Should we teach both evolution and religion in school?

But the thing is, students have delved into the Channeled Scablands (I among them), and have done active research there. That is how we know that those floods were three times older than the claimed global flood, but that we can see the evidence clearly.And that is one of the reasons we know that the claimed global flood, much larger and much more recent, is nowhere to be found.

Theologians can persuade themselves of anything.--Robert A. Heinlein Sure you could. All you would need is evidence. Unfortunately for creationists, the evidence turned against them some 200 years ago and has been getting more and more convincing ever since. Opinions are one thing, but they must yield to solid evidence. That there was a global flood ca. 4,350 years ago is one thing that evidence shows didn't happen, so opinions that disagree with the evidence are useless.

The problem here is that your timing is wrong.The vast majority of biblical scholars place the global flood in the 4,350 years ago period, give or take a few. The channeled scablands are two to three times older than that.To change this around you have to rewrite all of human history. Creationists have not been able to come up with the evidence to support that claim.

Sure you can. Just bring evidence. Reliable, verifiable evidenceThat's the one thing you haven't tried.

You are basing your opinion on belief. It is unfortunate, as you can't rethink that.I've been to the Channeled Scablands, and studied them while in graduate school. I did my MA thesis on a very old archaeological site in the Scablands, one with a continuous record of human habitation going back 12,000 years. There was no flood during that time.So don't try to pawn your beliefs off on me, as I've been there and seen the evidence for myself. And I helped, in a small way, to create that evidence.All you have is belief, and that's pretty thin gruel.

Fossils are far older than 4300 years ago. Think millions of years and older.And, no, there is no such global flood evidence around 4350 years ago. You are letting belief overshadow all the evidence that shows you are wrong. They accepted the evidence of the real world. Fossils dating in the millions to hundreds of millions of years ago are evidence for a flood about 4350 years ago? You have done nothing but argue your belief while ignoring all the evidence that shows you are wrong.If you think that's doing a pretty good job I have a couple of lightly used unicorns I'll sell you--cheap!

And what makes you think that faith, as opposed to reason and evidence, is a good thing?

True science and TRVE religion are diametrically opposed, 180 opposite.True science relies on evidence, while TRVE religion abhors evidence in favor of dogma and un-evidenced beliefs.

I don't believe you had a coin radiocarbon dated.First, I doubt if you have ever researched radiocarbon dating or even contacted a laboratory that does such things.Second, you don't radiocarbon date metals! You need something that was once living, something that would have absorbed C14 from the atmosphere while it was alive and stopped absorbing C14 upon death.If that coin is your sole justification for not accepting the results of radiocarbon dating you reaffirm my faith in creation "science."And no, the mistakes are not exponential after a few decades. Here is the current calibration curve, INTCAL13, that combines tree-rings and several other methods into a single curve. As you can see, it is not exponential. And you are correct, there is no sense in arguing here. We should be arguing this in the Age Correlations and An Old Earth, Version 2 No 1 thread.But first it would help if you learned something about the radiocarbon dating method.

It would be interesting to see the laboratory reporting sheets for the coin.Wonder what method of pre-treatment they used.And if it is 1958 they should have had to take into account the bomb effects as well.

When you do a radiocarbon date, you get back from the laboratory a data sheet that gives all the information about the sample and the results of the testing. Where is that data sheet? What was the name of the laboratory used? In what year was the test supposedly done?One of those items is the method of pre-treatment. Because radiocarbon dating is used on once-living materials, the methods of pre-treating are geared toward those. For example, shell is treated with an acid etch to remove your fingerprints and modern carbon absorbed on the sometimes powdery surface of old shell.I doubt that there is any standard pre-treatment for a penny, Australian or otherwise.If the test was done before about 1990 or so, it was probably not done using the AMS technique which can date very small samples. We were submitting shell samples weighing 50 or more grams prior to that time; that's a far greater weight than a penny, Australian or otherwise, and shell at least contains once-living material. Your penny would have had such a tiny amount of carbon in it, and the amount of C14 in modern carbon is about 1 part per trillion.Sorry, but I don't believe a word of this. Perhaps your teacher just pretended to send the penny off to be dated? Or perhaps there were creationists involved in this escapade somewhere?By the way, I have submitted about 650 radiocarbon samples for dating over nearly 40 years, so I have some familiarity with the subject. Pre-treatment methods are designed to remove that embedded dirt, whether it be on shell or any other material. When pre-treating charcoal or other forms of carbon the pre-treatment methods remove hair roots, humus, and other modern materials.But there are probably no standard pre-treatment methods for Australian coins because nobody in their right mind would try to radiocarbon date them. No, the question does not make me in the least bit uncomfortable because the claim of 6000 years for the age of the Earth was disproved by early geologists and subsequently by almost every branch of science since then. To claim that all dating methods are wrong means to trash virtually all of science, and if you believed that was true then you'd be living in a cave wearing animal skins--if you could figure out how to kill them and skin them and preserve the skins, which I doubt.Creationists think that they can overturn those things in science that they don't like and keep those things they do. Sorry, it doesn't work that way. As an example, if you try and change the decay constants to accommodate a 6000 year old Earth you run into endless problems, not the least of which is parbroiling the Earth from releasing the heat of 4.5 billion years in just 6000 years. Even the RATE boys admitted they couldn't account for that little problem.

Science does not claim to TRVTH, Trvth, or even truth. For example, a scientific theory can be seen as the current best explanation, having been tested and having made successful predictions, for a given set of facts. False, and absolute nonsense besides. Also false. Getting closer and closer to an answer, guided by evidence, the scientific method, and improving theories is not "like a boat without a rudder." Quite the opposite. With creationism you have a bunch of answers made up by shamans and other ne'er-do-wells in the distant past, for which there is no evidence, and many of which have been shown to be false.

Posting this type of nonsense is not helping your cause.

I taught a college course that included evolution and related subjects. On the first day I passed out the casts of three innominates (half of the pelvis). They were modern human, a chimpanzee, and an Australopithecus africanus. I asked students to group the three innominates into two groups based on morphology.They all grouped the human and Australopithecus together because the shapes were so similar, even though the Australopithecus and the chimpanzee innominates were closer to the same size.Never had a problem after that.

Because one is a science which follows the scientific method while the other is the exact opposite, following scripture and dogma.And, welcome to the site!