bodies of the mollusks themselves, but rather their shells, which are made of carbon from limestone that has been dissolved in the water and reabsorbed by the mollusks. The snails that were tested lived in a pool in a limestone sinkhole, and the only carbon source was from the geologic formation in which the pool was formed. When they tested the shells of the snails, they were basically testing the age of the limestone bedrock in which they lived.
I don't know about the mortar claim, but I suspect it was the same thing - the mortar was probably made from crushed limestone that was several thousand years old.
can we get a reference to these living molluscs. sealskins and 800 year old mortar being dated at thousands of years old? Because I haven't been able to find a thing.
True, C14 dating is nothing to do with radiometric dating of rocks, but I would like to challenge this claim. If it is wrong, then it totally discredits the poster, who repeated a false claim without checking. Never mind virtually guaranteeing that the input comes without any divine inspiration at all.
If you Google it the first three pages are simply creationists sites but on the fourth page there was a like to Wikepeda I think it was that gave reasons for the errors. With the molluscs they live in a closed environment where they obtain their CO2 from disolved limestone not from the atmosphere. The seals are eating planktons that are eating stuff that is upswelling from the depths of the oceans. I do not know enough to validate the reason for the seals but with the molluscs it seems if the orginal data is correct, one would not expect an accurate date. I know for those who refuse to even attempt to understand the terminology of science there rationals would sound like lame excuses but those minds are made and apparently closed.
As far as the mortar goes who knows where the builders obtained the raw materials and it would be the raw materials that would provide the dating not the date of construction.
It is the knowledge that I have come to possess that made me try and fit my religious beliefs to God - not trying to make God fit my religious beliefs. I don't think we have to agree on a definition of God or what His claims on us might be. We each have to walk our own path to God. God gave us a brain, and hopefully, a little common sense. As we grow, we should be able to adapt ourselves to God, not try to make God adapt to us.
You remind me a bit of our ptsum, who is a Native American and who has been discussing a similar point of view on the part of the many tribes -- a default of mutual respect for the personal nature of one's religious beliefs. According to him, a tribal member can believe in no god at all, and that is respected as "their path".
That is very different from the common tropes of Christianity, which usually involve some notion of capital-T Truth for all, of orthodoxy vs apostasy, right vs wrong, heaven vs hell.
This also explains how you can fit your beliefs to god without a universally agreed definition of god -- you are talking about fitting your beliefs to god as you conceive of him, personally. Which is perfectly fine, even if I don't get it. If there is no objective shared reality in which god is god, if it's entirely personal, then to me, what you're really talking about is fitting your personal conception of god to the facts on the ground -- which is better than the way it's usually done in OR, granted. But it is still nothing you can show to be objectively so, it is simply what you choose to believe about god.
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Originally Posted by Ella Parr
Considered what?
In any way, at all. How can god enter into my deliberations about the nature of things when he is not even part of nature, which is all I can apprehend in the first place?
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Originally Posted by Ella Parr
I don't know what I said that makes you believe that I think God is outside nature. That simply isn't true.
When Christians use the language you used ("god is not bounded by any natural laws"), that usually is part of the "god is outside of and above / beyond nature" which = supernatural. If you believe god is part of nature, that makes him less removed and potentially quantifiable, and I apologize for misunderstanding your view.
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Originally Posted by Ella Parr
I see the hand of God everywhere in nature. I think nature reflects God, and God's wondrous works echo from every animal and tree and flower. I think the cycle of life is God in all His glory. I see massive man-made structures and huge airplanes that slip through the air and men that do marvelous things and I see the intelligence that God has bestowed on some. And, I strive to open my mind and my heart (and that tiny box OR created) to let God fill me (and it) so that I might know Him better and glimpse the awesomeness of Him.
I see nature in nature, I do not see intentionality or orchestration. If you see god in nature, than you have to see him in cancer and tsunamis and human suffering as well as in flowers and rainbows and unicorns. You can't have it both ways.
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Originally Posted by Ella Parr
"Even as a Christian"????? It's a good thing that I'm fairly good-natured because I think you're trying to insult me.
No, not at all. I do not automatically accord any unearned free passes to religious notions in the free marketplace of ideas, but that is a critique of ideas, not of you. In all honesty if most Christians were like you I'd find Christianity far less annoying and cloying.
I also may be influenced at times by my background I came out of, which is Christian fundamentalism.
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Originally Posted by Ella Parr
It just happens that I am really nice and kinda smart.
If you Google it the first three pages are simply creationists sites but on the fourth page there was a like to Wikepeda I think it was that gave reasons for the errors. With the molluscs they live in a closed environment where they obtain their CO2 from disolved limestone not from the atmosphere. The seals are eating planktons that are eating stuff that is upswelling from the depths of the oceans. I do not know enough to validate the reason for the seals but with the molluscs it seems if the orginal data is correct, one would not expect an accurate date. I know for those who refuse to even attempt to understand the terminology of science there rationals would sound like lame excuses but those minds are made and apparently closed.
As far as the mortar goes who knows where the builders obtained the raw materials and it would be the raw materials that would provide the dating not the date of construction.
I had a look back and couldn't find a link. But the problem with living molluscs absorbing more carbon is that this would imply a greater measurement of carbon 14 and would imply a younger age than they really were, rather than an older. And if they were living but 'sacrificed' as they say in dissection labs then they couldn't be measured as being younger than they were. and who in heck wants to carbon -date something that was alive five minutes ago? The thing smells worse than yesterday's living molluscs.
If you Google it the first three pages are simply creationists sites but on the fourth page there was a like to Wikepeda I think it was that gave reasons for the errors. With the molluscs they live in a closed environment where they obtain their CO2 from disolved limestone not from the atmosphere. The seals are eating planktons that are eating stuff that is upswelling from the depths of the oceans. I do not know enough to validate the reason for the seals but with the molluscs it seems if the orginal data is correct, one would not expect an accurate date. I know for those who refuse to even attempt to understand the terminology of science there rationals would sound like lame excuses but those minds are made and apparently closed.
As far as the mortar goes who knows where the builders obtained the raw materials and it would be the raw materials that would provide the dating not the date of construction.
I used your post as inspiration to do a little further reading, and found THIS SOURCE, a debate between two people, one of whom defends the accuracy of radiocarbon dating, and one who declares that C14 dating and other forms of radioactive dating are unreliable.
The debate is well communicated, and while it touches the complexities of the issue, it is still quite readable.
One of things I learned from reading the debate is that I, for one, dont really understand the complexities of radioactive dating. I'll wager that 99.9% of us dont have the education to comprehend the complexity. I, however, accept complexity because the earth and the universe are complex.
As for myself while I believe in God, I also believe in science, I also believe that belief in one does not mean the other is not also believable.
But the problem with living molluscs absorbing more carbon is that this would imply a greater measurement of carbon 14 and would imply a younger age than they really were, rather than an older. And if they were living but 'sacrificed' as they say in dissection labs then they couldn't be measured as being younger than they were. and who in heck wants to carbon -date something that was alive five minutes ago? The thing smells worse than yesterday's living molluscs.
As I understand it the problem with fresh water mollusks is that they tend to C-14 date as 2000 years old, even though freshly killed. The problem is the opposite of what you state, I believe -- they don't have as much C-14 in them as other freshly killed animals because their food sources haven't mixed with the atmosphere such that they pick up C-14 from there.
It's my experience that most people objecting to Carbon-14 don't even know what it is appropriate to use for, or that there are other methods and also ways to cross-check Carbon-14 results, such as comparing the tree ring count in C-14 dated pine cones. When many of the seminal popular treatments of Christian apologetics were written (e.g., Evidence That Demands a Verdict (originally published I believe in the early 1970s, updated in the late 1990s) Carbon-14's "unreliability" was the standard thing trotted out to attempt to debunk its use. C-14 is not accurate for anything older than about 20,000 years because there isn't any detectable C-14 left after that length of time. That particular method is used for things younger than that, up to a point, depending on what it's made of and how it's cross contaminated / influenced or not by its environment. There are other methods that are used for other purposes. I assume that all the fuss about C-14 is because it impacts the creationist / ID claim that the earth is 6,000 to 10,000 years old, and they need to discredit items dated older than that. C-14 testifies that the earth is older than creationists claim that it is, by a factor of 2 or 3 times even within its relatively limited range.
There is also some confusion regarding the half-life of the decay of the earth's magnetic field that creationists use to show that C-14 dating would be influenced by. These criticisms assume the strength and the way it is trending are constant, rather than fluctuating (and changing in polarity) as science has shown them to be. When that is taken into account, C-14 is affirmed rather than debunked.
I had a look back and couldn't find a link. But the problem with living molluscs absorbing more carbon is that this would imply a greater measurement of carbon 14 and would imply a younger age than they really were, rather than an older. And if they were living but 'sacrificed' as they say in dissection labs then they couldn't be measured as being younger than they were. and who in heck wants to carbon -date something that was alive five minutes ago? The thing smells worse than yesterday's living molluscs.
Radiocarbon-dating was performed on the the shell of a living freshwater mussel and obtained an age of over two thousand years. This was published in a paper by M. C. Kieth and G. M. Anderson, August 16, 1963. "Radiocarbon Dating: Fictitious Results with Mollusk Shells." Science 141:634ff.
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ICR creationists claim that this discredits C-14 dating. It does discredit the C-14 dating of freshwater mussels, but that's about all. Kieth and Anderson show considerable evidence that the mussels acquired much of their carbon from the limestone of the waters they lived in and from some very old humus as well. Carbon from these sources is very low in C-14 because these sources are so old and have not been mixed with fresh carbon from the air. Thus, a freshly killed mussel has far less C-14 than a freshly killed something else, which is why the C-14 dating method makes freshwater mussels seem older than they really are. When dating wood there is no such problem because wood gets its carbon straight from the air, complete with a full dose of C-14. The creationists who quote Kieth and Anderson never tell you this, however.
A good debate, which I only skimmed over, and I haven't yet found the bit dealing with C14 in molluscs or mortar. But I did note a mention of Snelling by Con (arguing for dating being unreliable, lost by a narrow margin of votes, it seems) tried to paper over his doublethink by saying that his talk of Cretaceous rocks did not impose an acceptance of a 60 million Y.o date. This is dishonest since, if con used Snelling to support his position, he must know that he uses million y.o dates in his scientific publications and thousand y.o dates for the same rocks in his creationist publications.
can we get a reference to these living molluscs. sealskins and 800 year old mortar being dated at thousands of years old? Because I haven't been able to find a thing.
True, C14 dating is nothing to do with radiometric dating of rocks, but I would like to challenge this claim. If it is wrong, then it totally discredits the poster, who repeated a false claim without checking. Never mind virtually guaranteeing that the input comes without any divine inspiration at all.
Yup I think PoorinSpirit's argument is that if C-14 dating is unreliable even though the rate of decay is seen as a constant than it is not impossible for other dating methods to proved to be unreliable.
C-14 can be tested against organic material of which we know the date of. Potassium-Argon dating cannot be tested independently in the same way because the vast amount of time supposedly involved. It must be assumed that when the rock formed all the argon-40 escaped from the rock. It must also be assumed that nothing contaminated the sample with argon-40 over these millions or billions of years it remained in the earth.
To put it into prospective: An evolutionist believes that given vast amounts time inorganic material produced life and that simple life evolved into vast array of complicated organisms we can observe today. Yet in that same vast time span the geological material being tested today remained unaffected by out side influences.
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then they couldn't be measured as being younger than they were. and who in heck wants to carbon -date something that was alive five minutes ago? The thing smells worse than yesterday's living molluscs.