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Author Topic:   Creationist problems with radiocarbon dating
dwise1
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Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


Message 25 of 194 (556546)
04-20-2010 10:25 AM
Reply to: Message 13 by Flyer75
04-19-2010 11:49 PM


Re: RATE
Also, real quick and I hope this is the right spot to ask this, Henry Morris did a study a few years back that collected all the uniformitarian ways to rate the age of the earth, outside of radiocarbon dating (is that the right word?), and I think he came up with 66 or 67 other means, such as earth's magnetic field decay rate being one of them. He supposedly used chrisitian and secular sources for this study and of the 66, one could come up with an age older then just a few million years old, nothing close to the 4.5 billion that radiocarbon dating comes up with....is he dead wrong, am I wrong, or is there some truth to this? Thanks in advance for your answers.
Not a few years ago. H. Morris died in 2006 after having retired some time before that -- I can't find off-hand what year he retired. The last books he published were in 2002 and 2003.
Could you please give us a citation for that "study" so that we could offer a proper response? It certainly sounds to me like that ubiquitous "Uniformitarian Estimates of the Age of the Earth" appendix that seemed to appear in every one of their books from the early 80's on. Instead of a study, that was a list of their stock and standard claims citing their source of each. As I recall, most of them were from an unpublished work by Harold Slusher.
Those claims are not part of a recent study. They date back to the 70's and early 80's and earlier. They are all PRATTs ("points refuted a thousand times") which have been examined and refuted a thousand times over. The reason they have been refuted a thousand times is because somebody like you keeps trotting them out as the latest thing.
talkorigins.org has a comprehensive list of PRATTs (not their term for it; I've only seen that acronym here) and short explanations. You could start there. Or start a PRATT thread with the best one in your opinion and then line up the rest of your ducks.
Edited by dwise1, : "... from the early 80's on."

This message is a reply to:
 Message 13 by Flyer75, posted 04-19-2010 11:49 PM Flyer75 has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 29 by Flyer75, posted 04-20-2010 2:50 PM dwise1 has replied

  
dwise1
Member
Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


Message 27 of 194 (556564)
04-20-2010 11:39 AM
Reply to: Message 24 by Coragyps
04-20-2010 10:17 AM


Re: RATE
Even H. Morris mentioned aluminum's residence time, but just did a kind of "huh, I wonder what that's supposed to mean". Obviously, what it meant was that he had it all wrong. Instead of a constant build-up of the substance, what's happening is that as that substance enters the system, it's also leaving it, such that any given particle of that substance would remain in the system for its residence time.
On another forum, a creationist once opened my eyes as to what's really going on with them. He had presented that tired old sodium-residence-time-in-the-oceans claim and I responded both by pointing out that residence time is not what he thinks it is, but also by asking why he would use that claim since sodium's residence time is in the millions of years, which completely contradicts his explicitly-stated claim of the earth being no more than 10,000 years old. His illuminating response was that it didn't matter at all to him whether the earth was 10,000 years old or millions of years old ... just so long as it wasn't 4 billion years old as science says it is.
They don't really have any interest in their own claims (as supported by their extreme disinterest to defend or even to discuss any of their claims), but rather they are only interested in attacking science and in proving it wrong. As I understand it, once they are able to prove science to be wrong, they can then be free to pick and choose what parts of science to ignore and what to keep: evolution, no -- flush toilets, yes.
Offered as possible insight as to why creationists have problems with radiocarbon dating as well as with the rest of science.

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dwise1
Member
Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


Message 36 of 194 (556643)
04-20-2010 4:02 PM
Reply to: Message 29 by Flyer75
04-20-2010 2:50 PM


Re: RATE
The second link that JonF (Msg #26, replying to your Msg #13) lists 68 items. Take a look at it yourself to verify, but I think we have a match.
One of the problems with creationist claims is that they act very much like urban legends. They circulate around and, because they sound convincing (the only measure of merit creationists apply to them), get picked up and reused and sometimes embellished. Even the scientific sources being cited get passed on without any intervening creationists in the chain having bothered to look up those sources, though sometimes those will get changed, much as in the campfire game of "Telephone".
Taking the moondust claim as an example, H. Morris had referenced a "1976" NASA document ("written well into the space age!" -- every creationist repeating this claim was required to repeat that invocation) which, he claimed, showed that a 4-billion-year-old moon would have been covered by a layer of meteoric dust over 200 feet thick. When I wrote to the ICR asking for more information, they sent me a letter by Morris' source, Harold Slusher, who cited the "1976" NASA document and developed his formula for calculating that layer's depth. Every other creationist I saw using that claim also gave that exact same date. But when I pulled that NASA document off the university library shelf, I immediately saw that it was dated Aug 1965 and inside that it was printed in 1967. Furthermore, Slusher had included two extraneous factors in his calculations, the first by having misquoted his source and the second by violating the laws of mathematics, thus inflating his result by a factor of 10,000, correcting for which resulted in his over-200-foot layer becoming one-third of an inch, just what we did find there. The ICR's reaction was to completely ignore my findings and to summarily and without notice cancel my subscription to their Acts & Facts newsletter. Then a few years later, they officially dropped that claim and some creationists started using the correct 1965 date, though they continue to this day selling several books that still contain that claim.
"The New Defender's Study Bible". From amazon.com:
quote:
This study Bible provides a handbook for a solid defense of the accuracy, integrity, and inspiration of the Bible, a seven-day creation, and Jesus as God's incarnate son.
Hmph. Defending the Bible with PRATTs? Don't sound too bright an idea. And that page lists its price at nearly $500 (that's "five hundred dollars"). Say, if you're interested, I own this bridge back east in New York City that I'd be willing to sell to you.
PS
Sorry if that came off as too harsh. Although I'm taking a break this past decade, I'd read and listened to and followed the ICR's activities since about 1980. My very low opinion of the ICR is based on experience.
The basic party line I encountered was that if their claims are not true, then Scripture has no meaning and God does not exist, or at the very least is a monumental Liar who shouldn't be worshipped. And, of course, their claims are in fact not true.
I am appalled at anyone preaching such doctrine, especially under the pretense of "defending the Truth of the Bible", since it achieves what an army of anti-religion atheists could never ever hope to accomplish: proving that God does not exist.
My opinion is that there surely must be some better form of apologetics to use instead of "creation science". Certainly it would be difficult to find much that's worse, but then I could still be pleasantly surprised.
Edited by dwise1, : PS

This message is a reply to:
 Message 29 by Flyer75, posted 04-20-2010 2:50 PM Flyer75 has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 45 by Flyer75, posted 04-21-2010 2:30 AM dwise1 has replied
 Message 51 by IchiBan, posted 04-21-2010 1:58 PM dwise1 has not replied

  
dwise1
Member
Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


Message 50 of 194 (556846)
04-21-2010 10:26 AM
Reply to: Message 45 by Flyer75
04-21-2010 2:30 AM


Re: RATE
PRATTs??? what does that stand for? sorry.
As I told you when I first used the acronym with you ( Message 25):
quote:
Those claims are not part of a recent study. They date back to the 70's and early 80's and earlier. They are all PRATTs ("points refuted a thousand times") which have been examined and refuted a thousand times over. The reason they have been refuted a thousand times is because somebody like you keeps trotting them out as the latest thing.
Which is true. The creationist literature is very resistent to correction, the pattern we see being that they're far more interested in claims that sound convincing than in the truth. So new creationists pick up the "latest" books and see all those claims that were soundly refuted 30 years ago being presented as if they were the latest thing. So these new creationists think they have all this really great evidence that blows evolution out the window when in reality they have worse than nothing.
It just boggles my mind that people who care so much for their religion and for their faith would insist on building their house upon quicksand.

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dwise1
Member
Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


Message 128 of 194 (684142)
12-16-2012 12:23 AM
Reply to: Message 125 by morningstar2008
12-15-2012 8:55 PM


Well, really will there be not a single Russian in all America?
Would not make the slightest difference when you post complete gibberish like this (copy and pasted directly from your own post to which this is a reply):
Maybe if you were to actually post что-нибут по руский, then a Russian would be able to make sense of what you write. But as long as you instead insist on posting complete gibberish (as I had quoted from you above), then this entire world could be completely filled with Russians and still nobody would be able to understand what you write.
Besides, this forum is in English, which means that we post everything in English. Not posting in the standard language of this forum is rude and persistent rudeness will not be received well.
Both things I have told you in this message are very simple and self-evident and should be obvious to anybody capable of thinking. Why are you unable to understand them?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 125 by morningstar2008, posted 12-15-2012 8:55 PM morningstar2008 has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 129 by morningstar2008, posted 12-16-2012 2:26 AM dwise1 has replied

  
dwise1
Member
Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


Message 130 of 194 (684152)
12-16-2012 3:31 AM
Reply to: Message 129 by morningstar2008
12-16-2012 2:26 AM


And still you are unable or unwilling to understand those two simple concepts.
OK, I tried. Your failure here is your own damned fault.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 129 by morningstar2008, posted 12-16-2012 2:26 AM morningstar2008 has replied

Replies to this message:
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