A simple question for a complex issue

brian...what a great way to teach developing minds! i applaud your ability to work in such a student-centered fashion. i teach honors level ninth grade biology and earth science. i am lucky to be working with students that will delve into anything i give them. i start them off with what science actually is and how it is done. right off the bat i state that science constrains itself to the natural world and to natural phenomena that are affected by natural laws. any claims on the supernatural have no place in a science class except as an exercise in what science is not.unlike scientists that do actual and beneficial research, creationists basically quote the parts of the bible that could actually happen (while misquoting scientists) and try to find problems with evolution. they don't just stop with evolution, though. creationists in texas did not want the metric system taught b/c jesus had 12, not 10 disciples!!! these same people also wanted "cain's theories" that people were farmers first and not hunter/gatherers taught in social studies!!!the biggest problem with creationists is that they do not put forth any experimantal or corroborating evidence for their claims. they always complain about not being in scientific journals, but the fact of the matter is that none of their claims or studies associated with their claims pass peer review. most don't submit anything to actual science publications b/c they know that their "studies" will not pass for science or have already been proven false by actual scientific work.recently, intelligent design has come into vogue with creationists b/c it actually sounds more scientific. however, most ID claims, such as irreducible complexity, merely beg the question or are not falsifiable. look into books by mayr, dawkins, gould, shermer, sagan, asimov, and berra. most of these authors spend a lot of time on the nature of science while talking about evolution in that context. feynman is great also. he has some very interesting works on physics and on science in general. hope that wasn't too much for anyone. of course i could try to use 100 pt font and red letters!

pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeease avoid the fallacy of false alternatives. whose to say that our planet doesn't ride on the back of a gigantic invisible space turtle that laid it as an egg!?! or is held up by gigantic red letters with first grade spelling mistakes...sorry, i take that back. i think the carving up of cronos or tiamat sounds better. anyway, anything is better than "if we cannot explain it, then god did it"[This message has been edited by hitchy, 01-17-2004]

regardless of whatever's info, ID does not necessarily mean that Earth is young. also, using an icr site as a reference is hardly science at its best. i'll check on your info. in the meantime, will someone please tell this guy to stop using the fallacy of false alternatives!!!

ok, i am back. that didn't take too long.i didn't matriculate (what a fun word, matriculate...and masticate for that matter) at the U of Wisconsin at Madison, but they have a great deal of info on zircons and using them to date the earliest ages of Earth.first, as any physicist knows, and i should have remembered, one type of radioactive decay involves the ejection of helium from the nucleus of the decaying isotope. guess what a lot of helium (relatively speaking) means when it is found in rock that has been dated back to around 4 billion years ago--a lot of radioactive decay. yes, helium can diffuse out of rocks, but a study on helium diffusing out of quartz showed that quartz with a well developed lattice stucture is impermeable to helium diffusion.second, the team at the U of W used an ion microprobe to measure oxygen-18 and corroborate it with other findings. i am not familar with oxygen-18 dating, but it doesn't appear to be a novel method.finally, i am not saying that the oxygen gave off helium. i am just saying that even an isotope with an incredibly long half-life would be mostly helium and otherelements by now.thanks for playing whatever.http://library.thinkquest.org/3471/radiation_types_body.htmlUW-Geoscience 404UW-Geoscience 404[This message has been edited by hitchy, 01-18-2004]

took a look at whatever's link to the icr website. read the article. kind of disturbed that only two of the references for the article came from outside the creationist community. also, the experimenter is not mentioned by name. the guy who wrote the article is, of course, named, but his source isn't. why would you not name your source in the article? why would you call him the experimentor two or three times and not use his name?one more thing--if all the rocks surrounding these zircons are giving off helium as their radioactive components decay, isn't it possible for helium from outside sources to get trapped and held longer inside the crystal lattice of the zircons? quartz, which is also a silicate like zircon, traps helium in its crystal lattice. maybe this is why helium content is not a reliable dating method--too many outside factors can skew the results.