Age of the Earth 2

[artsylady]

SA:

Since your first post on this thread was a copy and paste, I thought I'd copy and paste as well. And yes, it is from a Creationist website, but try not to let that cause you too much bias while reading it, if that is at all possible.

RC dating methods (that's radio carbon, not roman catholic) can be reliable if we assume (there's that word again) that there were no variables in the history of the earth - no major flooding, no change to the magnetic field (which we know there is) etc, etc, etc.

What about carbon dating?

By Ken Ham, Jonathan Sarfati, and Carl Wieland, Ed. Don Batten

First published in The Revised and Expanded Answers Book

Chapter 4

How does the carbon

[artsylady]

I understand the mathematical part of the decay chain and I do see how this could give a good solid date, however it seems to me we're making a big assumption that we know nothing has messed with those calculations since we're dating things so far back in the unobserved past.

Yes, this is right. They don't take into consideration things that we do know will drastically affect these calculation rates. These variables are simply disregarded for some reason.

[Bread_of_Life]

artsylady

Dr. Alan Walker, an anatomist at Pennsylvania State University who specializes in hominid research but was not involved in the kadabba analysis, said that too few fossils had been discovered to justify either interpretation. He noted that it was easy to be misled by variations that are normal within the fossil collections of any single species.

You got these quotes from a creationist website didn't you? Because, I can't believe you've actually read the whole article - otherwise you'd know what Mr Walker was really talking about.

The article, first published in a Russian newspaper (Pravda) is about a find that some scientists had proposed we teeth from an early homonid ancestor of ours. There was a dispute as to whether the teeth were from a different species of ancestor to those found before, or from a species of fossil ancestor that had been already discovered. Here is the full quote:

"Other scientists familiar with the research, but not involved in it, said they agreed or were at least inclined to agree with the authors' designation of a separate species for the fossils. But they were not so sure about the authors' proposal that the fossils were so similar to those of two other recently discovered early species that all three species might have actually belonged to a single genus of closely related hominids.

Dr. Alan Walker, an anatomist at Pennsylvania State University who specializes in hominid research but was not involved in the kadabba analysis, said that too few fossils had been discovered to justify either interpretation. He noted that it was easy to be misled by variations that are normal within the fossil collections of any single species. "

Dr Walker was not saying that these teeth belonged to human beings, or that it was too early to tell whether they were hominid. Nor was he talking about the fossil record in general. What he was saying is that too small a sample had been found to decide whether they came from a new transitional species, or a transitional species already discovered. Lose-lose for creationists either way, in other words.

"People who believe in a bushy family tree will look for bushiness in their fossils, and those who don't won't," Dr. Walker said in an interview. "We are generalizing far too much, with not very many fossils spread over a long period of time."

Again, Dr Walker was refering specifically to distant homonid ancestors, pre 3 million years ago - where he is right, we have little data. He was not referring to the human lineage in general.

This is the unfortunate danger of quoting out of context. It's easy to make the text say what you want it to say.

You have a strange way of answering the question. Would it surprise if a story about the wind and the hole and the cat surfaced around the earth? Yes or no.

Yes, if a story with every single one of those elements appeared throughout the world, it would surprise me, especially as high winds are rarely that disasterous, or widespread. However, in the case of the flood story, the flood myths around the world have only a few similarities each (although some that are geographically very close to the original have many similarities, presumably because they are the same story about the same flood mutated slightly in a different part of the middle east)

Furthermore, floods are more destructive and widespread than high winds, so it wouldn't surprise me if flood mythology was more commonplace. Also, in the case of a flood, the only sort of animal that could find dry land would be a bird, and even then this only appears in a few stories out of 35. A cat is not the only sort of animal that could find out if the wind had abaited. Also, digging a hole under the earth would not be the only way to survive high winds, whereas a vessel of some sort is pretty much the only viable way to survive a flood.

One that was so high that you could see any life and one where people drowned in? Have any of your ancestors seen such a flood?

I would imagine that many of my ancestors have seen such a flood. For example, the red sea flood, around 5000 - 6000 years ago, would have been pretty dramatic.

The question was 'there is proof of flooding all over the earth correct?"

The answer is: "no". There is no proof of a worldwide flood at all.

Then why aren't you on a message board debating apes?

I am, you are an ape. So am I.

However, your assertion was that there is a "huge" difference in intelligence between ourselves and other animals. This is not true. Indeed, some Gorillas can learn up to a thousand words of sign, and communicate pretty well. That's not quite human standards, but it isn't a huge gap.

I'm not being nasty, but are you for real? Do I really have to point out the obvious intelligence differences here?

No, I am perfectly aware that humans are more intelligent than dolphins or apes or elephants. However, you said that there was some sort of huge discontinuity between human and other animal intelligence. That isn't true. The difference is actually not that big - and has mostly to do with abstract thought and the use of tools.

You're very sure of many things that you have no proof of - language evolution, why origins myths arose, why men become spiritual leaders.

I am not sure of any of these things, in that there are many ways in which they can be explained, and I can only give possibilities.

No. I thought it was common knowledge that there are no real answers regarding this.

Where did you get this impression?

Well you have none of either.

it's a bald statement, but unfortunately false.

Based on assumptions of course, first. I know how they date stuff. They find it and guess how old it will should be. Then if they date it and it supports their belief, they accept it. If it doesn't they either throw it out or start rewriting their theories.

Given the last 3 sentences and the first of this quintet, it is clear the second sentence "I know how they date stuff", is false.

That's sad, because I have made two very detailed but hopefully accessible posts on this forum "How old is the earth" and "Age of the Earth 2" explaining how scientists date rocks and material, so in this case you are without excuse.

So there are obviously a lot of assumptions being used here. You have to admit this.

No, not really.

As well, if everything in the earth was in fact, very young, K-AR would be utterly useless.

Yes, however, K-Ar dating would do us the favour of ***telling us*** that is was useless, by consistantly giving dates under 10 million years. In fact, it would usually give dates under 1 million years (since this is about as much non-radiogenic argon as we've ever found in a new sample).

These results would instantly tell us:

a) the earth is very young

b) K-Ar dating is useless because the earth is very young, and you can't use K-Ar to date young things.

Unfortunately, we don't get consistantly low results from K-Ar dating. In fact, we rarely get any. Therefore the earth isn't young, QED.

But you said that they first decide how old it is. I know this is true.

No, they do not have to. If I picked up a rock, and did not know what age it was at all, and couldn't even guess or suspect anything - then I could still send it to a lab for K-Ar dating.

If the K-Ar date came out below 10 million years, I'd know that the rock was young. However, I wouldn't know *exactly* how young, because the error in the K-Ar date would be too big under 10 million years. I would then have to use a different form of radiometric dating, such as a uranium decay chain or something, to find out exactly how young the rock is.

However, if the rock came out to be, say, 50 million years old, then I would know that the rock was about 50 million years old, give or take a couple of million years error margin. The only reason that scientists send suspected age range to labs is to stop them doing inappropriate and expensive tests that might be useless - and to do more appropriate tests first. In other words, if I think a rock is less than 10 million years old, I don't want to waste someone's time doing K-Ar - when they could be doing a better young-age dating method first. Of course, in the unlikely event that I'm wrong, and the rock is older than I thought, then they can always do the K-Ar after - nothing's stopping them.

In any case, if it's all 'young' material, it will definitely be dated incorrectly.

Yes, but only my about a million or so years max. Not by 4.2 billion years.

I didn't mean throw out the sample. If their assumptions are wrong and it's dated incorrectly, they just disregard the sample.

No, they don't, they date it would other methods. If you get a rock whose K-Ar age is under 10 million years, then you conclude that the rock is young, and date it with more sensitive methods for younger rocks to see exactly how young it is.

How can constant change really be a strength of some theory that is supposed to be a solid one???

Because it means we'll be getting closer and closer to the truth, as we gather more and more evidence. The theory of gravity has changed a couple of times now, and it's about to change again in the next 20 or so years. That doesn't mean that the original theory was all wrong, or had no merit to it. It just means that it couldn't explain some of the new evidence we found, and had to be changed.

Similarly, we no longer believe in, say, acquired characteristics as some people did in Darwin's time. However, that doesn't mean that the whole of Darwin's theory was wrong. In fact, the core of Darwin's theory (common ancestry) remains through all the changes in evidence.

These names also go into Africa and Russia. So these people all of course, had copies of Bibles. Is that what you believe?

No. But I do believe that the tribes that moses based these names on probably spread southwards and northwards and mixed with other tribes, taking some of these tribal names with them.

Similarly, the Gallic may well be descended or mixed with tribes from further east.

Definitely not a possibility. The geneology was written before Moscow and many of these other places got their names.

Ah, but not before the tribes that might eventually emmigrate to Moscow or Africa got their names, that they eventually gave to Moscow.

Would a flood that lasted a year on the earth affect this dating method. If so, how?

Actually, any isochron method (such as the one described in great detail in the first post of this thread) is impurvious to any interference from outside.

If daughter or parent element is added or taken away, or if the rock is melted, then the isochron records this and we can clearly see what happened from our results.

As for K-Ar, the daughter element (argon) gets stuck in the Potassium salt's crystal lattice, and is unable to escape. Therefore flood is unlikely to have any effect. If it did, it would likely be to allow Argon to escape (by splitting the crystal), thus giving an artifically ***young*** age.

[Bread_of_Life]

mscoville

how can we be sure by using these methods, that they aren't just consistently wrong?

however it seems to me we're making a big assumption that we know nothing has messed with those calculations since we're dating things so far back in the unobserved past.

These are very good questions. I did answer them partially in the first post on this thread though. There I showed that isochron dating could tell whether:

- Any parent or daughter element had been added or taken away from the rock in the past

What if Rb87, Sr87 or Sr86 has leaked/entered the rock since the start?

Very simple answer to this one. Can you guess it? Well, the answer is, we don't get a straight line. If any part or parts of the rock have been tampered with, in any way, it would be statistically impossible that we'd get a straight line at the end of the day, hence, we'd know its been tampered with.

Sometimes scientists do find rocks that have been tampered with, and discard them because they are clearly unsuitable. Creationists try to trick people into thinking that the scientists are calling the rocks "unsuitable" because they don't agree with the age the scientists wanted the rock to be. Nothing could be further from the truth. Actually, the reason scientists are able to tell if a rock is unsuitable is because they've come up with a method of dating so clever, it even tests all it's assumptions.

- If the rock had melted and formed again

What if the rock has melted and then formed again?

Another very simple answer to this one. Anyone guessed? The answer is, the isochron resets to zero. So actually, if the rock's been melted and then reformed, we'll get the date from when it's reformed, because each time it melts and reforms, the isochron resets. Clever eh?

- If there was any daughter element in the rock to start off with

But you still can't tell how much parent and daughter were in the rock to start with?

Firstly, in this case, it doesn't really matter, because all we need is the gradient. But actually, we *can* find out how much daughter and parent was in the rock to start off with (meaning that we can calibrate this method of dating). Any guesses how we do this?

However, clearly none of these deal fully with your question - what if they are consistantly wrong in some way? What if some physical affect has affected all methods so as to give consistently wrong false dates in all of them?

Well, I would ask you, what could this possibly be? The only one creationists have come up with is that there has been a sudden period of rapid radioactive decay in the past, perhaps in creation week or during the flood. There are several problems with this hypothesis:

1. The heat given off would have melted (actually vaporised) the rocks thus resetting isochron and K-Ar dates to zero (by releasing Argon, and re-setting the isochron respectively)

2. The heat given off would not only have melted the rocks, it would have melted and vaporised (and exploded) large portions of the earth, not only killing all life, but also leaving no earth, parent, or daughter elements to date.

3. Rapid radioactive decay would affect decay series such that they would be taken out of secular equilibrium. Let me explain:

Uranium doesn't decay to Lead directly. It decays through a long series of decays to lead. Each element in the series has a different half life. After a while (in the case of Uranium, a few million years) this ratios of elements in this series come into equilibrium - which scientists call "secular equilibrium". The ratio of one element to another depends on the half life of each element.

Imagine that suddenly, the half lives of each element changed in such a way as to speed up the decay process massively. The ratios of elements would also change, because the half-lives had changed. Once the half-lives had been returned to normal, it'd take another few million years for the series to reach secular equilibrium for the longer half-lives. That means that every single Uranium decay chain should be out of equilibrium in every single rock on earth, if half-lives have been significantly disturbed in the last 10,000 years. This is not the case.

4. We find rocks of different ages. If the earth was created 6000 years ago, and everything was new, then, say, 4000 years ago half-lives consistantly accelerated to make the earth look 5 billion years old, we would expect every rock to look 5 billion years old. However, we find rocks from 4.2 billion years to zero years, and everything in between. We also find consistant fossils in rocks of consistant age, suggesting that these rocks really were formed in different geological periods.

5. There is no known mechanism by which such a disturbance could occur. Artsylady accuses scientists of neglecting possible sources of disturbance - this isn't true at all. In fact, scientists have tested what happens to radioactive decay rates at ultra-high temperature and pressures (so high that they would disintegrate the rocks that dating tests are performed on). Scientists have found that rates vary up to about 3% under extreme temperature and pressure. Even if the rocks could withstand such heat and pressure - it would require several million percent changes in radioactive decay rates for the earth to be 10,000 years old, not 3%.

Other than a disturbance in half-life, I can't see any other way that they could all be systematically wrong, other than if some very powerful being was trying to trick us, and deliberately put the correct ratios of Rubidium, strontium, argon, potassium, uranium, lead, etc etc etc in each rock. This being would then have to have created rocks of different "ages", put them in order, and bury the right fossils in the right rocks to make them look authentic. That being would then have to have added surface features to the rocks, to make them look as if they'd been lived and rained on in the distant past. He would then have had to create several mass extinctions within these fossils and rocks - and made sure that there were flood-basalts and meteor remnants to go with each of these extinctions. You're getting the picture right?

Edited May 8, 2004 by ScientificAtheist

[Bread_of_Life]

artsylady (again)

Since your first post on this thread was a copy and paste, I thought I'd copy and paste as well.

Erm, it was a copy and paste of my own words from another forum, AND it's yet unreplied to. It wasn't a massive copy and paste from a creationist website, most of which is irrelevant because it's about C-14 dating, which is not used to date the age of the earth, and which I know absolutely nothing about.

Also, much of it has already been answered. Sea salt entering the oceans for example, on another thread in the apologetics forum (I believe I've also answered the moon receding from earth question in the same thread) - testing assumptions has been dealt with in my last post, the one before that, and the first post on this topic - consistant agreement of dating methods is dealt with in my first "How old is the earth" thread, to which this thread is a follow up. That's rather the problem with simply cutting and pasting responses from creationist websites - whereas my original cut and paste was *all* on topic, firstly because I wrote it, secondly because I created the topic.

If you want to actually read through my arguments, and see what is relevant out of your creationist websites, and post that up in the appropriate place, that would be great. But I'm not going to respond to a massive copy and paste, most of which is irrelevant or already dealt with, sorry!

Yes, this is right. They don't take into consideration things that we do know will drastically affect these calculation rates. These variables are simply disregarded for some reason.

As I have already shown in my last post, these variables have not been disregarded, far from it.

[salt and light]

Scientific Athiest,

I've learned a lot from my pastor who used to be a scientist,and he preached on "creation" this morning. If you know the facts of what I'm going to share with you, then you would know that evolution is false and that the earth is not billions or even millions of years old. First of all, we take in oxygen and sugar,and breathe out carbon dioxide and water vapor, and plants take in carbon dioxide and water vapor,and give out oxygen and sugar, now, if we and animals are accidents, then plants are the perfect opposite accidents. We can't live without them,and they can't live without us. Next, the atmosphere consists of 18% oxygen, if there was lets say 22%, then if there was a forest fire,or some other big fire, it couldn't be put out,and if there was only 15% oxygen, we couldn't breath properly, we couldn't run,or climb stairs, or walk long distance without being out of breath. The sun is 93 million miles from earth, if it was 100 million miles away or a little more, this earth would be too cold for any living thing,and if the sun was only 80 million miles away,the earth would cook. The earth and everything on it was created in 6, 24 hour days,because if each day was really 1 thousand years, the animals and plants and people couldn't survive without each other and the sun, so the sun,moon,and stars were created in close proximity of time as plants and animals. One couldn't survive without the other for 1 thousand years. Next, what makes an apple taste like an apple,and pear taste like a pear,and corn taste like corn, and when you bite in to an apple or tomato,how did those seeds get in there? As far as the age of the stars go, God made them already mature, just like He made Adam, Adam didn't start out as a baby. If man did evolve from an animal, it certainly wasn't an ape, because we have 23 pairs of chromosomes,and apes have 15 or 17 pairs, so if we came from an animal,it would be a pig,for pigs have I believe 22 pairs of chromosomes. Here is something else, why does a lake or river freeze only on the surface in the winter time? because the ice acts as a insulator, or otherwise,the lake or river would freeze all the way to the bottom. Now, it would be soooo foolish to believe that this earth and atmosphere and plants and animals just happened by accident. It was designed by a VERY intelligent creator. Even if the "big bang' theory were true, there still would have had to been a "glob",and who created that? There is so much more. Can't you see,or don't you want to see how foolish evolution is? My pastor says that evolution is just stupidity,and there is not one shred of evidence that one specie came from another, not one.

[Cerran]

Creation and age of the earth are two seperate issues Salt, don't try and lump them together.

Water floats when it is frozen because the molecule is polar and forms a crystalline structure. Said crystalline structure is less dense than the parent material when frozen.

And please use paragraphs, your posts are annoyingly hard to read.

[Guest Scientific Christian]

SA:

Since your first post on this thread was a copy and paste, I thought I'd copy and paste as well. And yes, it is from a Creationist website, but try not to let that cause you too much bias while reading it, if that is at all possible.

RC dating methods (that's radio carbon, not roman catholic) can be reliable if we assume (there's that word again) that there were no variables in the history of the earth - no major flooding, no change to the magnetic field (which we know there is) etc, etc, etc.

What about carbon dating?

By Ken Ham, Jonathan Sarfati, and Carl Wieland, Ed. Don Batten

First published in The Revised and Expanded Answers Book

Chapter 4

How does the carbon

[Bread_of_Life]

First of all, we take in oxygen and sugar,and breathe out carbon dioxide and water vapor, and plants take in carbon dioxide and water vapor,and give out oxygen and sugar, now, if we and animals are accidents, then plants are the perfect opposite accidents. We can't live without them,and they can't live without us.

This is only to be expected, since we plant and animal life evolved together. As it happens, in answer to the "chicken and egg" question - in the case of the earth it was rich in CO2 long before glucose metabolising animals appeared. In fact, scientists estimate that the earth earth atmosphere was rich in greenhouse gases, with CO2 at 10 times the levels as it was today. That of course is plenty of C02 for plant life to be metabolising. Plant life therefore flourished - and cellular animal life started to take advantage of the abundance of flora and fauna by metabolising them!

Next, the atmosphere consists of 18% oxygen, if there was lets say 22%, then if there was a forest fire,or some other big fire, it couldn't be put out,and if there was only 15% oxygen, we couldn't breath properly, we couldn't run,or climb stairs, or walk long distance without being out of breath.

If it were 15%, then we wouldn't have the apparatus to breath an 18% oxygen atmosphere, but rather a 15% oxygen atmosphere. Also, if the atmosphere were 22% oxygen then (through fire, metabolisation etc) it would soon fall, being replaced with C02.

The sun is 93 million miles from earth, if it was 100 million miles away or a little more, this earth would be too cold for any living thing,and if the sun was only 80 million miles away,the earth would cook.

That'll be why earth, rather than mars or venus, contains life (although Mars may well have been warmer in the past and contained some cellular life). There are more stars in the universe than grains of sand on earth, and many have planets or orbitting bodies - there was bound to be a planet the "right" distance from a star to contain life - in fact, there's bound to be plenty all over the universe.

The earth and everything on it was created in 6, 24 hour days,because if each day was really 1 thousand years, the animals and plants and people couldn't survive without each other and the sun, so the sun,moon,and stars were created in close proximity of time as plants and animals.

That simply isn't true though, as I have shown above, CO2 for plants to metabolise was common on early earth.

Next, what makes an apple taste like an apple,and pear taste like a pear,and corn taste like corn, and when you bite in to an apple or tomato,how did those seeds get in there?

In answer to the first three questions of this sentence - taste is a function of our brain. Our brain senses certain chemicals and creates a taste sensation in our consciousness. Things taste different to different animals - for example, rotten flesh is so horrible to us we can't even go near it - to a hyena, it smells and tastes like a lovely feast.

I'm not sure what you're getting at with the seeds? Fruit is the reproductive part of a plant, so it contains seeds...

If man did evolve from an animal, it certainly wasn't an ape, because we have 23 pairs of chromosomes,and apes have 15 or 17 pairs, so if we came from an animal,it would be a pig,for pigs have I believe 22 pairs of chromosomes.

Not so, apes have 24 pairs of chromosomes. We have 23 because during our evolution, 2 pairs of ape chromosomes fused to make one pair in our cells (chromosome 2 in humans is homologous to 2 chimp chromosomes placed end to end).

Check out this website, with pictures of the chromosomes if you don't believe me:

http://www.cs.colorado.edu/~lindsay/creati...nslocation.html

Oh, and here is an inversion mutation between humans and chimps:

http://www.cs.colorado.edu/~lindsay/creation/inversion.html

Here is something else, why does a lake or river freeze only on the surface in the winter time? because the ice acts as a insulator, or otherwise,the lake or river would freeze all the way to the bottom.

So?

Even if the "big bang' theory were true, there still would have had to been a "glob",and who created that?

That is a different argument altogether, and has nothing to do with science. It is a philosophical argument called "The Cosmological Argument", not a scientific argument, and not a disproof for evolution or an old earth.

Can't you see,or don't you want to see how foolish evolution is? My pastor says that evolution is just stupidity,and there is not one shred of evidence that one specie came from another, not one.

Your pastor is wrong I'm afraid. I seriously doubt whether he has ever studied evolution in any great detail - or whether he is qualified to make these statements - or whether he has even bothered to examine the evidence for evolution. I would therefore encourage you not to take your pastor's word for things, but rather you ought to try to check the things he says against the research that scientists perform.

Edited May 10, 2004 by ScientificAtheist

[Guest mscoville]

My next question would be, have there ever been unexplained Isochrons that charted straight lines and yet were divergent?

~ The Nerd