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Author Topic:   Where did Earth's Iron core come from and how did the mantle become molten?
Rahvin
Member
Posts: 4032
Joined: 07-01-2005
Member Rating: 9.2


Message 15 of 120 (523362)
09-09-2009 6:37 PM
Reply to: Message 6 by Archangel
09-09-2009 3:13 PM


Re: Since I'm the guy being discussed, here's my 2 cents...
Hi Archangel. Welcome to the forum.
Not true at all, there exists a great deal of observable evidence from quantum mechanics to cosmology and geology regarding our Earth, Solar System and Universe, but what separates creationists from evolutionists in a nutshell is the application of this evidence in the way we interpret it. You see, I don't deny the evidence which exists. I just interpret it from another perspective rather than a strictly natural one.
Please explain.
It is my strong opinion that your beliefs system requires much more blind faith than mine does, and yours requires true magic
That's a curious position. Science, by its very nature, eschews faith, and does not deal in "magic." That which is understood is describes as accurately as possible given currently available evidence - and only evidence, with emphasis placed on objectivity and questioning existing belief structures. The highest awards in science come from proving an existing model to be wrong in whole or part. The processes of independant verification and peer review are specifically designed to eliminate the sorts of bias that are created by taking a "worldview" for granted. In science, everything is open for debate, and everything is tentative pending the addition of new evidence or a model that explains the evidence with more accurate predictive qualities than existing paradigms.
What "magic" is required in the standard model of a billions-of-years-old Earth?
where as my supernatural source remains consistent in my modern day world view since I have a personal supernatural relationship with my God through Jesus Christ, my Lord as we speak. In other words, I have first hand evidence that my God is real, alive and well, and personally involved and active in every aspect of His creation today, justas He was on the first day of Creation.
Two words: evidence, please?
This is the Science area of the forum. Faith is irrelevant here - you can believe whatever you wish, but your argumetns are unconvincing without the addition of evidence.
Furthermore, this is a massive tu quoque fallacy - you are accusing scientists of invoking magic and blind faith to justify your invocation of magic and reliance on faith. As such, your logic is unsound.
Do you have an evidence showing that your deity exists? If so, I;d love to hear it. I've never seen a series of objective facts that support the existence of a deity as the most likely and parsimonious solution.
I though that was what the whole "faith" thing was about - faith being the "substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen."
You have no such first hand evidence for evolution which remains unprovable and untestable in the laboratory.
Quite to the contrary - evolution has been observed both in the wild and in the laboratory. In fact, the change in biological populations over generations is directly observed each and every year in Universities spanning the globe, through a variety of experiments understaken by undergraduate students.
New species have been directly observed to arise from pre-existing ancestor species. New features have been observed to form over generations, and thrive or die out according to natural selection.
But this is off-topic in a geology thread...and first-hand experience is not required in teh first place.
We don't require first-hand experience to determine the circumstances of a murder. Neither do we require first-hand experience to support evolution, or geology, or any of a variety of other fields.
Certainly you don't require first-hand experience to believe that Jesus died on teh cross, or that God created the world, do you? After all, you weren't there.
What we require is objective evidence, which exists all around us, both in and out of laboratories.
The age of teh Earth is very well established, and it has been generally accepted by scientists for hundreds of years - long before Darwin ever proposed the Theory of Evolution, I might add.
quote:
Abū Rayhān Bīrūnī (11th century CE) discovered the existence of shells and fossils in regions that were once sea floor, but were later uplifted to become dry land, such as the Indian subcontinent. Based on this evidence, he realized that the Earth is constantly changing and proposed that the Earth had an age, but that its origin was too distant to measure.[13] The principle of superposition of strata was first proposed by Avicenna (11th century).
All the way back in the 11th century, scientists were aware that the Earth (and life) was old.
Superposition of strata, simply, means that newer layers are deposited on top of older layers. THis led to a better estimate as to the age of teh Earth:
quote:
In the 1790s, the British naturalist William Smith hypothesized that if two layers of rock at widely differing locations contained similar fossils, then it was very plausible that the layers were the same age.[18] William Smith's nephew and student, John Phillips, later calculated by such means that Earth was about 96 million years old.
But these scientists were workign with very limited data, and were establishing only a lower limit (minimum value) for the age of the Earth.
Nowadays, we have radiometric dating...and the results are pretty conclusive.
The current lower limit estimate for the age of the Earth is a litle over 4.5 billion years. This was determined by measuring the radioisotopes and their decay products.
quote:
Nevertheless, ancient Archaean lead ores of galena have been used to date the formation of Earth as these represent the earliest formed lead-only minerals on the planet and record the earliest homogeneous lead-lead isotope systems on the planet. These have returned age dates of 4.54 billion years with a precision of as little as 1% margin for error.
Radiometric dating is very well established, and incredibly accurate. This is partly due to the absolute consistency of radioactive decay (halflives do not change, period - if decay rates had been different in the past, well...suffice it to say we'd see some evidence of it. Or rather, we wouldn't because we wouldn't exist. But I digress). Radiometric dating also allows for self-verification - given decay rates of different isotopes in the same timespan, they can confirm each other somewhat like using a meter stick and a ruler to measure a 10cm length. If multiple isotopic dating methods arrive at similar estimates, they're pretty certain to have made an accurate estimate.
The following meteorites were used in dating the Earth:
quote:
1) St. Severin (ordinary chondrite) a. Pb-Pb isochron - 4.543 +/- 0.019 GY b. Sm-Nd isochron - 4.55 +/- 0.33 GY c. Rb-Sr isochron - 4.51 +/- 0.15 GY d. Re-Os isochron - 4.68 +/- 0.15 GY
2) Juvinas (basaltic achondrite) a. Pb-Pb isochron ..... 4.556 +/- 0.012 GY b. Pb-Pb isochron ..... 4.540 +/- 0.001 GY c. Sm-Nd isochron ..... 4.56 +/- 0.08 GY d. Rb-Sr isochron ..... 4.50 +/- 0.07 GY
3) Allende (carbonaceous chondrite) a. Pb-Pb isochron ..... 4.553 +/- 0.004 GY b. Ar-Ar age spectrum ..... 4.52 +/- 0.02 GY c. Ar-Ar age spectrum ..... 4.55 +/- 0.03 GY d. Ar-Ar age spectrum ..... 4.56 +/- 0.05 GY
As you can see, each meteorite was dated using several of their component minerals, each with different decay rates, to ensure the most accurate estimate possible and reduce any potential contamination. All of teh dates from all of the minerals in all of teh metorites arrived at an estimate around 4.5 billion years.
If you want to dispute the age of the Earth, you're going to have to start here: with the evidence. You claim not to ignore evidence, but rather to "reinterpret" it. How do you "interpret" obsevable facts like radiometric dating to support a younger Earth? How do you "interpret" the backward extrapolation of observed yearly cycles through geological strata that predict a very old Earth?
It sounds to me like you're applying religious apologetics rather than the scientific method - rather than following evidence (and only objective, observable evidence) to form logically consistent and parsimonious models that explain the observable data with testable predictions, you're starting from a given conclusion and attempting to justify it through the "interpretation" of evidence. I'd love for you to prove me wrong.
All references from from here.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 6 by Archangel, posted 09-09-2009 3:13 PM Archangel has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 23 by Archangel, posted 09-09-2009 9:28 PM Rahvin has not replied

  
Rahvin
Member
Posts: 4032
Joined: 07-01-2005
Member Rating: 9.2


Message 22 of 120 (523372)
09-09-2009 7:40 PM
Reply to: Message 18 by Taz
09-09-2009 7:07 PM


Re: Please Stay On Topic
Going back to Earth, after G-D put the planetary bodies around Earth, their gravitational effects started to work on the Earth. The Earth began to be geologically active. One of these effects is the heat generated by friction as one side of the Earth is pulled toward the Moon a lot stronger than the other side.
Try to beat that explanation!
The Earth displays millions of years of readily observable geological activity, reaching back to the point where geological processes would have recycled any older features. The lower limit for the age of the geologically and biologically active Earth using only observations like seasonally-deposited strata and the age of fossils found in rocks is in the tens to hundreds of millions of years range...orders of magnitude greater than the thousands to tens of thousands of years estimated by your scenario.
Further, gravitational heating requires some pretty hefty tidal forces to be exerted on the Earth...and we can readily observe that the Sun's effect on the tides is minimal, and the Moon is not causing any sort of geological activity as it orbits the Earth. We have observed cases of tidal heating in the moons of Saturn and Jupiter, and it looks nothing like what we observe with Earth.
Finally, your scenario requires the Sun, Moon, and other celestial bodies to magically "Poof!" into existence. This contradicts current models of stellar and planetary formation, which are devised by dating the ages of meteorites, observing other stars and nebulae and planets, and other methods. What is you evidence supporting the sudden appearance of the Sun and all other celestial bodies 6-10,000 years ago, as opposed to their continued existence for billions of years? How do you avoid violating the conservation of mass/energy? By what mechanism does the sudden appearance occur? What testable predictions does your model make, so that we can test your accuracy?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 18 by Taz, posted 09-09-2009 7:07 PM Taz has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 24 by Taz, posted 09-09-2009 10:20 PM Rahvin has not replied
 Message 57 by Peg, posted 09-13-2009 9:04 AM Rahvin has not replied

  
Rahvin
Member
Posts: 4032
Joined: 07-01-2005
Member Rating: 9.2


Message 29 of 120 (523455)
09-10-2009 12:34 PM
Reply to: Message 26 by Archangel
09-10-2009 9:51 AM


Re: Since I'm the guy being discussed, here's my 2 cents...
Hi Archangel,
The topic in this thread is a little confused at this point, so I'm going to try to restrict my response only to what I think is relevant. I'd be happy to debate non-geological issues in a more appropriate thread.
But let's suffice it to say that it is you who is ignoring the scientific method as a believer in evolution. And it's also why I reject all of your modern conclusions for evolution.
Geology has nothing whatsoever to do with evolution, which is the change in biological populations over generations. The Earth is not a biological population, and so the topics are wholly separated. Even if evolution were proven false tomorrow, current theories in geology, including the age estimates of teh Earth, would stand unchanged.
Creationists often conflate unrelated scientific theories as part of some "evolutionist agenda;" I assure you that this is not how science works. No individual theory can directly contradict another theory (ie, if it were proven that teh Earth is in fact only 6000 years old, the Theory of Evolution would have to modify its predictions about the past), but science is not a proverbial house of cards (even if the Earth were conclusively proven to be only 6000 years old, the actual Theory of Evolution, which explains the change in biological populations over generations as being due to random mutation guided by natural selection, would not be affected).
All of the examples you post are nothing more than interpretations which are arrived at based on the assumption that life spontaneously arose from that primordial ooze around 3.5 billion years ago, allowing 1 billion years for the earth to allegedly cool down to allow for that to occur from the original age of the guestimated 4.5 billion year old age which evolutionists promote.
Modern age estimates for the Earth are arrived at independently from any biological evidence. It quite literally has nothing whatsoever to do with evolution. Evolution doesn't even include abiogenesis.
You very much seem to be wrapping together lots of completely independent theories and claiming that they are all part of some "Evolutionist conspiracy." What science do you accept, Archangel?
Regarding radiometric dating: The validity of radiometric dating depends upon the three listed assumptions being correct. The decay rate being a constant is probably true but the other two are questionable (what was the parent/daughter ratio when the object being tested was "created"; and the assumption that there has been no loss or addition of the parent or daughter component throughout its history). Scientists, of course, try to correct for these flaws through techniques such as carefully choosing the samples, dating multiple samples, etc. However, there are many cited cases of inconsistent dating results where the obtained date was very different from the expected date based on the position of the rock in the geologic column (see Woodmorappe, "Studies in Flood Geology", where over 300 major inconsistencies are documented), and results where lava flow rocks of a known recent age were dated to millions of years old (such as at Grand Canyon, as documented by ICR scientists). There is also the issue of "selective publication", where the reported dates will always tend to be those that fall into the "already known to be approximately correct" range, while other samples giving the "wrong date" "must be bad".
Radiometric dating is extremely well established in science, and its predictions where verifiable have proven to be extremelyaccurate. The "flaws" you point out (sample size issues for both the parent and product isotopes, contamination, etc) are corrected for by utilizing multiple completely different and independent radiometric dating techniques to date individual samples, while also dating multiple independent samples. This is like using a ruler, a meter stick, and a laser rangefinder to measure a given length, and then repeating the process on multiple samples. For all of the measurement methods to arrive at the same estimate over all of teh independent samples by chance or due to contamination or sample size issues defies probability. In short, we take great pains to correct for the very issues you bring up - as I mentioned in my previous post.
Further, "inconsistencies" are typically the result of using the wrong dating method. Using a radioisotope with a halflife in the billions of years to date something known to be only a few centuries old simply won't work - there's a minimum and maximum range for every dating method. For example, carbon dating is useless for dating samples millions of years old; the halflife of the isotope involved is just too short. An analogy would be like using a ruler to measure the distance between the Earth and the Moon. Creationist sources who attempt to "debunk" radiometric dating frequently attempt to date a sample known to be millions of years old using carbon dating, and claim victory when the sample dates to only a few tens of thousands of years. To put it bluntly, they're being either incredibly dishonest or downright stupid.
And I especially find your examples of Abū Rayhān Bīrūnī of the 11th century CE and 18th century British naturalist William Smith's hypothesis to be curious as if their opinions based on interpretations of observations in nature would impress or sway me at all. Do you think that because I trust Gods word, a source you consider to be ancient myth, that I would then respect sources from antiquity that you offer which defend your position, just because they're origin is old?
The age of the estimates I gave was relevant only in that they predated Darwin's Theory of Evolution, and so absolutely cannot have been part of some evolutionist conspiracy to support the Theory of Evolution by proposing an old Earth. The old Earth model came long before evolution.
What's more relevant is that those dating estimates didn't use radiometric dating - they used only directly observable evidence to arrive at lower limit estimates for the age of the Earth that are still orders of magnitude older than Creationists propose; further, since Abū Rayhān Bīrūnī's estimate used seashells, it constitutes readily observable evidence that life on Earth is millions of years old at the least. Even if you accept an old Earth as a "dead, void rock" until God "breathed life" into it a few thousand years ago, these estimates directly contradict your religious view.
In short, a young Earth has been refuted by multiple independent avenues of evidence. Young life has similarly been refuted - neither position matches the observed evidence.
The fact is, modern theories of geology have proven to be highly accurate. This is the ultimate test of any scientific theory, and is how we eliminate faith from the equation despite your false accusations. Theories are explanatory models that explain a set of observations; those models make predictions that can be tested for accuracy. We don't have faith, Archangel, that our current models are "true." We have objectively demonstrated that their predictions are highly accurate by all available methods of testing. This is incontrovertible. Further, all scientific theories are tentative such that they will be dropped like a dirty diaper if a more accurate model is presented, or new evidence arises that falsifies them.
No faith is involved. Only evidence reigns supreme in science.
So far, you've presented no model, no testable predictions. You've barely even clarified your view beyond "the Earth is old, but life is young according to the Bible." You've presented no evidence in favor of that view, instead choosing to try to falsify geological theories that have been tested extensively over the past several centuries and have been proven to be very accurate in their predictions.
If you want to support the Biblical view, falsifying current models won't help you. This isn't a binary choice; if modern geology is wrong, the Bible doesn't magically become accurate. If you want to scientifically support the biblical model, provide evidence. Clearly explain your observations and your model of geology that explains them, including how old you think the Earth is, your explanation for the geological processes we observe today, etc. Make predictions based on that model, and then provide observations showing that those predictions are accurate, and that they are more accurate than current geological models.
If you cannot present evidence, if you can do nothing but throw limp criticisms at currently accepted scientific models, then I'm afraid you'll be unable to convince anyone that your position is anything more than religious flimflam.
I fear that the rest of your post runs far afield of geology and would be off-topic here. If you'd like to discuss cosmology, I;d be happy to do so in a more appropriate thread.
I can see that obvious child would rather report my response to rahvin than debate the points I make here which he can't answer.
Archangel, this statement is absurd. Obvious Child didn't "report" anything to me - I'm not someone to "report" things to in the first place. I'm no administrator, I'm just a guy who enjoys debating as a mental exercise. I saw this thread, and as you'll note I've basically ignored OC's opening post in this thread in favor of debating only your actual statements - I'd rather debate my opponents own stated position, rather than what someone else presents as my opponent's position.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 26 by Archangel, posted 09-10-2009 9:51 AM Archangel has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 30 by Archangel, posted 09-10-2009 9:28 PM Rahvin has not replied

  
Rahvin
Member
Posts: 4032
Joined: 07-01-2005
Member Rating: 9.2


Message 82 of 120 (524096)
09-14-2009 12:57 PM
Reply to: Message 80 by ICANT
09-14-2009 11:41 AM


Re: old universe
You did not answer my question, "So when did science find out the earth was old"?
When was the first rock dated older than 6,000 to 10,000 years old?
What method was used to date that rock older than 10,000 years?
The first dating methods were simple extrapolations from obwservation: given an observed number of layers, how long would that number of layers have taken to form; given fossilized ocean creatures found in continental strata, how long would it have taken for the rock to be uplifted, etc.
From wiki:
quote:
Abū Rayhān Bīrūnī (11th century CE) discovered the existence of shells and fossils in regions that were once sea floor, but were later uplifted to become dry land, such as the Indian subcontinent. Based on this evidence, he realized that the Earth is constantly changing and proposed that the Earth had an age, but that its origin was too distant to measure.[13] The principle of superposition of strata was first proposed by Avicenna (11th century). He outlined the principle while discussing the origins of mountains in The Book of Healing in 1027.[14][15] Shen Kuo (11th century) also later recognized the concept of deep time.[16]
Nicolas Steno (17th century) was one of the first Western naturalists to appreciate the connection between fossil remains and strata.[12] His observations led him to formulate important stratigraphic concepts (i.e., the "law of superposition" and the "principle of original horizontality").[17] In the 1790s, the British naturalist William Smith hypothesized that if two layers of rock at widely differing locations contained similar fossils, then it was very plausible that the layers were the same age.[18] William Smith's nephew and student, John Phillips, later calculated by such means that Earth was about 96 million years old.[19]
Edited by Rahvin, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 80 by ICANT, posted 09-14-2009 11:41 AM ICANT has not replied

  
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