Animal Description

[senerhu]

I have to agree with yod that it's a hippopotamus...

[Guest sanctification]

Maybe it's the pretty archeopertyx (the ancestral bird) in senerhu's sig?? At least I wonder if that is what senerhu has a picture of...

I know!! I know!! It's a New World animal!! (ha! like the Jews ever reached the Americas like the mormons believe)

well I guess hippo is the only thing that works I can imagine.

[papa T]

How about the Leviathan?.....

[Dad Ernie]

Greetings ScientificAtheist,

In other words, the simplest explanation for the evidence we find is not that time has relativistically shifted significantly in earth's past, but rather that the earth is actually 5 billion years old, and that life is actually 3.7 billion years old.

The problem with this is that "theories" (the Word calls them "fables") are built on other "theories", that are built upon other "theories".

As for me and my house, we shall trust the Lord. Why would God allow such deception, one way or another, so as to confound even the "elect" if that were possible? There are many very good scientists that are Christian, who view science from a Christian conservative POV, that you ought to take advantage of their research and perhaps discover the REAL truth for yourself.

God Bless,

Dad Ernie

[nebula]

His tail sways like a cedar

Hippopotomus?

[rafter]

Wooly Mammoth?

[txpaleo]

A couple of responses.

1st--ScientificAtheist.....you talk about dating techniques that show the earth is old, old, old. I want to bring 2 contradictions up to you based on 2 different dating techniques. The first one is radiometric dating. If your unfamilar with it, it looks at how uranium decays and turns into lead (and thus creating helium as a by product). It mesures the amount of uranium in the zircons crystals that are formed and based on a constant decay rate come up with a date of 1.5 billion years. But lets do a different test and look at the helium, which is formed. Helium is found inside these crystals and due to the slow buildup, it should be seeping out continually and not accumulating inside. Yet tests have shown that there is a significant propotion of helium still found in these supposdley 1.5 billion year old crystals (Big problem for old earthers). Here is what testing the helium side of the coin shows. These zircon crystals are a Precambrian basement granite (by implication the whole earth) These crystals were sent to a world class expert on helium diffusion from minerals (with no hint that it was a creation project) and the consistent answer--the helium does indeed seep out quickly over a wide range of temperatures. The test showed that because the helium is still in the zircons the earth could not be older than 14,000 years old. In other words, in only a few thousand years, 1.5 billiion years worth (at todays rate) of radioactive decay has taken place. And a side not the dates have been refined and updated to give a date of 5, 680 (+/- 2,000).

Second....if radiocarbon dating is good to 50,000 (rate of decay) why is carbon found in every fossil fuel and diamonds, which are supposed to be millions of years old? It can't be both ways.

Just some food for thought. This study was recently published by Carl Wieland.

God Bless.

Steve Baird

www.bairdclan.com

[Bread_of_Life]

txpaleo,

These I believe are both recent questions from the RATE papers, published by ICR I believe, is that correct?

Two Claims are mutually Exclusive

Anyhow, the first thing I'd point out is that the two conclusions are mutually exclusive. If there really has been a period of largely accelerated decay in the past 6,000 years, then any constituent C-14 in fossils, coal and oil etc should have decayed also (a fortiori, even more so). Therefore, both arguments cannot be simultaneously correct. Either there was a period of vastly accelerated radio-active decay or C-14 in coal and fossils shows that the earth is young, they cannot both be true, since one contradicts the other.

C-14 in Fossil Fuels

Secondly, there are several ways in which higher than contamination levels of C-14 in coals and fossils can be accounted for. Firstly, Uranium and thorium rich rocks surrounding deposits of fossil fuels (such as coal or oil) create trace levels of C-14 in the oil and coal through radioactive interaction. In other words, radioactive sources in rocks bombard the coal and oil with large alpha and beta particles which are captured by the Carbon in the coal or oil and form C-14, which then decays. This process is essentially constant, so there is a constant source of C-14 created by the radioactivity of the rocks surrounding the oil or coal. The levels of C-14 found in coal and oil deposits have been linked strongly with the levels of radioactive material in the rocks surrounding the deposit.

The second way in which C-14 could be formed in coal or oil is through bacterial activity. Until recently it was believed that no bacteria lived deep underground, where coal and oil deposits are situated. However as David Lowe's 1989 Radiocarbon paper shows, there are bacteria and fungi living on granite many kilometres beneath the earth's surface. These could well be the source of at least some of the C-14 found in carbonous fuels. Research in this area is ongoing, although it is thought unlikely that bacteria alone, without other sources, could account for all the C-14 found in the richest samples.

Helium in Zircons

RATE claim that because helium found in Zircons is not at equilibrium, that is, because some helium is retained by the zircons as opposed to the surrounding rocks, that the rocks must have undergone a period of very fast radioactive decay in the near past.

There are several major problems with this hypothesis, and also with the paper that ICR published on this issue. The first major problem is that radioactive decay releases heat - actually, quite a lot of heat. If as RATE claim there has been a very fast period of radioactive decay in creation week or in the time of the flood, then this heat would not only have melted the rocks and released the helium within - it would actually have melted the whole earth. Since a) the earth has not been melted recently, and b) we find helium in these rocks, we can safely assume that the hypothesis is incorrect. RATE have ignored this fact because, rather than proceeding as scientists do from evidence to theory, they have a theory that they must stick with, no matter what the evidence.

Secondly, Uranium does not decay directly to lead, as you stated. It decays through a chain of about 13 isotopes to lead - involving 13 different decays. This forms a "decay chain" - a chain of isotopes all the way from Uranium to Lead. We always find such a chain in rocks containing Uranium. We also know that the ratio of the ammounts of isotopes within this decay chain depend on their half-life. The quicker the half-life, the less of the isotopes we should find. After a few million years of decay (in the case of Uranium), this decay chain comes to an equilibrium (called "secular equilibrium), where the ratios are fixed at a level determined by their decay rate (or half life). If the half-lives of elements had changed and then changed again 6000 years ago, we would not find any decay chains in secular equilibrium at all, because this equilibrium would have been disturbed by the period of rapid decay, and it would take several million years of normal decay to restore it. Yet, pretty much ever rock we find with constituent Uranium dating over 3 million years old has an equilibrium decay chain. Notice that the ICR RATE team didn't bother performing a decay-chain analysis on their samples of Zircons, presumably to avoid the embarrassment of being proven wrong.

Thirdly, the paper uses rocks from a region (the Valles Caldera in western New Mexico) which has undergone a lot of unpredictable thermal activity. In fact, this area was chosen by Los Alamos National Laboratory to evaluate the potential for geothermal energy production (the Fenton Hill Hot Dry Rock site). Since helium equilibrium in rocks is only achieved at constant temperature, in a region that has changed temperature many times, and is quite volatile in this sense, it is essentially impossible to predict what helium ratios one would expect in the rocks in this area.

Forthly, the sample size is tiny. 6 tiny zircon grains were collected (or perhaps selected from a larger sample), 1 of which (sample zero) is not used in conclusions because of problems with the sample, and two of which (samples 5 and 6) are at the limit of what is measurable with the apparatus. In fact, sample 6 is thrown out along with sample 0, neither of which fitted into the trend that the creationists wished to show. Such a small sample size is unacceptable, and many more (and bigger) samples would need to be taken to draw any conclusions at all about helium flow in the area.

Fifthly, the data that RATE uses for helium diffusivity at different temperatures in native zircons does not extend to the temperature range that is interesting. The creationists in question took samples from 20 up to around 300 degrees Celcius - whereas the data they used for helium diffusivity was taken from about 350 degrees Celcius upwards. Because of this data inadequacy creationists had to assume the graph's break point to fit in with their data and assumptions concerning the age of the earth. No direct measurements of helium diffusivity at the temperatures of interest.

Hope this helps tx - also, you might be interested in my recent threads on the age of the earth, and various dating methods. They don't deal with these points specifically, but they would give you a good background in the subject area.

[txpaleo]

I can't speak fully about the radiometric dating, need to research it more. But I can however speak in full detail about the C-14. As an archaeologist, we rely on it as our main dating technique and I can tell you, that its a crock of you know what. If you have ever been to a radiocarbon lab, they will even tell you that they can filter out any contamination and that it truly does not play much of a part in the dating scenerio. Yet everytime I have seen dates come back from a site you get about 10 different vary dates and which time usually the archaeologist will pick the dates that match the given theory the best and discard the rest and the public is non the wiser. This is common practice. The contamination that you speak of, if it exists is minimal at best and doesn't factor into the equation. The fact is coal and other fossil fuels have large amounts of carbon found within them, not trace amounts, as do diamonds. This is big stumbling block that most old earthers won't touch and prefer to gloss over.

And the information fro the Radiometric comes from AiG not ICR. Like I said I don't deal with radiometric so I'm not as well versed in it.

Steve

www.bairdclan.com

[Bread_of_Life]

txpaleo

And the information fro the Radiometric comes from AiG not ICR.

I can assure you that the paper was originally ICR, but I do know that AiG have reprinted it, so you could well have gotten it from there.

If you have ever been to a radiocarbon lab, they will even tell you that they can filter out any contamination and that it truly does not play much of a part in the dating scenerio.

Well, they don't "filter out" any contamination, they simply estimate how much there usually is, and subtract that ammount. That's why radio-carbon dating can come back with different ages, because such estimates are made.

the archaeologist will pick the dates that match the given theory the best and discard the rest and the public is non the wiser.

I can't comment on the practices of archaeologists I'm afraid, since I've never met one, or been on any sort of work experience with one. However, it would be unscientific not to report all radiocarbon ages - and indeed every field scientist I know would report all findings, even outliers. It would be a sad fact if peope were not doing this regularly.

The contamination that you speak of, if it exists is minimal at best and doesn't factor into the equation

Contamination is usually minimal, I agree, of the order of 10^-15 or less, which is about the detectable limit. The highest ammounts of C-14 found in coal, fossil fuels etc are only around 10^-14, 10^-13 parts. That means that at the most in coal and fossil fuels we find around 1 C-14 atom to 10,000,000,000,000 atoms of Carbon. That isn't a lot, and as I've said can be explained through the action of bacteria, and also through the action of alpha and beta particles from the surroundings creating new C-14. Therefore this is really not much of a problem for old-earthers at all.

I can't speak fully about the radiometric dating, need to research it more.

Well, like I said, try reading my first post on "How Old is the Earth" thread on Apologetics (it doesn't assume any pre-knowledge of physics), then if you want to go into more depth, try "Age of the Earth 2", which is a deeper look at one particular form of radiometric dating (which does assume that you've at least read the "How Old is the Earth" thread).

Hope I've helped.