Not only Intelligent Design - but DIVINE DESIGN!

Do you have any evidence to present, or is that it?

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Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.

Sorry, not correct.I am a professional archaeologist and my own research in the United States has shown that the biblical flood story is incorrect.This matches evidence from thousands of other archaeologists, as well as tens of thousands of other -ologists all over the world.Just a sample: strata of the appropriate age, ca. 4,350 years ago, does not have evidence of a massive flood.Another: we have mtDNA from before 4,350 years ago, and after that date, that are from the same exact lineage (numerous examples, including from my own work). Those populations were not wiped out by a flood ca. 4,350 years ago, but rather show continuity across that date.The only conclusion possible is that the flood did not happen as claimed in the bible.

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Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.

You have not refuted any of the evidence in my post #28.Try again?

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Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.

You may have said it, but that doesn't make it true. In fact, it is totally wrong.Just one example:Radiocarbon dating is not affected by water, and in fact marine shells make fine dating samples. I have probably obtained about 500 dates using marine shells. (How many have you obtained?)You have been reading too many creationist websites and too few scientific papers.So as to not clutter up the thread I refer you to any of several threads we have on radiocarbon and other radiometric dating methods.But I doubt you will research the subject. Creation "science" doesn't seen to need research; dogma and scripture suffice.I provided you with other reasons we can say the flood never happened about 4,350 years ago: archaeological research shows no flood at that time period, and mtDNA shows continuity across that time period. You have ignored those points, just as you will probably ignore your mistake on radiocarbon dating.

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Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.

That was not my post; I don't do K-Ar or any of those radiometric dating methods.However, your "leaking" argument is incorrect for radiocarbon dating. Radiocarbon dating measures the ratios between C12 and C14, and usually includes C13 as a means of achieving greater accuracy. Leaking would affect all three and would not render the method inaccurate. 1) I am aware of the half-life of C14. However, C12 does not have a half-life, as it is not undergoing radioactive decay; nor does C13, a stable isotope. The fact that C14 has a half-life is what allows us to date it! That fact can't be used as an argument against the method as radiocarbon dating would be impossible otherwise.2) Marine shells make fine specimens for radiocarbon dating. No, they are not rocks. You can't radiocarbon date rocks, but shells contain carbon so they can be radiocarbon dated. And when they died is what you measure when doing radiocarbon dating. I have obtained dates on shell back some 9,000 years, and my colleagues have gone quite a bit older than that. Evidence of water deposition is found in many places. Unfortunately for your case, those deposits are spread over hundreds of millions of years! For evidence of Noah's flood we would need to see deposits centered around 4,350 years ago so. Cambrian deposits, for example, do you no good (being over 500 million years too old). For the time period associated with the flood story (about 4,350 years ago) you need to examine soils, not rocks, and that leads to archaeology rather than geology.And archaeology is what I do. Again, unfortunately for your case, neither archaeology or sedimentology provide evidence for your a priori beliefs and conclusions. In fact, they refute them convincingly. The early creationist geologists, seeking to document the global flood, gave up just about 200 years ago.All you need to do to refute the idea of a worldwide flood about 4,350 years ago is find one archaeological site with a deposit cross-cutting that time period but showing no evidence of a discontinuity that could be attributed to a massive flood. I have tested over a hundred sites that cross-cut that time period, and what I have found is continuity of human cultures, fauna and flora, site formation, and in one case continuity of mtDNA. In other words, there was no discontinuity in just those things that would be disrupted by a flood.This same continuity is found in virtually all sites which cross-cut that time period. The human population growth argument is too old and tired to be worth refuting once again. It is a creationist fantasy.What is becoming increasingly obvious is that you have no personal knowledge of radiocarbon dating, nor other methods of radiometric dating. You are picking and choosing bits and pieces from creationist websites because they agree with your religious beliefs.Unfortunately, you have no way of knowing when those bits and pieces are horribly wrong as you have not studied the method yourself. What is even worse is that, based on your superficial knowledge, you come here and lecture professionals who use these methods in their work, and have for decades.That is not likely to get you a very good reception.Similarly, your evidence for a worldwide flood is bits and pieces carefully selected to suggest a flood while ignoring the overwhelming evidence that contradicts the bits and pieces as well as the whole notion of a recent worldwide flood.If you are attempting to do science you have to account for all of the data with your theory. You can't selectively ignore the data you don't like. That is apologetics and creation "science" which are pretty much the exact opposite of real science.

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Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.

Please don't try to lecture me on radiocarbon dating. You have shown with every post that you don't know a thing about it.Examples:1) The amounts of carbon in the atmosphere would have no effect on radiocarbon dating because that method does not rely on amounts of carbon, but ratios between different isotopes of carbon.2) Radiocarbon dating is not used to establish the age of the earth. It's maximum limit is about 50,000 or so years (and getting better all the time). But even that is sufficient to demolish the young earth belief.3) We are able to account for atmospheric variations in C14 through tree ring calibrations and other methods. The divergence doesn't get beyond about 10% at the most, and modern dating methods let us correct for that. We have continuous tree ring sequences for several parts of the world that extend much beyond the purported dates for the global flood. That allows us to calibrate our radiocarbon dates for atmospheric fluctuations. (And it also shows that there was no flood, as those tree rings are from things like the standing dead bristlecone pines in the White Mountains of southern California.)And I did that without looking anything up on the web! Can you say the same? Has nothing to do with any purported flood. The Carboniferous was millions of years ago, while the purported flood was about 4,350 years ago. Believe whatever you want. Rub blue mud in your naval on alternate Thursdays if that makes you happy.But when the overwhelming evidence of science contradicts your beliefs, don't try to claim that they are supported by science. That is apologetics and creation "science," not real science. And many of us here know the difference.Now, do you have any empirical evidence for your claims, or are you going to continue with the religious apologetics you have been dishing out?

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If you are actually interested in learning, here are some good links for your edification:

ReligiousTolerance.org Carbon-14 Dating (C-14): Beliefs of New-Earth Creationists

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Radiometric Dating: A Christian Perspective by Dr. Roger C. Wiens.

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This site, BiblicalChronologist.org has a series of good articles on radiocarbon dating.

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Are tree-ring chronologies reliable? (The Biblical Chronologist, Vol. 5, No. 1)

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How does the radiocarbon dating method work? (The Biblical Chronologist, Vol. 5, No. 1)

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How precise is radiocarbon dating?

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Is radiocarbon dating based on assumptions?

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Has radiocarbon dating been invalidated by unreasonable results?

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Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.

By using standing dead bristlecone pines they have extended the tree ring sequence past 12,000 years. European oaks have produced a sequence twice that long.Bristlecone pines do not produce two rings a year. The way this can be determined is correlation with historic volcanic events of known age. If there is an abnormal ring at the appropriate place, reflecting the temperature changes caused by the volcano, that rules out more than one ring per year, no rings some years, and so on. So? See above. The trees used for tree ring dating have none of these problems. (Sorry.) And tree rings are supplemented by coral growth and glacial varves, among other things. They agree with one another! There was no "Great Flood" -- that is a myth with no scientific backing. Nonsense. You just don't like the results! And you know next to nothing about the dating methods themselves, beyond what the creationist websites tell you -- and they lie. They have to lie -- they don't have any real data to use against these dating methods, so the make things up to mislead the unwary and shore up their beliefs.Check out RAZD's correlation threads and learn something beyond your creationist fantasies. Then try to explain why multiple dating methods, relying on many different lines of evidence, all produce the same results?If any one of these test was imperfect that test would produce results which differed from the rest. If all were imperfect they would produce random results.Unfortunately for you, that is not the case. The different dating methods correlate with one another quite well. This shows that they are accurate and creationists who deny them because they don't like the results are wrong.

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Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.

I am an evolutionist; that was one of my studies for my Ph.D. (The other being archaeology.) Scientific dating methods do not show a young earth.You don't rely on dating methods? Not exactly. You deny dating methods. And you do so not because of some knowledge of the methods, techniques, and assumptions but because they produce the wrong results and support an old earth.And don't bother to regurgitate some of those "anomalous results" that creationists are so fond of. I have debunked quite a few of them in another thread: Radiocarbon dates -- young coal and natural gas (things that C14 date too young/old).We are getting a bit off topic here. If you want to continue discussing radiocarbon dating let's move to another thread. You pick it. We could use the one I just cited in the above sentence. It hasn't been used in a while. But read up on some of those "anomalous" dates first and see how wrong creationists can be when they try to discuss science without learning anything about it first.

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Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.

No, I studied the technical and environmental aspects of archaeology, not the classical style popular for Mediterranean cultures. We read the record of the earth, not ancient texts. Don't embarrass yourself. Those points you raise are known here as PRATTs -- points refuted a thousand times. A good source of information on these is the Index to Creationist Claims. This site examines hundreds of these claims and shows where they are wrong.I'll let someone else deal with most of these, but I'll deal with the diamonds issue. The Taylor & Southon study that incorporated diamonds was designed to detect the residual C14 in the AMS instruments, and that's just what it did. Diamonds were used because there is no C14 in them (unless exposed to radiation). They revealed how much contamination was building up in the AMS instruments. This has been misconstrued by creationists looking for something -- anything -- to bolster their belief in a young earth. See the thread I referenced in my last post, as it deals with this and a lot of other creationist fantasies. [By the way, I know Taylor and have discussed this issue with him. He does not agree with the creationists' interpretation of his results.]Nonsense. The bible has been falsified in a number of instances, and this is just another of those.You might choose to believe in a young earth, but don't try to tell scientists that they are wrong based on your beliefs. Your evidence has been refuted, although you won't admit it. Sorry, false. Even my own archaeological research has falsified the global flood story.1) I have tested over a hundred sites that included the approximate 4,350 years ago time period. None showed signs of a massive flood. What we see instead is continuity of human cultures, fauna and flora, and site deposition. One such example disproves the idea of a global flood some 4,350 years ago. I have come up with over a hundred such examples. [My colleagues have come up with tens of thousands of examples. Then you add in all the other -ologists who have produced similar data.]2) One site I tested produced a burial well over 5,000 years in age whose mtDNA matched living individuals in the same area. This shows there was no depopulation and replacement with mtDNA from Noah's kin. [Other archaeologists around the world have come up with the same data, often with far greater time spans. This alone disproves a global flood about 4,350 years ago.]And the evidence I have come up with is just a tiny amount of the evidence that falsifies the idea of a global flood some 4,350 years ago. The early creationist geologists tried to document the flood, but gave up just about 200 years ago. The evidence disproving the flood story has only grown since then.The only ones who believe that story do so because they believe the bible. But they have to ignore 200 years of scientific evidence to do so.You apparently are an example of this type of believer. You will accept the flimsiest of evidence which supports your religious beliefs, while rejecting the overwhelming evidence that shows that belief is false.You are lying to yourself, and that's the worst kind of lie I can imagine.

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Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.

Nice try at the Gish gallop. But futile. I'm sticking to the specific topic I am trying to discuss with you, just as you are doing everything you can to avoid that topic. The reason is because it is contamination, both in the sample and in the instrument itself.These measurements are being made using the AMS technique (Accelerator Mass Spectroscopy). That technique is extremely sensitive, and can measure the isotopes of carbon sufficiently small to produce dates back to 50,000 or so years. Some laboratories are working to extend that range back perhaps to 80,000 years.One of the things they need to learn is just how small the residual C14 can be before the readings are lost in a background of machine noise and contamination. When dealing with samples of that age, and those tiny amounts of C14, ion source memory becomes a significant factor, as do residual radiation in the area from which the samples originated and even the carbon (and carbon 14) in the atmosphere!Here is a good article on the subject. From my knowledge of the subject I can recommend it highly. The author, by the way, is a poster to this site: RATE’s Radiocarbon: Intrinsic or Contamination?If you would take the time to read and understand this article you would be able to avoid the simple mistakes that you have been making when you actually address the topic of radiocarbon dating.You are claiming radiocarbon dating is invalid because of the diamond results, so you have to provide evidence to that effect. So, please learn something about the subject, then we can deal with this one point. Once we have done that perhaps we can move on to another point.But please, no more Gish gallop, eh?

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Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.

Coal that is billions of years old???? Maybe you mean this...Here is one of those creationist claims that I debunked on another thread:--------Claim:Coal from Russia from the Pennsylvanian, supposedly 300 million years old, was dated at 1,680 years. (Radiocarbon, vol. 8, 1966) SourceAnalysis:False information due to sloppy research.This is a difficult reference to track down because the actual page number is not provided. It appears that each creationist website just copies from the previous without checking the original citation. (The information in question is on page 319.)The original source for the false information seems to be Ken Ham, Andrew Snelling, and Carl Weiland’s The Answers Book, published by Master Books, El Cajon, CA, in 1992 (page 73).The original article in the journal Radiocarbon includes the following paragraph describing this sample:

Mo-334. River Naryn, Kirgizia 1680 170. A.D. 270

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Coal from the cultural layer on the left side of the r. Naryn (Kirgizian SSR), 3 km E of the mourh of the r. Alabuga (41 25′ N Lat, 74 40′ E Long). The sample was found at a depth of 7.6 m in the form of scattered coals in a loamy rock in deposits of a 26-m terrace. According to the archaeological estimations the sample dates from the 5 to 7th centuries A.D. The sample was found by K. V. Kurdyumov (Moscow State Univ.) in 1962. Comment: the find serves as a verification of archaeological data on the peopling of the Tien Shan.

What we have here is no more than shorthand or sloppy translation from the Russian! The coal is nothing more than charcoal from an archaeological deposit. This sample is even included in the section of the report dealing with archaeological samples, and the paragraph discusses archaeological data.The odd use of terms is shown clearly in another radiocarbon date, Mo-353, reported on page 315 of the same article. It reads Charcoal from cultural deposits of a fisher site. The coal was coll. from subturfic humified loamBut the term coal in place of charcoal was enough to fool Ken Ham, as well as dozens of subsequent creationists who apparently were salivating to find 300 million year old coal radiocarbon dated to recent times, and who repeated Ham’s false claim without bothering to check its accuracy.The interesting question is where Ken Ham managed to find Pennsylvanian in that short paragraph, and where he dug up the date of 300 million years.This is still another case where a creationist claim about science falls apart when examined more closely.ReferenceVinogradov, A.P.; A.L. Devirts; E.I. Dobinka; and N.G. Markova. Radiocarbon dating in the Vernadsky Institute I-IV. Radiocarbon, Vol 8, 1966, pp. 292-323.

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Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.

So you are unable to respond to my last two posts concerning radiocarbon dating, eh?You come on here and make outlandish statements, but can't back them up.Ever consider the reason for this is that your statements are wrong?(Didn't think so...)

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Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.

Nonsense. They are wrong and anyone who knows that field is aware of that. You made outlandish statements about radiocarbon dating, a field about which you know little and understand less. You were corrected, and rather than admit your error you are dodging and weaving. It seems like you are ignoring the criticisms of your statements and just continuing to make additional outlandish and unsupported statements.Are you here to discuss these matters with those who might just know more than you do, and to learn, or are you here to preach? It would seem the latter.

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Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.

I know the differences. Science follows the data where it leads, while creationism ignores, distorts, misrepresents, and denies data that is inconvenient. You have shown us how that works in this thread. I know about anomalous readings. Scientists examine these, run more dates, try different dating methods, and eventually figure out what is going on and what the correct dates are.Creationists start blowing about a young earth, global flood, or some other cherished religious belief that has nothing to do with the issue. In essence, they lie, misrepresent, and spout nonsense. Nonsense. You clearly know nothing about this subject. On my last large project I ran 31 radiocarbon dates to make sure that I understood the time periods I was dealing with. If radiocarbon dating was as inaccurate as you seem to believe I should have been getting random results. That was not what I got. And I cross-checked my results with other dating methods.Just admit that you were spouting creationist nonsense and wishful thinking about the diamonds and the general inaccuracy you claim for radiocarbon dating, and we can move on.

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Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.

Nice Gish gallop! You totally avoided the subject we are discussing and went off on an unrelated tangent.You seem to be living proof of that old adage: You can always tell a creationist, but you can't tell him much. I have shown you where your comments on diamonds and radiocarbon dating are incorrect. Isn't that enough?

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Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.