Peanut Gallery - What variety of creationist is Buzsaw? (Minnemooseus and Buzsaw)

Well, we have direct evidence that Buz most certainly has been shown that at the time while Adam would have been alive nothing was much different than it is today.Oetzi would have been a contemporary of Adam and we can test what conditions were, what plants and animals were around, what folk ate and wore and some of their customs and tools and the genetics of plants, animal and humans and there is nothing to indicate anything much different than today.

Walls such as that are dated by their context.This is true for early walls, such as the mortarless walls of Egypt or South America, as well as historic walls in Rome, England, or the New World.Dating the actual stones is a fool's errand. That won't tell you anything important about the wall. Discovering that your basement wall is less than 160 million years old is not going to get anyone a Nobel prize.If walls are adobe or some similar material, then perhaps the organic binders can be dated using C14 dating. Bricks can be dated by a variety of means based on historical knowledge, and sometimes by other techniques. That's not one of my specialties.If I were to try to date your middle wall I would check when the house was built through the historic records, see if there were building plans on file with the city or county, etc. There could be records of permits received for additions, etc. The local assessors are often a good source of information on when building improvements are made.Archaeology relies on a lot of common sense. You should check into it sometime!

Here's some stuff I wrote for a PNT on the subject.Let us start with the rock wall. I cannot see any scientific dating method that would be used to date the wall as pre-human. Unless it convincingly mimics a natural formation (which would be extremely unusual) archaeologists would clearly be looking for the date of construction, and certainly not even considering the age of the rock.Likewise when fossils are dated palaeontologists look to the date that the rock was laid down, not the age of the earlier rock that provided the sediment. Fossils are dated from the rocks, so we must see how rocks are dated.To give a simple overview, rocks are primarily dated by their geometric relationships - which relate, of course to the formation and history of these strata, not the earlier rock that contributed the sediment. The simplest criterion is the well-known "principle of superposition" which tells us that older rock is below, younger rock above - at least when it was deposited! Radiometric dating on igneous rocks is the other major input. This, gives us a date when the current igneous strata cooled down sufficiently to "close", locking the radioactive materials in place. These dates are used to give us ages for sedimentary rocks through the relationships between the rocks - a lava flow over rock must be older by the principle of superposition.While this description has been greatly simplified, and there are many other considerations it does capture the basic principles. Work out the order in which rocks formed by the relationships between the rocks, use radiometric dating to find when igneous rocks were formed, and plug those numbers into the relationships.It is easy to see that all these considerations relate to the formation of the current rocks, contrary to Buz's assertion. What is not easy to see is where Buz gets his idea that fossil dating is based on discovering the age of the original rock. (The more so since the idea is not even applicable to biogenic limestones, which are not formed from particles of older rock at all).

Obviously Buz realizes that dating the rocks in his wall will produce an answer that's far older than the date his wall was constructed, and therefore radiometric dating of rocks can produce a date that's far older than the date they were formed.The problem with this scenario is that formation of igneous and metamorphic rocks is not at all analogous to assembling a rock wall; we know how they are formed and modified and how that affects or does not affect their radiometric dates. Formation of sedimentary rocks can be thought of as somewhat analogous to assembling a wall, and that's why we don't do radiometric dates on sedimentary rocks (except for a few cases in which we date the "mortar" that holds the grains together).

Of course strata is the wrong word; some strata are sedimentary and some strata are not.Nope, the old creationist PRATT "layers are usually dated by the fossils in them and the fossils are dated by the layers" just ain't so. Sedimentary rocks are dated by their relationship with igneous and metamorphic rocks. As a simple example, a sedimentary layer above a 100 million year old igneous layer and below a 90 million year old igneous layer¹, is between 90 and 100 million years old, no dating-by-the-fossils involved. There are lots of other scenarios which don't involve fossils. Index fossils are used to correlate between geographically separated layers. An index fossil is one that is easily identified and only appears in rocks spanning a small period of time, as determined by dating igneous and metamorphic layers without using any fossils. If a sedimentary layer in the U.S contains a particular index fossil and lies above a 100 million year old igneous layer and below a 90 million year old igneous layer, and a similar layer in Latvia contains the same index fossil, the layer in Latvia is between 90 and 100 million years old. But that layer in Latvia hasn't been dated by the index fossil, its similar-age relationship to another layer has been established by the index fossil.Sorry, Buz, you've swallowed yet another canard.--
¹And with no signs of the rare and easily identifiable case where a set of layers is overturned.

Buz writes on the Debate thread: Buz, whenever your opinion or understanding of an issue seems to be at odds with science, you really should bet on science. It has a track record.But of course if your mind can't be changed by facts and evidence, why are you even bothering to debate? You preaching?Let me put this into baby talk:The geological record comes in layers, or strata. Some of those can be dated by radiometric means while others can't.Usually the volcanic layers can be dated this way, while sedimentary layers can't be.As was pointed out above, if we have a volcanic layer at, say, 90 million and another lower layer at 100 million, any sedimentary layer in between has to be between 90 and 100 million.Now many of these sedimentary layers have unique fossils because of evolution. These fossils are not found in other layers.So, using our example above, if we have a particular unique fossil in that layer dated between 90 and 100 million, we can assume that same age if we find that fossil in other contexts. This would be called an "index fossil." If a particular index fossil is well dated from many places to a particular age range, then it in turn can be used to date the layers in which it is found without the need to do expensive radiometric dating. And in some places the volcanic layers might be eroded away, but we still have a reliable means for dating the sedimentary layers by the fossils.If you are having trouble following this, let's use a similar analogy--the Buffalo nickel. If you find such a coin with the date worn off what is it's age? Since that coin was only made from 1913 to 1938, we can assume it was within that age span because of it's unique design and it's well-dated context.Same with fossils.This is not circular reasoning to anyone but a creationist trying to obscure the facts to agree with a particular religious myth.

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We're not debating the Exodus perse presently. Nevertheless, NoNukes and PaulK are going at me in Message 10 about dishonesty, implying that I was ignoring the fact that the Exodus crossing is too deep presently for such a crossing.

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In fact, I said nothing at all about the Exodus crossing or about anything that Buz might have posted about the crossing.

What Creationists tend to forget is confirmation.The whole issue of dating has been a series of unrelated methodologies that time after time have confirmed the age of the earth.First was simply positional dating, older stuff under younger stuff.Then a greater understanding of process made stuff even older. To get sand stone you first had to raise up a mountain, wear it down and then compress the small pieces into larger conglomerates.Then came radiometric dating in all its many different versions and each new method developed confirmed the earlier findings.Even more recently methods like the various luminescence tests have once again confirmed ages.The important point is that each totally different, totally unrelated method returns the same results adding increased confidence.

The analogy is erroneous. Consider your rock wall sitting on a poured concrete floor and supporting a poured concrete ceiling, The floor dates at 75 years old, the ceiling dates at 60 years old, the rocks in the wall date to 120 million years old, and we can tell from the construction of the wall that it's made of old rocks created long before the wall was built. How old is the wall?Oh, and the igneous and metamorphic rocks we do date aren't deposited by floods or any form of water. We can tell. Of course that pattern is not what is actually found in the geologic record, with elephants and blue whales found above the first birds and way above the first flying insects.

This is another example of just making stuff up by Buz.Creationists just seem to pull stuff out of the dark places, in this case volcanoes and then throwing in more excrement in the form of saying that volcanism would somehow add pressure.When there is magma intrusions they also leave very clear evidence and can most certainly be identified.But does Buz provide any evidence to support any of his assertions or innuendos?

Buz quotes JonF's post: But then claims: which is quite obviously not what JonF said.

This is one of the all time stupidest things that creationists say, mostly because it is so far removed from reality. Buz has been in this game long enough to know better than dumb stuff like this. Let's take a look at the evidence shall we? Just for the record Buz, fish are considerably more mobile than corals. The stupid idea that nimble creatures are higher in the fossil record than immobile ones really is the height of creationist ignorance. Only someone who knew absolutely nothing about the fossil record could make a claim this wrong. For someone like Buz, who has been having this kind of discussion for years, it really amounts to utterly shameful ignorance to the point of deliberate refusal to learn.Mutate and Survive

And it's amazing how fast grasses can run My memory may be faulty, but I have a vague recollection of an argument being made on this board about why birds were above dinosaurs in the fossil record. The poster suggested that when the flood occurred, the dinosaurs ran up hills to avoid the water and the birds perched on their heads. Now it could be that someone jokingly suggested this and the Floodist agreed that it was a likely scenario, rather than the Floodist suggesting it in the first place, but however it came about it had my eyes out on stalks

If the wall is made of sedimentary rocks, no, it won't date to the time the sediment was deposited. If it's made of igneous rocks those rocks will date to the time they solidified. Actually, yes. BUT THAT"S NOT ANALOGOUS TO HOW WE DATE SEDIMENTARY ROCKS!!!!!!!!!one11one1shift!.WE DON"T DATE SEDIMENTARY ROCKS BY TRYING TO DATE THEM DIRECTLY. WE DATE SEDIMENTARY ROCKS BY THEIR RELATIONSHIP WITH IGNEOUS AND METAMORPHIC ROCKS.Which both I and Minne have already explained.Many times.My concrete analogy is analogous to how we date sedimentary rocks. Your analogy isn't.Buzzie-poo, if a sedimentary layer is sandwiched between two igneous layers, and the lower igneous layer dates to 100 million years, and the upper igneous layer dates to 90 million years, do you really think we can't conclude that the sedimentary layer is between 90 and 100 million years old?Forget the analogies and address the reality.Edited by JonF, : No reason given.Edited by JonF, : No reason given.

Content deleted. Posted and logged out, forgetting where I was posting. My apologies. Edited by Buzsaw, : No reason given.