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Author Topic:   No knowledge of Creationism.
Coyote
Member (Idle past 2399 days)
Posts: 6117
Joined: 01-12-2008


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Message 36 of 77 (659442)
04-15-2012 11:22 PM
Reply to: Message 35 by foreveryoung
04-15-2012 11:01 PM


Evidence vs. belief
The idea that the world was created in 7 days and a biblical flood and the tower of babel was assumed as fact by me as soon as I read about such things in the bible. I was 6 years old at the time. Every sermon I listened to from then on confirmed that belief. Every family member of mine believed it except my stepfather who was catholic. It wasn't until 8th grade biology that I heard anything different. It wasn't until I was an adult until I started hearing serious discussions about evolution.
Some of these issues science can readily test.
As just one example, the global flood ca. 4,350 years ago was tested initially by creationist geologists seeking to document that flood. They could not do so, and had to admit that the flood did not occur as described. This capitulation occurred in the early 1800s, long before Darwin.
Since then the evidence that there was no global flood ca. 4,350 years ago has become overwheming. It is so easy to disprove this that any archaeologist can do it.
I've done it in my own research. What one needs to do is find an archaeological site that cross-cuts the 4,350 year time period. A site that does so by thousands of years is best. Then you examine what occurred before and after that time period, and you look to see if there is any evidence of a major discontinuity at that time.
What I have found in the many sites that I have tested is that there is no discontinuity about 4,350 years ago. Instead there is continuity. I've seen continuity of human cultures, fauna and flora, sedimentary deposition, and mtDNA patterns. This last one is the most telling: the mtDNA patterns were the same both before and after the 4,350 year date.
This shows that there was no discontinuity, as would be caused by a global flood which wiped out all but a select group in the Near East. If there was such a flood, all human mtDNA would be eliminated at about 4,350 years ago and would have been replaced by one type from the Near East (Noah's female kin). This can be shown not to have happened. The same type of evidence can be shown for all fauna and flora: there was no extinction-repopulation event in recent times.
This is the kind of evidence that scientists look at.

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

This message is a reply to:
 Message 35 by foreveryoung, posted 04-15-2012 11:01 PM foreveryoung has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 38 by foreveryoung, posted 04-15-2012 11:45 PM Coyote has replied
 Message 44 by Tangle, posted 04-16-2012 4:02 AM Coyote has replied

  
Coyote
Member (Idle past 2399 days)
Posts: 6117
Joined: 01-12-2008


Message 39 of 77 (659447)
04-16-2012 12:16 AM
Reply to: Message 38 by foreveryoung
04-15-2012 11:45 PM


Re: Evidence vs. belief
I don't believe the biblical genealogies were meant as time measuring instruments, so the whole 4350 year old flood is a bogus argument to me. The flood happened at the hadean/archean boundary. That is 3.9 billion years ago according to radiometric methods. I believe in accelerated radioactive decay so the hadean/archean boundary is actually much younger than that. How much so? I don't know. Much of the sedimentary strata in the geological column is due to marine transgressions and regressions. If we could measure the amount of sediment accumulation on a shore that is currently experiencing either transgression or regression and compare it to the depth of marine sediment of known radiometric age, we could have a more realistic age of the earth.
These are ideas that can be tested against evidence.
Accelerated radioactive decay was one of the things the RATE group tested, using over a million dollars in creationist money.
They essentially found that science was right, but refused to believe the evidence they themselves generated.
Assessing the RATE Project: Essay Review by Randy Isaac
Assessing the RATE Project
Do the RATE Findings Negate Mainstream Science?
http://184.173.80.159/...RATEFindingsNegateMainstreamScience
The initial part of the conclusion from this last link:
Young-earth creationists have long claimed there is no evidence for an old Earth. The fact that billions of years of nuclear decay have occurred in Earth history has been denied by most young-earth creationists. Now, the RATE team has admitted that, taken at face value, radiometric dating data is most easily and directly explained by the Earth being billions of years old. This is a remarkable development because no longer can young-earth creationists claim it is merely the naturalistic worldview that makes scientists believe rocks and minerals are millions or billions of years old.
As for the marine transgressions and regressions in the geologic column: we can directly date some of the layers in that column using radiometric methods. Creationists' attempts to discredit radiometric dating have not been successful, as was pointed out in the reviews of the RATE group's project.
Our own poster RAZD has several lengthy threads here on the subject of radiometric dating and all of the various ways in which independent methods of dating produce similar results. I think you should review those threads before you attempt to claim anything to the contrary.

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

This message is a reply to:
 Message 38 by foreveryoung, posted 04-15-2012 11:45 PM foreveryoung has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 40 by foreveryoung, posted 04-16-2012 12:58 AM Coyote has seen this message but not replied

  
Coyote
Member (Idle past 2399 days)
Posts: 6117
Joined: 01-12-2008


Message 54 of 77 (659511)
04-16-2012 11:45 AM
Reply to: Message 44 by Tangle
04-16-2012 4:02 AM


Re: Evidence vs. belief
Can you point me at any papers on this? Thanks.
Just look in any general archaeology text. You will find descriptions of culture sequences from several parts of the world.
None include a flood event with total population and culture disruption at that time period.
Egypt is a good example. Their writings began before the date ascribed to the flood and continued beyond that date. There was no break as would have been seen from a global flood.

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

This message is a reply to:
 Message 44 by Tangle, posted 04-16-2012 4:02 AM Tangle has not replied

  
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