What is the YEC answer to the lack of shorter lived isotopes?

So you think God created an earth that appears old? He did this when it is not at all necessary so what does that tell us about His sense of humour? You'd have to wonder about what other little jokes he has hidden and waiting for us.

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Common sense isn't

No! Now listen very carefully. If something is unobservable (in all ways) science says nothing about it. Nothing at all. The process of science can't say it exists or not. Having "no comment" on somethings existance is not the same as saying it doesn't exist. I can't tell what you could possible mean about a "fundamental truth" in the scientific sense. You are constructing another false dichotomy. Science can say many, possibly true things about the universe none of which have anything to do with God. Some of them maybe pretty "fundamental" (whatever that does mean) but all are subject to further research and may prove to not be so "fundamental" after all. In fact, that's happened a lot. So perhaps there isn't any "fundamental" truths in science. (even things like conservation of energy had to be changed less than a century after being formulated).You are putting forward a false dichotomy. A dangerous one. If you insist that only one of "science" or "god" can be correct then as evidence mounts more and more people will pick the one with evidence. However, most believers aren't so foolish and believe in a more interesting God than you do.Your whole last paragraph is based on the wrong idea that not observing something known (defined) to be not observable disproves it. It doesn't!Let's try an analogy. Einstein's special theory of relativity says we should always experience time dilation if we travel. It predicts the exact amount that we should experience. We calculate how much you should experience driving to the store and back. We use wristwatches to check the result. We do NOT observe time dilation.Have we disproved special relativity? Of course not. We didn't expect to observe the dilation.You have described God as being unobservable. Given that, when we don't observe Him have we disproved Him? Of course not.If you say that God doesn't exist if the earth is more than 6,000 years old you have supplied an observation that can be made. I make the necessary observations. The earth is much more than 6,000 years old by any measures that I can reasonably make. {i}Now[/i] [b]you've/b supplied a God which is disprovable and disproven. That's up to you, not scientists.

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Common sense isn't[This message has been edited by NosyNed, 01-09-2004]

Ok, maybe I get what you mean by fundamental.But it is so very fundamental that I'm not sure it's meaningful. Most of us here don't have any argument with those that say "I believe God created the universe.". We may not believe it ourselves but you can if you want. Science has no comment that far back (at least not for the time being).But you don't get to believe just anything about how he went about creating it. Well, you can but you have to keep it out of other peoples faces in any free country with separation of church and state.So most of us aren't arguing about something quite so "fundamental". I don't know how the universe came into being or why. I'm comfortable not knowing and enjoy watching the process of learning more and more. Others aren't so patient and want an answer now, however it is arrived at.But as I noted earlier there are a number of pretty basic things about the universe which are probably pretty correct to a high enough probability that you really, really have to do better than just believe if you expect to be taken seriously.The arguement here is with those who not only choose to believe some pretty silly things, but to believe it without any good evidence or logic and, on top of that, want to interfere with the process of scientific discovery and education based on that belief. They even think that they can damage some very fundamental freedoms in most democracies by breaking the church-state separation.That last one is pretty strange, they are in a minority everywhere and would be in the group of those who suffer if the separation ever really was gone.

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Common sense isn't

Yes yes, John Paul, but as noted this is just one of the pieces of evidence. Is it just a huge co-incidence that the ones that are missing are exactly right to match the measured age by using the long lived isotopes? (and any and all other pieces of evidence? )Here is a bit of writing by a Christian:
Geoscience Research Institute | I think we need more research on that...

quote:

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For example, samarium-146, with a half-life of about 100 million years, is not found in naturally occurring deposits. However, its stable daughter product, neodymium-142, is found there. A 10 half-life calculation would therefore set a minimum age for consolidation of about one billion years. Thus, this process brings us to the interesting conclusion that the radiometric age of the planets, moons, and meteorites of our Solar System may range between one and five billion years.

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I don't know enough nuclear physics to tell if neodymium-142 can come from other sources. How far are you going to go with this?

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Common sense isn't

I've just noticed that, although we have a number of YEC's around the dates and dating forum is being left out in the cold.Perhaps they want to take a shot at it?