IgnatioDeLoyola

Oh wow really? Could you link me into an explanation of the original Greek and explanation of that translation @other one?

Dear @RdJ Hmmm. Not sure I agree there. If someone, for example, believed that only God the father existed and had no son, I don't think they could be Christian. Jewish, sure, but not Christian. Agreed. I was sort of assuming we are dealing with an adult. Imagine, for example, that I didn't believe that Jesus was the lamb of God - that I specifically denied that. Would that still be Christian? I guess I was also thinking: are there other things, besides the 5 I wrote that people think are necessary? Dear @Rick-Parker, Obviously agreed. Dear @other one, Agreed. I think it "sounds" simple. But when you actually start asking hypotheticals, it's harder. For example, John 3:16 says that "whosoever believeth in Him shall not perish but have eternal life." But when you look at it, it can't just be intellectual belief. Satan believes in Jesus, knows exactly who Jesus is, met and tempted him to try to disrupt his ministry, and is absolutely convinced of His truthfulness, love and power of His name and blood. But Satan isn't saved or a Christian for sure.

Dear All, I've started this thread out of genuine interest in the response. The question is, what is absolutely mandatory to believe in to be called a "Christian"? Or, are there beliefs that, if you profess that you hold them or do not hold them, we can be certain that you are not in the Body of Christ (the Church)? There are some obvious answers to this for me: 1. That God exists. (yes, I know, this is really basic, but I've met atheists and agnostics who claim to be Christians) 2. That God is made up of 3 persons (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit). 3. That man fell into sin and was seperated from God as a result, that God made a series of covenants with man to save him from sin, and the final covenant is the blood of Jesus Christ, God's son, the perfect and spotless Pesach lamb who died on a cross at Calvary for all of us. 4. That the only known path out of sin, and towards reconcilliation with God, is through uniting ourselves with the sacrifice of Jesus. 5. We do this through professing inwardly and outwardly that Jesus is our Lord and Saviour, and committing to listen to him and follow him, however imperfectly, in all we do. After that it gets hard. There are many other statements in the Nicene and Apostle's creed that add to this theologically. But would I say that, if you disagreed with one of those, you cannot be a Christian? There are epistemological statements you could add: do you believe the Bible? How much of it do you believe? What other sources of truth are there about God, in your opinion? There are statements on sacraments and salvation: have you been, or do you intend to be, baptised in water? Do you believe that baptism is necessary to belong to the Church? etc. There are many moral statements also that one might add to this also - could you be a Christian if you think murder is okay, for example? I would love your opinions on this, and to understand how other people see this question. Best I

I particularly love the "Queers for Palestine" people. I always think: "fancy a visit? You'll only need to buy a one-way ticket!"

Well, there is a "just so happens" there, isn't there? It "just so happens" that in a totally different set of physical laws, one in which radioactivity might not even occur at all, the reactions and things that do happen just so happen to look exactly like the product of millions and billions of years of radioactive decay when transposed to the new physics. That's a very big coincidence, because you really have to go some to look that way. It's not just one or two wee things. It's literally hundreds of, often independent, pieces of evidence that look for all the world like millions of years worth of radioactive decay. All produced, by complete coincidence, in a totally different physical universe for unconnected reasons - and then when the physics flip to our modern universe, perfectly in place to look like the earth is really old. Sounds a bit like someone wanting to make it look that way to me! I dunno man, it's fooled quite a few people eh! Well, it is a physical constant. I mean, no offense, but I read physics at Uni - I ought to know that time is part of physics... Actually, we can know how fast things are moving in space, and there are several ways of doing this, the most popular being measuring "redshift". And, we can measure distances in deep space too, and the measure is through pretty simple optical physics and geometry. Which was my original point exactly. God changed loads of physical constants and laws, and the result is a universe that just to happens to look like a really old one in the new set of laws, but in the old set (if only we knew!) it'd look really young. I know, I get it. And it just so happens, in the new physics, to look exactly like a decay chain, in exactly the same quantities and ratios we would expect, and it just so happens to agree in apparent age with other "so-called" radioactive decay (which never happened it was just some other kind of reaction in the old world that happened much faster). It's all a massive, massive coincidence - nothing to see here! Completely agree. Who knows whether there were even electrons in the old physics right? I'm just saying though, it now *looks* like radiogenic argon of exactly the type that is formed through radioactive decay. And it's now inert, so there's no reason for it to even be on earth other than radioactive decay (obviously unless you know your gnostic truths about the old physics - in which case it all makes sense and is just a huge coincidence what it looks like now). Who knows! All I know is that the zircons as they are now look awfully like they have billions of years worth of radiation tracks and damage. Clearly there was a process, completely unrelated to radiation, in the old physics that formed these in days. Who knows how? But all I need to know is that it's all a big coincidence that the result, in the new physics, looks like millions of years of radiation damage. To hell with my uniformitarian assumptions, o ye of little faith! Cratars form in the direction of the impact. But hey, that's only in the new physics. You never know back then right! It's all good though, there's little point discussing further. My points remain entirely valid.

Dear @RV_Wizard, Thank you for your interesting and well-thought-through reply. You are right, there is much we are not told. And it's almost impossible to say how uniform the tree rings would be in Eden. I suppose my point in bringing up river varves was to imagine whether several independent lines of evidence could point to a false conclusion about Eden. In the case of varves, as it happens, I don't believe there would be any in the rivers coming out of Eden. Varves are layers of annual or bi-annual sedimentary deposition - often noticed because they are different colours depending on the contents of sedimented layed down in Autumn or Winter vs Spring or Summer. Since there had been zero seasons prior, and no organic matter to change sedimentary deposition, there should not be varves in the rivers coming out of Eden. But if there were varves, and the tree rings in Eden were not uniform, there should be no correlation between them in terms of climatic analysis. Because this would point to a false history of climate that quite simply never existed or happened. As you see in my post above to Dad2, I have pointed out many different, and wholly independent, lines of evidence pointing to a very old earth with various events happening in that earth, and all of them agree. For me, there is so much evidence pointing to the self-same conclusion that I can draw only one of two conclusions: that the earth is very old, or that God has deliberately fabricated a lot of corresponding lines of evidence in this regard. Since God does not "fabricate" anything, the former must be true. Correct. Although a day to God can be rather longer than a day to us. But I do agree that God's own word is the basis for our week. Indeed, agreed. However, 24-hour periods (what we think of as days) are due to the earth's rotation and the relative position of the sun to earth. But the sun didn't exist until day 4. God may think of days in a very different way - or may simply be using days as a human analogy that has very different meaning for a divine being who does not live on a planet under a sun, but in Heaven, and is the source of eternal light. I only think that's the case if you take it fully literally, from a human point of view. Correct, exactly my point. Nor are we entitled to know everything from God. He can, essentially, do as he pleases. Indeed.

Dear @dad2, I won't reply to your whole post point-by-point, because fundamentally you have made a similar point throughout. As I understand it, you are saying: The old processes and physics of the world (which are unknown and could have been anything) just so happen to have produced all the evidence we see today that, when transposed to the present (new) physics of the world, just so happen to look exactly like very long period of radioactive decay has occured. This argument can be extended to any process or observation. Sure, it looks like the debris from a supernova has been travelling for millions of years, but only IF you accept the current physics that time = distance / speed. etc. etc. Of course, this is a contingent possibility. But how different is it to saying "God made it look that way"? According to you, totally different physical processes just so happened to form decay chains in exactly the same ratios and elements that we see in present nuclear physics. And just so happened to link elements now linked by radioactive decay in some other unknown way, but just as it happens always in a way that makes the earth look really old and radiometric dates from independent methods agree. Uranium-238 has over 20 decay products today. In the old physics Uranium didn't decay. But as it happens, it still was somehow connected to all these decay products, and produced them (albeit over much short periods of time) in the exact quantities we would expect from radioactive decay, finally terminating in Lead (the most radioactively stable element in the new physics of the world), but ONLY the lead isotope that is now (in the new physics) associated with decay of U238 (Pb-206 - btw, Lead has 37 unstable isotopes and 4 stable). In the zircon grains where Uranium-238 has been present, we see what appears to be millions of years of accumulated radiation damage. But don't be fooled - don't believe those lying eyes and uniformitarian assumptions! This damage is from a totally different, non-radioactive process, that just so happened to damage and discolour these grains in an identical way to long-term radiation damage today. Potassium, a highly reactive metal, was somehow connected chemically or physically to Argon, an inert gas, and somehow produced Argon around it, though not through radioactive decay. And only Potassium-40 has this quality (K-39 and K-41 aren't somehow linked to Argon), and then only Argon-40 (not ANY of the other 25 known isotopes of Argon). Pure coincidence, nothing to see here. And yes, that distant supernova *looks* like it happened millions of years ago from the speed of the debris and distance to the centre, but don't be so hasty. You don't know if all the debris was slowed down a few thousand years ago. In the old physics, there might have been no reason why this debris couldn't have been moving close to or faster than light speed - relativity only exists in the new Physics. You say there's a massive meteor cratar in the Chicxulub peninsula in Mexico from a meteor large enough to wipe out most life on earth, along with shocked quartz typical of an impact and worldwide Iridium anomaly typical of a massive meteor strike, and a huge discontinuity in the fossil record at the supposed same "time". Sure. But how do you know that, in the old physics, supposed meteor cratars didn't form naturally from some other process, along with shocked quartz, and through some other (now unknown) physical process distribute Iridium across the globe? I assure you, I'm not trying to make fun of you @dad2. I'm trying to communicate how close, indeed identical, your proposition is to saying "God just made it look that way". The ludicrous number of coincidences involved in the "old physics" making things in the "new physics" look millions or billions of years old are countless. I could write many, many more paragraphs similar to the above talking about loads of other natural, measurable phenomena that all point towards an older age and real events in the long past, and that would involve the same ridiculous number and type of coincidences to explain in your hypothesis. But I think I've made my point of why I think your hypothesis is essentially the same as saying that God made it look that way, and thus calling God a liar. All the best, I

Dear @RV_Wizard, Thank you for your thoughtful reply. I wonder if you can answer a question I have on the difference between "maturity" and "appearance of history". I think these are quite different things. You say you think trees created in the garden of Eden would have rings. I am wondering however about the composition of those rings. I know this may seem a very stupid and detailed question, but bear with me. Tree rings are interesting things. They do usually tell us information about the age of a tree. But they also often contain information about the climate and nature as the tree grew. For example, the width of rings tells us about the abundance of natural growth elements during that season of growth. The darkness or lightness of rings tells us about nutritional conditions. The chemical makeup of rings tells us about the light and nutrients present in the season they grew. The amoung of C-14 remaining in tree rings tells us about when they grew exactly. I'm sure you get the point. Now, would I be surprised if trees had rings in the Garden of Eden? Probably not (although I would say it's a coin toss whether they did or not). But I would be VERY surprised if they were like modern tree rings. Imagine for example I chopped down one of these trees and examined the rings. I would expect them to be very, very uniform, because the trees didn't grow during different seasons causing disuniformity - they were specially created by God. I wouldn't expect "older" rings to tell tales of drought, or diseases the tree might have had in the past (why would they? the tree had no diseases or past disuniformity of growth of nutrition). I wouldn't expect there to be significant climactic variation, and therefore colouration, of rings - because the tree didn't grow in different climates or epochs. I would expect there to be the same levels of C-14 (and other elements) in each ring - because they tree hasn't grown over a long period allowing changes to "earlier" rings - therefore such patterns should not exist. This is the sort of difference I am talking about when I look at the appearance of maturity, and the appearance of history / age. Imagine then I look at the rivers coming out of Eden. I take core samples from the riverbeds. Would these have varves telling of different seasonal deposition of minerals, when there had been no seasons or mineral variation? What if these varves were present, and told of the same seasonal weather, climate and nutritional patterns the tree rings did from the garden? Would you agree that this would be a sign of history / age, not only maturity? Would God create such fabrications that gave the appearance of a real age and history, rather than maturity? Indeed, the agreement of the tree ring and varve history would suggest a genuine past that hadn't happened - would God decieve man in this way? You say that the truth lies with the eternal creator, not the temporary creation. Of course that is true. But creation is part of our revelation of the creator, though scarred by our sin. It is one of the sources of information we have about Him, because his hand and design and intelligence lies behind all the created order. I do not wish to put barriers ahead of anyone's faith. I am not seeking to steal and destroy as Satan does. But I must tell you, if there is an "old earth deception", it is a deception of God's own hand, and this is impossible. Insisting that a person either believes in God and salvation, or that the earth is old, really is a barrier to faith for anyone who understands the evidence. It is to say that I must both accept that God is an active deceiver of believers as well as the Way, the Truth and the Life. I cannot believe God would put such a stumbling block in the way of faith, nor that God could intentionally makes things look a false way when the truth is different. All the best, I

@dad2 Understood. So likely the physical laws and makeup of the universe changed ~4300 years ago (about 2300BC)? I understand. In practical terms though, for supposedly very "old" rocks, the vast, vast majority of the "daughter" isotope would have been in there to start off with from the previously created (pre-Babel) world. For example, Rubidium-87 has a half-life of 49 billion years. That means that very, very little Strontium-87 in rocks is from Rudidium-87 if its only had 4000 years to decay. Similar conclusions can be reached for Uranium-238 (half life of 4.5 billion years), Potassium-40 (half-life 1.2 billion years). We therefore have to assume that the vast majority of "daughter" isotopes of these that exist aren't daughters at all - they were there already 4400 years ago when the physics of the world changed, and have had very small quantities added to them since then. Great. We understand each other fully, I believe. This is exactly what I thought you were saying. However, I am still unconvinced that your hypothesis could possibly explain the physical world we see today. My contention here however, is part scientific, and part theological. Let me give you some examples of my problems with this: Decay Chains: Some radioactive elements do not decay immediately to the ultimate daughter element. For example, Uranium doesn't decay immediately to Lead. Rather, there is a long chain of radioactive elements from Uranium to Lead (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decay_chain). As a bunch of Uranium (or indeed Thorium) decays, the decay chain is set up. After many millions of years, the decay has been going on long enough that the decay chain stabilises, with the ratios of decay chain elements becoming constant. The ratios of these elements are dependent on their half-life. We find many, many rocks with stable decay chains - that is, the exact ratio of radioactive elements we expect from their half-lives. This suggests one of two things: 1. The decay has been going on many millions of year. 2. In your scenario, that God created rocks with exactly the amount of (at that time non-radioactive) elements to make it later look like a stable decay chain was in progress to scientists measuring the supposed age of the rock. Remember, this has been measured in literally thousands upon thousands of rocks. The decay chains are so long (often involving literally dozens of elements) that the exact ratios occuring by chance are astronomical. The only conclusion is that God must have deliberately set these rocks up to have the appearance of great age when this was not the case. Let me give you another example: Multiple Agreeing Dating Methods: Given your hypothesis, there is no reason at all that multiple dating methods should ever agree in a rock, because the amount of parent and daughter element in a rock are completely coincidental (since SR-87 didn't originate from Rb-87, Pb-206 didn't come from U-238, etc.) Yet, using completely independent methods of radiometric dating, we very often find remarkable agreement. Are we to believe that this is coincidence (almost impossible statistically!) or are we to believe that God created the rocks this way (such that they would look extremely old when analysed by scientific methods, when really they are very young). When you actually look at the methods of dating themselves, you find once again that God must have gone to great lengths to set the rocks up to look old. For example, in Rb-Sr dating, God must have formed rocks with the exact ratios of Rb-87, Sr-87 AND non-radiogenic Sr-86 to form old-looking isochrons. This is exceptionally precise work. Or in the case of K-Ar dating, God must have put Ar-40 in rocks to begin with and trapped this Argon, even though it doesn't occur *anywhere* else in nature. The only known source of Ar-40 is from the decay of K-40, and we ONLY find it in rocks with K-40 (because it isn't naturally occuring). If it was important for God to trap Ar-40 in rocks, why did he only trap it in rocks that had K-40? Why do we find this non-naturally occuring gas only in rocks with "parent element" K-40? Is God a liar / trickster? While the questions above are partially scientific, they are actually theological. The basic analysis is that the rocks we find either have experienced very long periods of radioactive decay, or have been created to look like they have experienced very long periods of radioactive decay. This is different from creating things to look *mature*. Creating Adam as a human adult is making him mature. Creating Adam with a scar on his knee where he fell as a child, even though he was never a child, is creating him to look old. It is creating a false history for Adam. It is the same for the physical evidence we see. And that brings me to the ultimate question: is God capable of falsehood or deception? Could He trick us in this way? Can God lie, or deceive? The Bible gives us an answer of course: we know that Satan is the father of lies, and that God is Truth and Life, as we have experienced Him in His only begotten son Jesus. Therefore I conclude that, while your hypothesis has a certain naive plausibility, it cannot explain the physical evidence we see UNLESS God is deliberately and carefully fabricating an artificial and false history of Earth. Since God would not do this, I cannot ascribe to your hypothesis and therefore reject it. Best I P.S. I could have used a third (and equally compelling) case - of what we see in the galaxy and universe. For example, we see supernova explosions where, charting the speed of the debris and direction of the explosion, we can conclude that the explosion must have happened many millions of years ago. But of course, in your proposed universe, this is false. God created the debris mid-flight, to make it look like there had been an explosion many millions of years ago that, in actual fact, did not occur. Again, God has created "theatre" - a movie show in the sky to make everything look very ancient when in fact the universe is very young - the supernova never happened. And again, the movie he has created is very intricate and detailed - down to the composition of the elements in the explosion that we measure. Again I say: God isn't a liar. He isn't Steven Spielberg. He isn't in the movie business.

Hey @dad2, Thank you for your carefully worded and thought through reply brother. I think I understand what you are proposing. Let me outline it for you to confirm this: 1. Prior to the fall of man (assuming that the introduction of sin into the world was the point this changed), a totally different physical paradigm was in operation. This paradigm may well be unimaginable to us. 2. Therefore, the fundamental forces described by equations like the semi-empirical mass formula (the equation that governs the stability of nuclei) may not have even existed before the fall of man. Therefore, radioactive decay likely didn't exist before the fall of man. Is this correct so far? If so, there are still some really obvious questions to ask. We find in present day a bunch of what we think of as "decay products" and "parent elements" in rocks and minerals. When we test these rocks and minerals to find out the ammounts of "decay products" and "parent elements", and we calculate the apparent ages of these rocks (on the assumption that they really are decay elements and radioactive decay really has been going on since forever), these rocks appear many millions or even billions of years old. Now, my assumption is that your answer is that these elements we find aren't really decay products, they were in the minerals and rocks all along from an originally created earth that worked under a totally different set of physical laws. Therefore, the age isn't really an age, but an apparent age - they have nothing to do with the age of the rocks - they were there all along. Is this correct? Or am I going off base with way too many assumptions? Best, I

Dear @dad2, I do genuinely understand this argument but, as a qualified physicist, I am obliged to tell you that it is misinformed, and undercuts many other solid apologetic arguments for God's existence and precise design of the universe. The reason for my disagreement with you has to do with how fundamental the laws governing radioactivity are to the nature and consistency of matter and the universe. Most people, unless they have studied physics, don't understand just how fundamental radioactivity is to the formation and nature of matter. Let me try to explain. What is a nucleus? Every atom has a "nucleus". This is a very small ball of positively charged protons, and neutral neutrons, that form the core of an atom, and determine its fundamental qualities such as weight, size, chemical element, nature (metal, gas, etc.). The nucleus is a fine balance of different forces - some attractive, and some repulsive. For example, protons (being positive) repel each other through the "electromagnetic force". Protons and neutrons attract each other through the "strong force". In total, there are 6 types of "forces" (or 5 if you exclude gravity, which only applies to very very large nuclei, like neutron stars) which effect the energetic balance of nuclei. Why do some Nuclei decay? If a nucleus is too energetic, it cannot exist because it would instantly split apart. Indeed, there are many, many possible universes where nuclei cannot exist, because the balance of fundamental forces has to be "just right" for any matter to exist at all. You may have heard of "fine tuning" arguments for God's existence - this is one of them. Now, some nuclei exist on the "border" of being stable and unstable. That is, they are quite energetic, but not energetic enough to split immediately and therefore not exist. We call these nuclei radioactive - and exactly how radioactive they are depends on how much energy they have within them, depending on the balance of these fundamental forces. This balance determines how often these nuclei decay, and this determines their half life. As you have noted in your post, if you change some fundamental constants (or if they were different in the past), then you can change the half-life of these elements. BUT - this creates a LOT more problems / questions than it answers, because of how fundamental these forces are to nature. Here are some of the questions / issues changes in these fundamental constants creates: If nuclei were more unstable in the past, elements that are currently stable would have been unstable back then. To make radioactive decay faster in the past, you need to alter some of the fundamental balance and constants of forces in nature. The result will necessarily make ALL nuclei more unstable. In-so-doing, you widen the number and scope of nuclei that are unstable, creating huge amounts more radioactivity. Why would God do this? How would he prevent this extra radioactivity damaging humans, and other life on earth? Indeed, if nuclei were more unstable in the past, some radioactive elements couldn't have existed at all, obliterating many of the decay-chains we find in rocks today. From the evidence we have today, this clearly didn't happen. Radioactivity produces heat. Making every nucleus way more unstable would destroy the earth and everything in it. Most folks don't know this, but the earth's core is kept molten through radioactive decay, and the heat released by it. By definition, ALL decay causes energy to be released from nuclei - because radioactive decay is the process by which nuclei become less energetic, and thus more stable. This is why nuclear power stations work - they stimulate decay to become faster in a chain reaction - and this creates heat which drives turbines. It is also how nuclear fission (uranium / plutonium) bombs work - through the instant, or near instant, release of nuclear decay energy. If radioactive decay had been much faster and more widespread in the past, not only would the rocks and minerals it occurs in have melted and reset their radiometric dates, but in fact the earth would have melted and at least partially vapourised. Such is the level of energy released by radioactivity. Clearly this did not happen at any time from the Genesis narrative onwards. There is no alteration of constants / forces that would make radioactivity accelerate by the same amount in different radioactive elements. For your hypothesis to hold true, there must be a constant or set of constants that you can alter that accelerates radioactive decay by the same rate / ratio in all radioactive substances. Otherwise, you wouldn't have different methods of radiometric dating agreeing on ages so often in the same rock. In other words, decay would have to become exactly 4 billion times faster in Rubidium-87, Uranium-235, Uranium-238, Potassium-40, etc, etc all at the same time. But these elements have very, very different nuclei, that will be effected differently by changing certain fundamental forces. There is no constant, or set of constants, that you can change to make these nuclei's decay rates rise by the exact same ratio or multiplier. Therefore any proposed change would make radiometric dates differ radically depending on what dating method you used. This would be immediately apparent in almost all radiometric dating results, except those tiny tiny few that just so happened to agree by accident / coincidence. If the Universe is "fine tuned" for creation to exist, why would God mess with this fine-tuning post-hoc ex-facto?. I think this question speaks for itself - but to drive home the point, if God created the universe perfectly so that life could exist, why would he make matter fundamentally more stable after the fall of man, or after the flood? Wasn't the universe and everything in it created perfectly by God in the first place? Why would God make the universe's matter more unstable, then wait for man to sin, then make all matter more stable? While this is a theological rather than scientific argument, it still presents a considerable obstacle to accepting your narrative. Summary Sorry this was such a long and technical post @dad2. But I'm sure you can see why it had to be. In short, your hypothetical scenario is based on ignorance of the underlying physics behind radioactivity. It doesn't make sense or hold up to any form of logical scrutiny. More than that, it doesn't produce the world we observe today (and thus cannot explain it), nor can it possibly fit in with the narrative we find in the book of Genesis. And, it opens up the possibility that God created the world in some way "wrongly" to begin with, and had to tune fundamental physics as a result, which is obviously not the case. Sorry if that conclusion is blunt. I know you didn't mean badly or harmfully in your original post. Best I

@farouk I hope noone here is thinking of dating any of their relatives, that'd be well alarming!!!

Oh, I should also have said in the post above, around U-Pb dating: Due to metamorphosis lead-leaching does happen, as you rightly said. I said above it was rare for U-Pb to be used alone as a result. That is true - although I should have mentioned that multiple U-Pb methods can be used together to account for lead leaching / loss. Large rocks with complex thermal histories would be preferentially dated using U-Pb Concordia-Discordia method. This is where a discordia plot involving of both U-235 and U-238 results from several different zircons (which are divergent as a result of lead-loss) is drawn against the corcordia (ideal plot), and the intercept of the concordia and discordia gives the age. This can then be compared with other independent dating methods also (such as K-Ar, Ar-Ar, Sm-Nd, etc.) BTW - another wonderful advantage of zircons is that they layer during metamorphic events (showing the testing scientist that metamorphosis has happened). That means that multiple layers on a zircon implies multiple metamorphic events - meaning that scientists can then test several zircons with U-235 and U-238 because it is likely a discordia will be present. Like an isochron, a discordia forms from a rock of old age that has had lead leached. Unlike an isochron, a false discordia cannot be formed by mixing (because zircon grains are independent of each other.)

So for a short amount of time (hours or days) magma is at a temperature where Lead could enter a Zircon. Wonderful. And where is your proposed source of *radiogenic* Lead isotopes close to all Zircons during that short time of formation, that just so happens to inject enough radiogenic lead to date the rock as very old, but also in agreement with other forms of radiometric dating? No, because Uranium loss once the rock is formed is almost impossible, save for a metamorphic event. Uranium is extremely heavy and immotile (all isotopes) - and therefore cannot move unless the rock melts. If the rock melts, the isochrons and K-Ar dates will reset, and the U-Pb dates will reset or partially reset depending on the scale and longevity of the melt. That's why not even the most ardent creationist suggests Uranium leaching as a probable explanation for old age dates in rocks. If you wish to posit a hypothesis however about how and why this may happen, you may do so here. I can only presume in absence of any actual hypothesis from you. All I have is insinuation, not explanation or prediction. Radiogenic lead cannot move into a Zircon, even during a metamorphic event, unless it exists in higher concentration outside the Zircon than within. I have never heard of this being the case (although I challenge you to present a case study of this). Lead moving out of a zircon will (a) give a younger date than the true date (hardly a boon for biblical literalists), (b) be a metamorphic event that can and will be detected using other methods of radiometric dating, (c) will put U-Pb dating at variance with other methods, with younger ages reported. I'm not sure about your understand of geology, but heavy metals don't tend to leak our of solid rocks. Nor do I understand where you think all the high-concentration rare heavy metal isotopes that are moving into these rocks to give artifically high dates are coming from? They are very, very rare in nature, and by their very definition are all radiogenic! I would happily do so if you asked. There are literally thousands of cases where multiple independent dating methods have been in agreement. Would you like some links? Agreed, God could just have seeded a bunch of rocks with exactly the right amount of radiogenic lead, argon, strontium and other elements to look really old. But again, this comes down the "God dunnit" argument. Impossible to disprove, but as I said I have theological reasons for disagreeing. I such sources of radiogenic lead existed (they don't), and such metamorphic events occured and were undetectable (they're not), then yes. I think if you want any assumption in somewhere as big as nature to be "universal", outside of fundamental constants, you'll have a hard time. That is why it's so useful to have multiple methods that check assumptions, detect metamorphic events, etc. Demanding that assumptions are always correct everywhere, even when we can test if they are wrong, is entirely unreasonable. Depends on the type of evidence. It is always possible to find an exception that proves the rule. For example, if we do enough radiometric dating of enough rocks, we will find a rock one day where two methods both happen to yield the same incorrect date. This is not a theory, it is a statistical fact. But it wouldn't call into question the wider method. So I will await your evidence I suppose! Of course, but we should believe the explanation that is plain, obvious, well evidenced, and staring us in the face. When you come up with a testable alternative, I'll happily review your hypothesis and its testable predictions. Actually, even in this case, you would *still* have something to explain. That is, why so often faulty methods of dating which could yield any date at all happen to agree within a margin of error. Hypotheses should account for the known observed facts after all. And, btw, this is why so many creationist organisations started to posit more systemic issues with dating, such as the possibility that decay rates had increased dramatically at some point in the past. Please do. I would start at U-Pb if I were you - since Ar-40 doesn't exist in the atmosphere, and existing Sr-87 is actually a testable assumption of Rb-Sr dating (any the same holds for other isochron methods). Which is why it is very rare to see a rock dated with purely U-Pb, especially where a complex thermal history is suspected. I look forward to reading them! They aren't calibrated against each other. They are wholly independent, and only require known decay rates of each radioactive element to function. These are two competing statements. The second is right - different methods can disagree with each other, especially where a rock has a complex thermal history, and for example radiogenic lead has been leached and U-Pb gives an artificially low date. However, this is the exception and not the norm, and is readily detectable using other methods which can detect metamorphic events. If you think you, I welcome your systematic review of the literature on radiometric dates using multiple methods. They haven't. If you have evidence otherwise, pray tell. They don't. That's why it's so powerful to use several in conjuction - because they make different and independent assumptions that are uncorrelated to each other. You can always present evidence that they do though. Again, a table comparing the assumptions of U-Pb, K-Ar / Ar-Ar and Rb-Sr would be helpful. In other words, evidence. No, it doesn't. The question is, if the assumptions are false, why do dating methods so often agree? This does not rely on the accuracy of assumptions - in fact it rejects their accuracy as a premise for the question. All false. I refer to my demands for evidence in all of these areas above. I dealt with false isochrons in my answer originally. They are possible. But half of all of them are negative, and their results is completely random. I addressed this already. Which it almost never will, because it will bear no relation to the results of other dating methods, and is as likely to give a date in the future as the past. No. I'm asking you to evaluate from the data how many false isochrons there are (easy to do as half are negative), and also look at whether they agree with other methods (they usually do, where a mixing isochron wouldn't). Certainty has levels and limits, a nuance you seem to have missed my dear friend! No, I am not. I can very easily test this, both hypothetically and actually. Do you wish to know why? If God created humans with BCG scars on their arms when they never had a childhood injection, or broken little toes when they'd never been stubbed, then I would call Him a liar. But he doesn't, because God is not a liar.

Dear Kiwi Christian, Thanks for posting about this. However, you do seem to be slightly confused doctrinally. You are right that no man could possibly be infallible save our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Knowing that Peter was a sinner (and had very recently proved it!), and that every man is a sinner, Jesus was aware that His Church, and its temporal leader on earth (Peter and his successors) would make mistakes. However, he nevertheless wished the Church to be both united (be one, holy, and universal church), and for the Church to have authority in teaching about faith, scripture, etc. This is why he made Peter the temporal leader of the Church (even though Jesus himself is the spiritual and eternal head). "And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven." Matthew 16:18-19 In the first part of this statement, Jesus gives Peter authority over the church. But in the second part, he also makes a unique promise - that whatever Peter binds on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever he looses on earth will be loosed in heaven. Then in Acts 1:20-26 Peter establishes apostolic succession - which is the first time he "uses" this power given him by Jesus - to bind something on earth (the succession of the disciple's apostolates) so that it is bound in heaven. This is how we have had an unbroken succession of Peters, from Simon to Francis. The question then becomes: what is Peter gets something wrong? We know the original Peter did (Paul had to correct him with regards to circumcision for example). God may guide Peter (and He does) - but at one point or other, Peter will nevertheless err as a sinful human being. The answer, for me, is simple: that God will make it right in heaven, even if it is wrong. If people follow the teachings of Peter faithfully, even if they are not quite right, God will credit them with righteousness through their faith, as he did Abraham. That is, it is MORE important to God that there is a central authority that everyone can agree on and look to, than that this central authority is always right. God hates the Church splitting apart into many pieces, which is why he established one, holy, Catholic and apostolic Church through Peter, to save us from heresy and infighting. So, he puts Peter in charge, helps him with the holy spirit, and where he errs he makes it right in heaven. This is also why, btw, we have one bible (because the Pope convened bishops around the world to decide what should go into the bible and what books should not) - one creed (because the Pope called the Council of Nicaea to decide upon a universal statement of faith and combat gnostic heresies) - one set of sacraments reserved for particular circumstances, etc. None of these examples speak to Papal Infallibility, which only relates to ex-cathedra statements, to the whole church, on matters of faith and belief. These are understandably rare. Hope this helps brother, N