Hi Coyote, I lost most of an answer to your post through an automatic updating program that just threw it out of my computer last night with no warning that I'd managed to see. I don't think I ever got my thoughts back together well enough the second time around but anyway I am now finally posting an answer.
First of all thank you very much for such a thorough and thoughtful post, I really appreciate it very much. I might even nominate it for a POTM if nobody else does. My first answer probably did more justice to all your work than my second does so I'm sorry about that
I did some thinking about the carbon dating part of your post and want to post on that part separately, after this part:
I know there is every kind of weird creationist notion about when the Flood supposedly occurred, many of them based on a compromise with what they think science knows, and I'm probably the only one here, or maybe that ever was here, who believes the ENTIRE geological column was formed in the Flood in the time period traditionally understood to be identified in the Bible. So I understand if "creationism" comes across as just anybody's wild guess, which it pretty much is for some reason among those who post here.
Creationists have claimed the flood occurred anywhere between about 4,000 years ago and 250 million years ago and beyond. It is like they are terrified to pick out one specific time because then that time would be subject to examination for the telltale signs of a flood. And in fact, all of the time periods suggested for the flood have been examined and there is no evidence of a global flood at any of those times.
The basic reason is usually that they think science has actually proved something about age so they try to fit the Bible into that. They abandon the first page of their Bible, actually the first few pages, which my signature says we must not do. Why so many different time guesses I don’t know. Even some of the creationist ministries don’t hold to a fixed traditional reading of Genesis but add in a few thousand years here or there without any justification that I can see. The traditional reading, which I know is held by many who don’t get into the debate, is that the Creation is about 6000 years old and the Flood occurred about 4300 years ago. I wish we could all agree on this much at least.
As for the idea that you’ve examined the time periods suggested, let’s say 4300 years ago, and found no evidence for the Flood, this is an illusion because you are working from your own assumptions about time and you have a very limited idea of what sort of evidence you’re looking for. I think this is nave in the extreme. A worldwide flood would have had effects no ordinary local flood could have. The Flood would have effectively demolished the whole land surface of the planet, you wouldn’t just get a layer or deposit of a certain kind of evidence at some level of the strata or depth of an archaeological dig. Within days or weeks of constant rain and rising water it would have to have dissolved everything that could dissolve, all loose sediments and soils for sure, and probably pulverized some rock as well in the process as it tumbled from higher to lower positions in huge watery mudslides. Whatever could float would float and the ocean currents would carry huge quantities of both sediments and living creatures. Yes, it seems to have sorted things in some fashion, since the layers have pretty predictable contents. I’ve presented my view on this further up the thread though, and I still have to get back to the response I got to that. So no, you have NOT found no evidence of the Flood because you have a completely insufficient idea of what sort of evidence there should be. It's like you’re looking with a microscope for evidence when the real evidence is surrounding you everywhere you look if you would just stand up and look around. The entire geological column is the sort of evidence such a Flood would bring about. All of it bottom to top. And yes, I’ve dealt with a whole bunch of the objections to this idea but it would take too much space to get into all that here.
Including my own guesses of course. I can't see how any, some, many or most of the strata could have been formed by the Flood and the rest formed by some other means. They are all identical as to their basic horizontality, demarcation from layers above and below, etc etc etc. They show NO disturbances until recent time when tectonic forces distorted them, cut canyons into them or whatnot, they just lie there as a full stack. What is called "erosion" between the slabs such as in the GC, is a little roughing up, minuscule compared to what real erosion does on the surface of this earth, easily accounted for by runoff of water between the layers as the stack dried out after the Flood. Etc. etc. etc.
Check with the geologists and sedimentologists on this one.
Oh believe me I’ve read all that stuff already. I get my ideas from what scientists write. What I say here ought to be simple enough for anyone to judge, shouldn't need expert input. Just visualize the walls of the Grand Canyon.
Sorry, I DO respect you scientists a great deal -- when you stick to the work of science, not when you are conjuring up ages of time you can't possibly really know anything about and calling it fact and jeering us Biblical creationists for not accepting it because we have a better testimony to time.
No, you do not respect scientists, nor the scientific method, at all. You feel free to pick and choose what you accept and to denigrate those scientists who come up with answers contrary to your beliefs, beliefs, incidentally, not based on scientific evidence at all. Sorry, you don't get to do that. If you accept the scientific method, you have to accept the results whether you like them or not. And scientists use the same basic methods, with some adjustments for the nature of their particular data, across all fields.
I see, I’m not allowed to appreciate the actual reality of DNA because I don’t believe in the interpretive scheme of evolution, I’m not allowed to appreciate basic laboratory chemistry of the sort I did in high school or advances in medicine because I don’t believe in the interpretive scheme of evolution, I’m not allowed to appreciate how gold or oil can be found through a knowledge of the mechanics of geology because I don’t believe the earth is billions of years old. I must not respect the scientific method because I don’t believe evolution has anything to do with the scientific method, that the scientific method cannot even be applied to evolution because it requires testability which evolution does not afford since it’s just an interpretive scheme about the past and the past cannot be replicated. I can’t understand how population genetics works, how different breeds are genetically developed, which is something I argue a lot at my blogs, because I don’t believe in evolution beyond the level of varieties and breeds. I see. Then you must be right, I don’t respect scientists at all.
What creationists pick and choose is very specific. We pick and choose what is actual factual science, and throw out the purely speculative untestable and unprovable interpretive system of evolution. The fact that you can't tell the difference is our biggest problem. It's a very real diffierence.
Seems to me that as long as certain kinds of science, such as archaeology and paleontology, work as oh, say, entomologists do, mostly by scrupulously identifying and cataloging pure phenomena/fact including location, conditions or whatever, rather than treating things like dating as fact that really depend on a bunch of accumulated speculations and NOT actual fact, then they are doing true science that I'm not going to dispute. Unless there is reason to suspect a hoax, and hoaxes are not unknown in science to say the least.
I would suggest that there are far more hoaxes, distortions, misrepresentations, and outright lies peddled by creationists than scientists. I have messaged some of the creationist sites with simple errors that they have made reading the scientific literature, and so far they have all refused to correct those errors. They BELIEVE and that has clouded their judgment completely. I think the same applies to you.
I know creationists get into some indefensible stuff, although I'm not sure exactly what you have in mind here so I can't judge it one way or the other. But there's a lot of true creationist work nevertheless. It couldn’t be that your own prejudice has blinded you to what and why creationists are doing what they are doing, could it?
A part of this is the phony dichotomy creationists try to establish between evolutionary sciences and "real" science. That's nonsense invented to try to prop up beliefs that have been disproved by the scientific method.
Not nonsense at all and not invented either. Hard to get across to someone who is totally immersed in the paradigm such that you can’t distinguish the actual scientific work from the interpretive work in which it is enmeshed, but no, not invented, quite real.
There is overwhelming evidence that our dating methods are at least pretty good, within, say 10%. Tree rings agree pretty closely with corals, and both agree with glacial varves, and so on. Bristlecone pines from southern California agree closely with European oaks. Newer radiometric dating using different methods and materials are also providing remarkable similar results. RAZD has several threads exploring these correlations.
You can't just say you don't accept them and retain any credibility.
Well, since I don’t want the sort of credibility that comes from abandoning what I know to be the truth I guess that’s just a handicap I’ll have to continue to labor under. What I try to do is argue from what I do understand, and I think there are plenty of such arguments that all by themselves undermine evolution, even, yes, absolutely discredit it to such an extent that all the OTHER arguments that seem to support evolution should have to yield to rethinking.
You have to present evidence why they don't work, and to explain away the multiple correlations. So far no creationist has been able to do that. Even the RATE boys were forced to backtrack on a lot of their initial ideas in the face of scientific evidence that they themselves produced--and this is after spending over a million dollars of creationist money.
Challenging the dating methods is one approach to the problem that can be taken by creationists but I think there are more effective approaches as I indicate above. My approach is to make other arguments that I think are a lot more defensible arguments, particularly about how you can’t get beyond breeds and varieties because of the nature of genetics, that is, because genetic variability decreases with each division of a population that results in a new gene pool in reproductive isolation. That’s a big argument I’ve made many times and I believe it shows that macroevolution simply cannot happen. (Yes, I know the argument from mutation. But my argument IS testable) This sort of evidence should force the dating arguments to be rethought, as I just said.
You are just hand-waving away solid scientific information based on your belief in ancient myths. Now, you can believe what you want, but what I don't understand is how you can keep trying to fool yourself--apparently quite successfully--in the face of the massive amounts of evidence that we present to the contrary.
What's hard to get across to you and people in your position is that we, I, genuinely believe that you do not have the evidence you think you have, that you are subsuming the work of true science under a false interpretive scheme and not noticing that the meld does not hold. Your massive evidence, where it is true fact, supports most of my creationist interpretations as well or better than it supports evolutionst interpretations. I sincerely believe that and argue it wherever I can to the best of my ability.
Go through RAZD's thread and there is a lot more than dendrochronology. There are a lot of different methods of dating, and they are all in pretty close agreement--certainly close enough that there is no room for a young earth or for a recent global flood.
I've been through RAZD's stuff. As I believe I've acknowledged. the dating arguments are the hardest for creactionists to answer. The best approach for us, therefore is to present other kinds of evidence so that eventually the dating stuff, which we believe has to be wrong even if we can't yet prove it, will have to be rethought as a result. As I say above.
So here we are recreating the Creationism Road Trip. Folks who are familiar with the various fields are presenting evidence, which creationists just hand-wave away. Same as always.
Yes, in fact this whole thread has become something of a Creationism Road Trip unto itself. But I think I’ve done a lot more here than just hand-wave, I’ve given answers of one sort or another to all your challenges. And again, I know my source of knowledge is reliable and trustworthy and therefore I’m not going to yield it up to mere fallible human thought processes.
Surely you can appreciate the basic position I'm in: if you believed as I believe, which to me is a kind of knowing really, that the Bible IS the word of the God who created everything we see, everything that is studied by science, including ourselves, if you believe the Bible is His revelation of who He is and what He made, know it and trust it from experience and not just some sort of intellectual assent, you yourself would have to agree that science should be subordinated to that revelation and not the other way around. Just as a matter of reasonable principle.
(See signature.)
Yes, I’ve taken note of your signature. I agree with Heinlein that belief gets in the way of learning and is probably what accounts for the inability of scientists to think outside the box of evolution. As for the idea that religious belief has nothing to do with scientific evidence or knowledge, it's true that most religious belief doesn’t, but the Bible IS the word of God and although it provides only the scantiest of hints to work from it provides enough for a belief in a physical universe that obeys laws and can therefore be studied, and the knowledge that human reason is untrustworthy.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
He who surrenders the first page of his Bible surrenders all. --John William Burgon, Inspiration and Interpretation, Sermon II.
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