Hammer found in Cretaceous layer

Of course you can. Chlorine is an exceptionally corrosive and highly reactive element. You can mix chlorine with just about anything that's not inert, especially iron. When you mix chlorine with iron you get a metallic salt. And did you know the automobile and petroleum industries are conspiring to keep technology for 100 mpg cars out of consumers' hands? And that we have a member right here at EvC Forum who's invented a perpetual motion machine, but hasn't been able to bring it to market? And that magnetic bracelets can cure a wide variety of ills? And that chirpractors can cure the common cold?Tal, a little skepticism is called for on such claims. We have these facts:

1. Baugh claims his hammer invalidates scientifically accepted dating chronologies.
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2. Baugh claims his hammer has a high-tech metalurgy that cannot be duplicated.
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3. Baugh won't make his hammer available for outside analysis.

Just that last fact should set off alarm bells in your head, especially when combined with Baugh's other wild claims, such as man and dinosaur footprints found together that not even the Institute for Creation Research buys into. From just this information alone it shouldn't be necessary to consider any of the other details, unless you really enjoy wild goose chases and have an abundance of spare time. Before you waste too much time, consider that archeology has found no other artifacts from this civilization that produced this uncorrosible iron, not even more of this iron whose mysterious qualities mean that all of it ever produced should still be around.Perhaps crazy Carl has happened upon a find that could revolutionize history and metalurgy, but science advances by allowing other scientists to replicate your work, not by keeping your secrets locked in a drawer. Carl keeps his hammer under lock and key because he knows that independent findings, whatever they might be, would definitely not agree with him.Consider which is more likely:

• A hundred or two years ago a prospector's hammer inadvertently fell from a wagon or beast and burden and lay hidden and undiscovered for a long time. Seepage of water laden with metallic salts from the local ores precipitated onto the hammer over the years. Weathering eventually caused the nodule with the hammer to break free and become visible to passersby.
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  Or...
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• Carl Baugh has discovered a hammer that invalidates all historical chronologies, radiometric dating, cosmological dating, and much of the rest of physics, but he won't let us study it.

--Percy

Would you consider formally making this offer to Baugh's Creation Evidence Museum (Creation Evidence Museum of Texas)?By the way, and someone may already have mentioned this, there's a possibility that the hammer's handle has already been radiocarbon dated to be younger than 700 years old, but this is considered unconfirmed. This is mentioned at http://paleo.cc/paluxy/hammer.htm, among others.--Percy

Right, I understand. I mentioned the possible dating of the handle only to complete the list of analyses that are mentioned on the Internet, the other being the supposed analysis of the hammer's head by Batelle Labs.Let me know if you need any help contacting them. It would be nice if we could track the dialogue in this or another thread.--Percy

If you won the lottery, you'd spend your time investigating extraordinary claims? That sounds like a pretty good thing, following on the lead of James Randi, Michael Shermer and the late Martin Gardener.When Schliemann discovered Troy, did he say "I'm not saying where it is and I'm keeping all the artifacts to myself and not letting anyone else study them?" When Champollion deciphered the Rosetta Stone, did he keep it secret by saying, "I will be the only person translating Egyptian hieroglyphics, and you'll just have to trust what I say about them?"Of course they didn't. They announced the details of their discoveries to the world and invited review and analysis.You don't need to investigate Carl's claims to know they're false. If they were true he'd make the hammer available for study. I invite you to try to help Purple gain access for study - perhaps it will take being ignored or refused by Carl before you'll believe he just makes it up.--Percy

Analysis of the composition of a sample of similar hammers from past eras might be important for establishing a context within which to interpret the analysis of Carl's hammer. It would be nice to be able to say how typical the composition is, but this makes the task more complicated.Doesn't a chlorine component seem unlikely to you? I know nothing about metallurgy, and poking about on the web provided no examples of chlorine being used in the forging of iron.--Percy

Hi Buzz,Scientists publish everything they discover in their papers and keep nothing secret, but them you doubt. Carl comes up with spectacular claims, many of which even ICR rejects, keeps everything to himself, but him you grant the benefit of the doubt.Religion is a fertile field for charlatans. Crying statues, Jesus images on windows, faith healing, the list just goes on and on. For you, what is it about Carl that distinguishes him from other religious opportunists?For most people, religious or not, finding a miner's cup embedded in coal from a mine where the coal is hacked, blasted, dumped, crushed, etc, is no surprise. And finding a miner's hammer encased in slag in a region of mines is also no surprise.Carl also has a fossilized human finger. It *is* a remarkable coincidence that a naturally formed rock could resemble a human finger, but nothing more. At one point in the tour of Luray Caverns in Virginia you'll see two fossilized fried eggs side-by-side sunny-side up. The resemblance isn't just remarkable, it's amazing, but they're not fossilized eggs, they're just natural formations. They're the base of stalagmites that have broken off. One wonders what would have happened had Carl found them first. Would they be in his museum as evidence that humans lived in the Americas long before previously thought? And would you and Tal be posting pictures of these "eggs" as evidence that no one can effectively rebut since Carl won't let them be examined? It wouldn't surprise me.--Percy

After reading the two links, what fascinates me most is the psychology of Ed and Ted. They're convinced their rocks contain human bone, and no amount of evidence will persuade them otherwise. That's pretty common around here, too.It also tells us that if Carl does allow his hammer to be subjected to independent analysis, the results will not affect his museum display or his website.--Percy

I'm having trouble understanding your continued credulity. When you see a magic show and can't figure out how the magician did it and he tells you that's because it's real magic, do you conclude it was real magic? Of course not. So when Carl makes a number of incredible claims and doesn't permit independent analysis, why do you continue to give Carl the benefit of the doubt.You've probably heard about the "James, son of Joseph, borther of Jesus" ossuary box. Whether or not you believe the box genuine, at least the owner, Oded Golan, made the box available for study. Would he have done that if he believed the box a fake? No, of course not.What would Golan have done if he *had* believed the box a fake. Why, he would have kept it away from independent analysis. He would have said that such analyses couldn't be trusted. He would have expressed concern about professionalism. He would have called attention to the intrigues of doubters. In short, he would have behaved precisely as Carl is behaving.If Carl's opinions about the cup, the hammer, the sandal imprint and all the rest are correct, it would revolutionize history and science. So what does Carl do with these invaluable artifacts? Does he move forward in a way that would benefit posterity? No, he locks them away in his museum with captions and descriptions unsupported by valid evidence in order to benefit no one but himself and his causes.And this is apparently not only okay by you, but implicitly encouraged by you through your tolerant treatment of him.The sheer gullibility reminds me of an old comic. Two adults are watching a televangelist who is saying, "God wants you to send me money." The caption says, "Sounds good to me, Orville, let's send him little Jimmy's college fund."--Percy

Hi Buzz,Did you see my Message 83? And my Message 55 before that? They both raised the same issue, and you responded to neither. I understand you're once again attracting a number of correspondents, but as the responses to Message 55 make clear, this is a key issue.The issue is one of credibility, and the question concerns the rationale by which you confer credibility upon the claims of someone like Carl who makes spectacular claims but keeps his evidence to himself.Replying to multiple messages from you, this is from Message 85: The evidence of science is available to all. No one is withholding evidence from creation scientists. This is the difference between scientific evidence and Carl Baugh evidence. Scientific evidence can be examined, replicated, etc. Carl evidence is locked away from scrutiny. The hammer has a simple explanation, and it has already been provided for you. Regarding the cup, even if it were absolutely certain that it's a modern artifact embedded in coal and even if we could divine no explanation for how it became embedded in coal, somehow it *did* become embedded in coal, because there were no humans around at the time of the coal's formation.A larger question is why anyone should be motivated to study how coal can come to encase modern objects if Carl isn't going to make his evidence available for study. What would be the point? There are certainly coal mines less than a few centuries old, but I think what you meant to ask is whether there are any coal mines with coal less than a few centuries old. The answer is that all coal is ancient. Radiocarbon dating indicates that it is older than the furthest back radiocarbon dating can go, making it older than 50,000 years by that measure. Other dating indicates that most coal is from the Pensylvanian and Mississippian eras, which makes it at least 250 million years old.From your Message 87: Your inability to convince yourself that a cup could become encased in coal is irrelevant. It is possible that the cup was completely encased in coal, but we can't be sure. The big question is why you're investing so much credibility in something which isn't available for examination, and for which the original in situ evidence is no longer available. What you've got is a cup that Carl won't allow to be examined and whose evidence for encasement in coal no longer exists. You *are*, I hope, aware that archeology attaches great importance to the details of the original context of a find. Oftentimes the context is more important than the artifact itself, and that is certainly the case with a cup claimed to have been embedded in coal. Once again, no one is keeping any secrets from "creation scientists". The secrecy runs in the other direction.Please give some consideration to the credibilty issues I mentioned in my earlier posts.--Percy

Would I lie? See Electro-mechanical engines of Perpetual Motion and Natural Selection. As the author will freely admit, no one's been able to disprove his masterful theory!--Percy

You don't follow such ridiculous logic in your daily life, why would you think it would work in the more stringent world of science? Say I tried to sell you magic beans, and when you expressed skepticism I said, "Prove that they're not magic beans," would that really convince you? Would you really accept that as a valid argument?You've been here a long time, so one would expect you'd have learned a little bit about fossils by now. Have you ever heard of flesh fossilizing? It's a pretty rare event, right? Mostly what we find is fossilized bone with no hint of the soft parts, not even the cartilage and tendons. So a little skepticism is called.And this is Carl Baugh's finger, which isn't available for study. This means a lot of skepticism is called for.Rather than continuing to introduce Carl's "evidence" into this thread, it might be more productive if you addressed some of the actual issues surrounding Carl's way of conducting "science." Why don't you finally reply to Message 55 and Message 83 and Message 92, focusing on the issues of gullibility, credibility, and how we know what we know.--PercyThis message has been edited by Percy, 02-04-2005 13:34 AM