Beretta writes:
... Well we all know how to use geological processes to our advantage now. Our difference of opinion is only in what may have been the case in the distant past. We all use present radioactive decay rates to our advantage as a civilization. Just because it is quite feasible that there may have been a burst of more rapid radioactive decay in the past doesn't mean we are going to use those past possibilities in our now technology...
... we know what the rate is now and we apply that rate to technology -I would think that would be obvious and practical and have nothing to do with the real argument here...
... Different elements currently decay at measurable rates -that is not an assumption, it is an experimentally verifiable fact. Uniformatarian assumptions about the past have nothing to do with this.
You are suggesting that it is "quite feasible" for certain observed physical constants -- the rates of decay for specific radio-active elements -- to have been drastically different at some point in the past, and that this makes YEC assertions about the "true" age of the earth plausible in some scientific sense.
But the sole basis for asserting a drastic change in decay rates at some point in time (e.g. "the stuff decayed much faster prior to... um... 4000 BC, give or take a few dozen/hundred years") is still nothing more than a quizzical belief in a particular "literal" interpretation of biblical text -- which is dubious
prima facie, given that most people who read the same text and accept one or another interpretation of its religious doctrines
do not accept this particular "literal" interpretation. They prefer to view it as allegory or metaphor or some other figurative sense.
In other words, the biblical basis for asserting changes over time in decay rates is flimsy just on biblical grounds, and there is no other authority or evidence or suggestion for asserting that the rates of decay could or should have changed at any time, ever, since the point at which these elements first came into existence.
Also, you are leaving out some important considerations in asserting the "feasibility" of such changes in decay rates. The rate of decay is not simply some arbitrary number assigned at God's whim to this or that element. It relates directly to other observable facts about the elements in question, the behaviors of subatomic particles in general, and the relations that these facts and behaviors have to other clearly observed physical constants.
I'm not a nuclear or cosmological physicist, so I don't have direct knowledge of all the related known facts, but based on what I can understand, I would fully expect that a change in rate of decay for various elements would entail changes in some other constants whose role in physics is considerably less variable -- maybe even the speed of light, for instance.
If someone manages to figure out what these entailments are, and then wants to try to assert that additional changes of related constants must also have taken place, just for the sake of supporting YEC assertions based on dubious interpretations of the Bible, there's a better-than-even chance that they'll end up with real problems -- maybe Adam and Eve had to be 12 inches tall (or the earth would have had to be 6 times larger), because of the different gravitation constant that would need to be posited on the basis of the different rate of radioactive decay. Or maybe life as we know it couldn't have existed under that different set of constants, or would have been terminated at the point where the constants changed, because they could not survive such violence to their physical composition. I don't know for sure, but personally I don't see the need for checking that out.
Uniformitarianism is just a lot more plausible. When the observable evidence is consistent, the better plan is to base further research and conclusions on that consistency, until observable evidence is found that reveals inconsistency. In the case of radioactive decay rates, evidence of inconsistency has not been seen.
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