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Author Topic:   Best evidence for Creation
Chiroptera
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Message 170 of 176 (486643)
10-23-2008 10:49 AM
Reply to: Message 169 by wardog25
10-23-2008 9:48 AM


Well if I set all the clocks in my house to the wrong time, they might agree, but they are still wrong.
If I went into your house and saw all the clocks were the same, then I would assume that they gave the correct time. If the time they gave were consistent with other information I had that gave an estimate of the time, then I would be more likely to accept the time as correct. Why wouldn't I? The only way I could find out otherwise is
(1) through another, independent check on the correct time, or
(2) a theory of why the clocks are all wrong in exactly the same way, a theory that I can test through independent means.
As far as (1) goes, there isn't an independent check of the absolute time scales in geology, so that presently isn't possible. Well, there is one check: the radiometric dates are consistent with the geologic time scales worked out by geologists before radioactivity was discovered, so why wouldn't we accept the radiometric dates?
As far as (2), the only testable proposals that would explain why the radiometric dates would be wrong are a decrease in the decay rates of the materials, or the gain or loss of isotopes in the crystals; not only do tests not bear these out, but these mechanisms wouldn't explain why the radiometric dates are wrong in the same way.
So, to sum up: we accept the dates as correct because they agree with what we already know from other fields of science, and there is no explanation of why they should be wrong and wrong in exactly the same way.
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Added by edit:
I couldn't care less if that guy can list 500 more dating methods that agree. If you test one method and it gives a wrong answer, all that does is bring every one of those dating methods into question.
But this isn't how you act in real life. To use the analogy you brought up, if you ask 500 people for the time, and 499 tell you that it's 2:15 and one person says that it's noon, I bet you don't assume that there is no accurate way to tell time. I bet you admit that the time is most likely 2:15. You know that occasionally a watch will be wrong, but most watches that are being used will be right most of the time.
Why else would you even have a clock if you couldn't generally rely on it? You use a clock because use of clocks are generally far more reliable than guessing the time, even if you do see a wrong clock once in a while.
Edited by Chiroptera, : No reason given.

Speaking personally, I find few things more awesome than contemplating this vast and majestic process of evolution, the ebb and flow of successive biotas through geological time. Creationists and others who cannot for ideological or religious reasons accept the fact of evolution miss out a great deal, and are left with a claustrophobic little universe in which nothing happens and nothing changes.
-- M. Alan Kazlev

This message is a reply to:
 Message 169 by wardog25, posted 10-23-2008 9:48 AM wardog25 has not replied

  
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