Four questions for YECs - (and a little history of creationism vs evolution)

[teddyv]

1 hour ago, Retrobyter said:

Shalom, The Barbarian.

See, THIS is what I take issue with when it comes to the interpretation of simple equations by evolutionary scientists.

The RATE of decay does NOT mean that the substance being tested has been around that long!

What is being described in these instances of "half-lives" is a RATE of change. It does NOT mean that the substance has actually gone through all those half-lives! This descibes a hyperbolic regression in the form of t(1/2) = ln 2 / k, where k is the half-life value for first-order decay rates. In the case of C-14, the value of k is 5730 years.

BUT, that does NOT mean that the substance has necessariy been around long enough to have gone through more than a single half-life period.

It's just as @Sparks said. NO ONE WAS AROUND TO OBSERVE THE ORIGINAL SUBSTANCE! The half-life has been CALCULATED to be that amount, but again, that doesn't mean that it was actually FOLLOWED to be that amount in the past! There are NUMEROUS contributing factors that could affect the expected results! Thus, one is making the ASSUMPTION that "all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation!" (2 Peter 3:4b).

Peter goes on:

2 Peter 3:5-6 (KJV)

5 For this they WILLINGLY are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens (skies) were of old, and the earth standing out of the water (the Pangaea continent out of the Panthalassa ocean) and in the water (within the canopy of water above): 6 Whereby (by which) the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished: (The FLOOD)!

Why is it that people have such a hard time just accepting the Bible for what it claims?!

Today, we have a name for this assumption (that "all things continue as they were from the beginning"): It's called uniformitarianism. And, it is fundamentally wrong! It's wrong because we have EVIDENCE of a world-wide disaster by water! Thus, "all things" DID NOT "continue as they were from the beginning!"

The Grand Canyon couldn't have been formed in thousands or millions of years, because of a little thing called EROSION! It had to have been cut QUICKLY! Indeed, we have such evidence in canyons formed more than 100 feet deep from the aftermath of Mount St. Helens eruption on May 18, 1980 in just 4 years time afterward! See Mount St Helens research. The canyons were already showing evidence of erosion! So, why doesn't the Grand Canyon have more erosion?

If the Grand Canyon was cut quickly, I doubt it would have all the bends in it. Also, the Mt St Helens is a poor comparison as the material being eroded was not as indurated as the Grand Canyon stratigraphy.

I .also told by creationists that the Grand Canyon sediments were laid down in the Flood, then lithofed, then eroded.

But YEC can't even decide on the pre Flood-post-Flood sediment boundary in the stratigraphic columns 

[Retrobyter]

17 minutes ago, The Barbarian said:

Wrong.  That's a fiction you've accepted even though it's clearly wrong.   If you were right, then moonrise would be morning.   No way to dodge that.

Shalom, The Barbarian.

Nope. Again, one must THINK a little: Moonlight doesn't have the strength to turn night into day. The text is talking about enough light by which to see vivid colors, and change the black night sky into a blue day sky. No sun required, just LIGHT!

17 minutes ago, The Barbarian said:

He created all things, including the Sun.  

I agree! And, He did it when He created the "kowkhaaViym!" the "ROUND OBJECTS!"

17 minutes ago, The Barbarian said:

However, the fact remains that morning is when the Sun rises.   If you have to redefine words to make your doctrine work, isn't that a pretty strong clue that there's something wrong with it?

By an ENGLISH definition, perhaps! BUT, the text wasn't written in English! It was written in Hebrew! And, Hebrew used the word "break" or "plow!"

I'm not redefining anything. All I'm doing is investigating the original words for THEIR definitions. There's nothing wrong with the "doctrine" when one has the right concepts.

[The Barbarian]

7 hours ago, Retrobyter said:

See, THIS is what I take issue with when it comes to the interpretation of simple equations by evolutionary scientists.

That's your first error.  The realization that radioactive decay showed billions of years, had nothing to do with evolution.   And BTW, it replaced an earlier scientific theory that showed the Earth being about 10 million years old, based on the assumption that there was no additional heating of the Earth's interior after it was formed.  

7 hours ago, Retrobyter said:

The RATE of decay does NOT mean that the substance being tested has been around that long!

It only shows how long it has been since it was last melted, not how long it has been in existence.  

7 hours ago, Retrobyter said:

It's just as @Sparks said. NO ONE WAS AROUND TO OBSERVE THE ORIGINAL SUBSTANCE!

The unscientific and faulty assumption that evidence cannot tell us about things we didn't actually see, is so obviously wrong that it's surprising that anyone would even suggest it.

7 hours ago, Retrobyter said:

5 For this they WILLINGLY are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens (skies) were of old, and the earth standing out of the water (the Pangaea continent out of the Panthalassa ocean) and in the water (within the canopy of water above): 6 Whereby (by which) the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished: (The FLOOD)!

If you have to insert your corrections into scripture to make it fit your assumptions, isn't that sufficient evidence that you've made some errors?

7 hours ago, Retrobyter said:

Today, we have a name for this assumption (that "all things continue as they were from the beginning"): It's called uniformitarianism.

No.   Uniformitarianism is the idea that the same rules that we see in place today have been the same since the beginning.   Lyell (who first introduced the idea) did not deny changes over time, nor did he deny that there are occasional catastrophic changes.  

7 hours ago, Retrobyter said:

It's wrong because we have EVIDENCE of a world-wide disaster by water!

No, and that's why most geologists in the 1800s became convinced that there never was a global flood.   Roderick Murchison, one of the most important geologists of the time, openly recanted his former belief in a worldwide flood, citing the lack of evidence for such a deluge.

7 hours ago, Retrobyter said:

The Grand Canyon couldn't have been formed in thousands or millions of years, because of a little thing called EROSION!

Had to be over a long time.   You see, sudden erosion can't cut entrenched meanders.   They only form gradually in very old river valleys that have been uplifted or the outlet water level has fallen. 

But very deep and wide meanders can also be found cutting hard rocks. Such meanders are called incised or entrenched meanders. The exception is that entrenched meanders are formed during the upliftment of land where river is young. They widen and deepen over time and can be found as deep gorges or canyons in hard rock.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entrenched_river

7 hours ago, Retrobyter said:

ndeed, we have such evidence in canyons formed more than 100 feet deep from the aftermath of Mount St. Helens eruption on May 18, 1980 in just 4 years time afterward!

You've been misled about that.  I've been there, not too many years after the eruption.   The gullies formed by the runoff in soft sediment were at most a few meters deep, and if they got deeper they would slump into the channel.  The sinuosity index of the gullies and the Toutle River into which they flow never approaches that of the meanders in the Grand Canyon. 

https://earth.google.com/web/search/mt.+st.+helens/@46.24449273,-122.26122091,1056.89349584a,13926.05253319d,35y,11.93734291h,41.28465229t,-0r/data=CnkaTxJJCiUweDU0OTY5OTU2NTY4YTI2OTE6MHg2OWRkYjRmNGI2Y2Y5NGM3Gaa3mtB_GEdAITmtgOeDjF7AKg5tdC4gc3QuIGhlbGVucxgBIAEiJgokCQlXCqjDZzRAEQpXCqjDZzTAGbx9vwWbIEVAIbx9vwWb4E3A

Would you like to see some pictures?

7 hours ago, Retrobyter said:

The canyons were already showing evidence of erosion! So, why doesn't the Grand Canyon have more erosion?

I'd say that 1,800 meters compared to a few meters would qualify as "more erosion."   And notice that in the Grand Canyon, it is in hardened rock, not soft sediment as it is around Mt. St. Helens.   Here's a shot of those gullies.   Notice  that the walls of the gullies collapse into slopes of sediment as the gully cuts more than about ten meters of depth.  

 

Edited May 21, 2023 by The Barbarian

[The Barbarian]

17 minutes ago, Retrobyter said:

Nope. Again, one must THINK a little: Moonlight doesn't have the strength to turn night into day.

That excuse won't work either.   Scripture says it was made to provide light.  So if we can trust God that excuse fails, too.   Sunrise is dimmer than daylight as well.

However, the fact remains that morning is when the Sun rises.   If you have to redefine words to make your doctrine work, isn't that a pretty strong clue that there's something wrong with it?

21 minutes ago, Retrobyter said:

By an ENGLISH definition, perhaps! BUT, the text wasn't written in English!

So your argument is that our Bible is wrong.   I don't think so.

Moreover, the Hebrew word also means sunrise...

Strong's Concordance:

Boqer:
dawn (1), dawn* (2), day (1), daybreak (1), every morning (5), morning (195), mornings (2), soon (1), tomorrow morning (1).

24 minutes ago, Retrobyter said:

I'm not redefining anything.

In English and Hebrew you are.

 

[The Barbarian]

And I think physicists are a much more reliable source of information about physics than you are.   Sorry about that.

2 hours ago, Sparks said:

At least I understand the math and know why it fails.

Sorry, physicists are a more credible source for the math than you are.   I notice you can't even denfine information mathematically.   How could you hope to debate real physicists over this?

 

[The Barbarian]

The Andromeda Galaxy is a galaxy like ours, but somewhat larger.   It is a tiny blur of light in the night sky, but it has billions of stars like our own.  Comparing the sizes of our own solar system which is about 0.0005 light-years across, we're looking at a galaxy about 152,000 light years across.   And yet that is only a tiny smudge of light in the sky, about 3 degrees of arc.  Doing a bit of trig, one can determine the distance, which is about 25 million light-years.  

So YE is completely refuted by the night sky.

2 hours ago, Sparks said:

Trigonometric Parallax works exceptionally well at relatively short distances. 

This is not about parallax.   This is why you keep having difficulties.   We have a good estimate for the size of the Andromeda Galaxy, and we have the degrees of arc it shows from the Earth.    If you have one side of a triangle, and the opposite angle, you can find the sides and the distance from the one side to that angle.   Would you like me to show you how?

 

 

[Retrobyter]

6 minutes ago, teddyv said:

If the Grand Canyon was cut quickly, I doubt it would have all the bends in it. Also, the Mt St Helens is a poor comparison as the material being eroded was not as indurated as the Grand Canyon stratigraphy.

Shalom, teddyv.

When hydrologists look at the strata, they see not only the layering, but also the discontinuities in the strata! Mount St. Helens is a miniature of the Grand Canyon, cut in 4 years!

6 minutes ago, teddyv said:

I .also told by creationists that the Grand Canyon sediments were laid down in the Flood, then lithofed, then eroded.

Sorry? I don't know the word "lithofed." Are you saying it was "lithofied?" as in "changed into rock?" or are you saying that it was "lifted up?" or ...what?

6 minutes ago, teddyv said:

But YEC can't even decide on the pre Flood-post-Flood sediment boundary in the stratigraphic columns 

That's because "the fountains of the deep were broken up!" (Genesis 7:11). They weren't placidly laid down in layers; they were JUMBLED TOGETHER! There ARE NO pre-Flood sections! What was pre-Flood can't be distinguished from what was laid down post-Flood!

Before the Flood, we have 1,656 years (See Genesis 5), and then there was the year of the Flood. In all of the time prior to the Flood, we're not told of any geologic changes to the land - no volcanoes, no earthquakes.

Then, in Genesis 7, we read,

Genesis 7:11-12 (KJV)

11 In the six hundredth (600th) year of Noah's life, in the second (2nd) month, the seventeenth (17th) day of the month, the same day were ALL the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows (sluicegates) of heaven were opened. 12 And the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights.

This was NOT some local, "tranquil" flood! This was a MASSIVE EVENT! I do believe that, before the Flood, we did have a Pangaea - a single massive continent - that rose above sea level, making all the waters below the skies a single massive "Panthallassa" - a single ocean. And, the Flood didn't begin on the land but beneath the ocean! This disrupted the balance above the skies, and started the rain to fall.

Have you ever considered just how much water would have fallen if the waters below the skies were the same amount as the waters above the skies? Whereas the amount of water in the ocean DID change during the FLOOD, there was the same amount of water overall as there is today.

It is estimated that the earth contains 326 quintillion gallons of water! If God divided the waters in half and put half of that water above the skies, then we're talking 163 quintillion gallons above the skies. Now, there are 24 hours in a day and night period, and it rained for 40 days and 40 nights. So, it rained for 24 x 40 = 960 hours. That means that we have an average of 163 quintillion gallons / 960 hours = 169,791,666,666,666,667 gallons fell per hour! The surface area of the earth is 196,900,000 square miles. Multiplying the square miles by 5280 x 5280 square feet per square mile and dividing the total gallons / hour by the result, gives one 30.9316 gallons / sq ft / hour ... ON AVERAGE! No breathing creature on the face of the earth would have stood a chance! They would be drowned in a matter of a couple of minutes!

[FreeGrace]

5 hours ago, Retrobyter said:

Shalom, FreeGrace.

It's a simple conversion from miles per second to miles per year:

186,000 miles / second x (60 seconds / minute) x (60 minutes / hour) x )24 hours / day) x (365.24219 days per year) = 186,000 x 50 x 60 x 24 x 365.2421 miles / year = 5,869,588,090,176 miles / year.

So, 1 light-year = 5,869,588,090,176 miles. Now, multiply that by 14.6 billion L-Y, and one gets 8.56959861165696 x 10^22 miles. Calculators just convert to scientific notation. One could also write 85,695,986,116,569,600,000,000 miles. That's worded as 85 sextillion 695 quintillion 986 quadrillion 116 trillion 569 billion 600 million miles.

My calculator doesn't have that many spaces.  Thanks!

[Sparks]

8 hours ago, teddyv said:

If the Grand Canyon was cut quickly, I doubt it would have all the bends in it. Also, the Mt St Helens is a poor comparison as the material being eroded was not as indurated as the Grand Canyon stratigraphy.

I .also told by creationists that the Grand Canyon sediments were laid down in the Flood, then lithofed, then eroded.

But YEC can't even decide on the pre Flood-post-Flood sediment boundary in the stratigraphic columns 

Mount Saint Helens just illustrates the idea that a deep canyon can be cut in hours, not trillions of years.

The biggest problem for Grand Canyon is the Kiabab Uplift.  Rivers don't flow up hill, especially for trillions of years.

[Sparks]

8 hours ago, The Barbarian said:

And I think physicists are a much more reliable source of information about physics than you are.   Sorry about that.

Sorry, physicists are a more credible source for the math than you are.   I notice you can't even denfine information mathematically.   How could you hope to debate real physicists over this?

Lying physicists are not right.