Simple facts about evolution and debate.

[Elioenai]

Wait, isn't trying to prove one's faith through science isn't faith/is weak faith?

I don't think that this sort of faith is Biblical.

For example, Biblical faith is always based in reality. When Jesus died and rose again, he offered tangible evidence of his physical existance. He ate with the people, allowed Thomas to touch him, interacted with physical objects and showed himself to many people.

Prophecy in the Bible is another example, when the future corresponds to what a prophet has said, you have tangible evidence that God spoke through that prophet.

There are many more examples like these. Faith is not based on something that cannot be proven; Biblical faith is based on what can be tested and observed.

God reveals himself to all people objectively according to Romans 1; and he reveals himself subjectively to every believer.

 

[Graham4C]

quite simply:

The sun’s diameter. (22,5 mil) The sun is burning fuel at a rate of 5000 tonnes per second. More than a hundred observers from the Royal Greenwich Observatory and the U.S Naval Observatory have made direct visual measurements that the sun is shrinking at a rate of 0,1% every century or 5 feet per hour. After just a few million years the sun would start to suck in the inner planets. At a rate of just 1/7th of this measurement, the sun would be touching the earth about 158 million years ago.

Can anyone find an explanation for this. The earth cannot possibly be millions and billions of years old.

 

[Graham4C]

Secondly:

1.) Planets losing heat. The outer planets are radiating more heat than they gain from the sun. Jupiter is an example of this. If it is billions of years old, it would have cooled off a long time before now. One of Jupiter’s moons, Ganymede, should have cooled off billions of years ago.

 

[Graham4C]

Also, an extract from an article:

There are a few evidences Evolutionists present as proof for their theory that the earth is old. The first of these is the geologic column. The geologic column is used to determine the ages of fossils found in rock strata. If the fossil is found in a certain rock layer, they know how old it is because the rock layer is x million years old. So if the rock layer is 50 million years old, then they know that the fossil will be 50 million years old.

But how do they know the age of the rock layers? According to scientists, that’s an easy question to answer. You see, if a rock layer contains a fossil that is 50 million years old, then the rock layer must be 50 million years old as well. That’s common sense – or is it?

If we use the rocks to determine the age of the fossils, and the fossils to determine the age of the rocks, then how do we really know how old they are in the first place? This is called circular reasoning. The age is made up according to how scientists would like it to be and then they work from there. This is both deceitful and illogical.

The second way the age of something is determined is by using radiometric dating. This includes carbon, potassium-Argon, etc. There are a few different methods of dating using different elements.

How does it work?
I’ll use carbon dating as an example because it is the most widely known method.
When solar radiation passes through the earth’s atmosphere, some of it hits nitrogen particles and turns it into carbon 14. This carbon 14 is absorbed by plants and, in turn, eaten by animals. If a cow eats the grass and we eat the cow, carbon 14 is transferred through into our bodies. The dating method works by comparing the amount in a dead animal to the amount in the atmosphere today.

Scientists compare this amount with the amount in the atmosphere and determine how long it must have taken to accumulate all this carbon 14 in our bodies. Only after a long period of time, is the carbon 14 converted back into nitrogen and released into the atmosphere. Because of this, carbon dating can determine ages of a few thousand years presuming it is entirely accurate. But it is not accurate at all. A mammoth was examined and its skin was found to be 24 000 years old while its bones were 14 000 years. That’s an error of 90% which is unacceptable in the world of science.
In another case, a giant snail that had been dead for a few days was told to be over 100 000 years old! That is ridiculous. How can these figures be so far off track?

The first reason could be due to experimental error. Dates of a hundred thousand years cannot possibly be measured accurately using Carbon Dating. This is due to the half-life of carbon 14 being a lot faster than 100 000 years. In fact, it is difficult to use carbon to measure dates of 20 000 years accurately (assuming that the method is reliable).

The second reason is because the radiation levels in the earth’s atmosphere have not reached equilibrium. Equilibrium means in balance. If the earth’s radiation levels were in balance then the income would be equal to the outgo i.e. formation of carbon 14 is equal to the radioactive decay rate of carbon 14. The carbon 14 levels in the earth’s atmosphere today are a few percent higher than a few years ago. Above, I have stated that carbon 14 dating works by comparing amounts in fossils with the amount in the earth’s atmosphere today. However, you cannot compare these amounts and get accurate results if the levels are not constant.

Also, how do you know the carbon 14 in a bone was formed inside it while it was fossilizing? And the animal could have had all its carbon 14 in its stomach instead of in the bones. And lets ask what happens if the animal eats trees that just didn’t receive their portion of solar radiation this year. Carbon dating can be compared to using a person’s money to determine their age. If I saw that a coin was made in 1950, then I could conclude that they were born before 1950. You may say that that’s a stupid way to work out their age but carbon dating uses more or less the same method. How can we possibly say that the carbon dating results are accurate? The other forms of radiometric dating are very similar and just as inaccurate.

 

[Jase]

There are a few evidences Evolutionists present as proof for their theory that the earth is old.

One need not even have to read that article past this line to see AIG starts out with an unscientific bias. Evolutionists have nothing to do with the age of the Earth. That is Geology, and one could completely reject evolution, and still accept an old Earth. They are two entirely separate theories.

 

[Graham4C]

alright then, ignore the word Evolutionist and insert Old Earth Creationist. The section of the article demonstrates the validity (or lack thereof) of Old Earth Evidence.

 

[notto]

Discussing Carbon 14 dating is a bit out of context following a discussion of dating fossils. Why not actually discuss the method that is actually used to date fossils and rocks? Why? Because they can't try to discredit that method with their poor reasoning.

The author also fails to mention that Carbon 14 dates are callibrated based on samples of known ages and that scientists know full well that they can't date things that are made of carbonate (shells) because that is a carbon resevior.

The author asks "How can we possibly say that the carbon dating results are accurate?"

This question wouldn't be asked by someone who understood c14 dating unless they were willingly trying to decieve the reader. We know they are accurate by comparing them to samples of known ages. This is also why it doesn't matter if the level of c14 in the atmosphere is constant. The dating is calibrated based on the measured amount of c14, not some assumption that it was constant.

The author of that piece demonstrates why people don't consider creation scientists to be scientists. They don't demonstrate even a basic level of understanding of what they are discussing and purposely cherry pick information to mislead readers.

 

[notto]

quite simply:

The sun’s diameter. (22,5 mil) The sun is burning fuel at a rate of 5000 tonnes per second. More than a hundred observers from the Royal Greenwich Observatory and the U.S Naval Observatory have made direct visual measurements that the sun is shrinking at a rate of 0,1% every century or 5 feet per hour. After just a few million years the sun would start to suck in the inner planets. At a rate of just 1/7th of this measurement, the sun would be touching the earth about 158 million years ago.

Can anyone find an explanation for this. The earth cannot possibly be millions and billions of years old.

Only if one assumes that this shrinking is constant and has maintained the same rate for millions of years. I thought that was a bad thing!

http://www.asa3.org/ASA/PSCF/1986/PSCF9-86VanTill.html

 

[notto]

Secondly:

1.) Planets losing heat. The outer planets are radiating more heat than they gain from the sun. Jupiter is an example of this. If it is billions of years old, it would have cooled off a long time before now. One of Jupiter’s moons, Ganymede, should have cooled off billions of years ago.

What is the rate of cooling of Ganymede? How was it determined that it should have cooled off billions of years ago? Where is the data? What is the source of this claim?

 

[gluadys]

quite simply:

The sun’s diameter. (22,5 mil) The sun is burning fuel at a rate of 5000 tonnes per second. More than a hundred observers from the Royal Greenwich Observatory and the U.S Naval Observatory have made direct visual measurements that the sun is shrinking at a rate of 0,1% every century or 5 feet per hour. After just a few million years the sun would start to suck in the inner planets. At a rate of just 1/7th of this measurement, the sun would be touching the earth about 158 million years ago.

Can anyone find an explanation for this. The earth cannot possibly be millions and billions of years old.

Start here:

http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CE/CE310.html

and follow the links for more information.

It is a good idea to check out all "scientific" claims from a creationist source here first before posting them.

 

[gluadys]

Secondly:

1.) Planets losing heat. The outer planets are radiating more heat than they gain from the sun. Jupiter is an example of this. If it is billions of years old, it would have cooled off a long time before now. One of Jupiter’s moons, Ganymede, should have cooled off billions of years ago.

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/hovind/howgood-yea.html#proof10

Looks like you got suckered in by Kent Hovind.

 

[gluadys]

Also, an extract from an article:

More Hovindisms I see.

If we use the rocks to determine the age of the fossils, and the fossils to determine the age of the rocks, then how do we really know how old they are in the first place? This is called circular reasoning. The age is made up according to how scientists would like it to be and then they work from there. This is both deceitful and illogical.

But that is not what scientists do. Index fossils can be used for an initial estimate of the age of a rock, but the age of the rock is always determined independently of the fossils in it. All an index fossil will really do is tell you that the rock in location X is the same age as the rock in location Z. You have to determine the age of the rock in either X or Z to know how old the fossil is.

I’ll use carbon dating as an example because it is the most widely known method.

Poor choice. Fossils are mineralized remains of organic material. A fossilized bone is not bone anymore; it is stone shaped like the bone.

And carbon dating cannot be used on minerals. It is only used on organic material that is still organic.

So carbon dating is rarely used on fossils, other than a few that are not completely fossilized yet.

The dating method works by comparing the amount in a dead animal to the amount in the atmosphere today.

Totally wrong. Carbon dating is not based on amounts of c14, but on proportions of c14 to c12. Nor is it based on what is in the atmosphere today, but on what was in the atmosphere at the time the organism died.

A mammoth was examined and its skin was found to be 24 000 years old while its bones were 14 000 years. That’s an error of 90% which is unacceptable in the world of science.

Another Hovind legend. They were actually two different mammoths.

In another case, a giant snail that had been dead for a few days was told to be over 100 000 years old! That is ridiculous. How can these figures be so far off track.

I wonder if it was a team of creationists who conducted this research.

In that case they deliberately ignored two things:

1. It is not possible to get a reliable measure of only a few days difference in c14 dating. The rate of c14 decay is too slow for that.

2. It is not possible to get a reliable measure from shelled animals, because the calcium carbonate in their shells has not come from the atmosphere. C14 is only good for measuring the date of carbon that originally came from the atmosphere.


So a scientific research team that ignores these facts is bound to come up with false results.

The second reason is because the radiation levels in the earth’s atmosphere have not reached equilibrium. Equilibrium means in balance. ...However, you cannot compare these amounts and get accurate results if the levels are not constant. ...

This is just sheer nonsense. Equilibrium is not needed. C14 ratios vary. But, as notto said, the c14 dating is calibrated against known dates to assure its accuracy. So you can indeed get accurate results even though the levels are not constant.

Also, how do you know the carbon 14 in a bone was formed inside it while it was fossilizing?

It wasn't. It was formed while the animal was still alive.

And the animal could have had all its carbon 14 in its stomach instead of in the bones. And lets ask what happens if the animal eats trees that just didn’t receive their portion of solar radiation this year.

Questions that show the whole concept of c14 dating is misunderstood/misrepresented. Animal organisms take in atmospheric c14 by breathing, by eating living or very recently living plants or animals who also take in c14 through respiration. So both the animal and its food will have the same proportion of c14 in their systems, namely the proportion that is in the atmosphere from which the carbon came.

Blood circulation will take both carbon in the lungs, and carbon ingested by food to all parts of the body, so it is not possible for all its carbon 14 to be in its stomach.

Nor does it matter if trees didn't "receive their portion of solar radiation this year" (whatever that means), because it is not the amount of carbon received that matters, but the proportion of the carbon that is c14 instead of c12. Even if the trees are getting less carbon overall, the proportion is still measurable, and it is the proportion that is the base line for measuring the age of the dead tree.

How can we possibly say that the carbon dating results are accurate?

Because we understand them and don't misrepresent the process as Hovind does.

 

[Smidlee]

Wait, isn't trying to prove one's faith through science isn't faith/is weak faith? Not trying to be insulting, but faith is something you don't need to try to prove. For example, I don't need proof that God exists, I have faith that He does exists. If someone is trying to prove that God exists using science (not possible), isn't this a sign that they have weak faith? I'm guessing the differences in our beliefs is how we view the word faith. I see it as believing in something without need of evidence.

Actually I believe in the existance of God because of the evidence long before I became a christian. This idea faith isn't based by evidence is complete nonsense. The scriptures point out the existance of God is clearly pointed out in his creation that they are without an excuse. Having faith in God isn't blind faith at all.

I get the impression that most TE don't want to admit they have to accept many claims about evolution by faith.

 

[Mallon]

I get the impression that most TE don't want to admit they have to accept many claims about evolution by faith.

Which claim about evolution isn't supported by evidence? If you aren't familiar with the science behind evolution, I can see why you would think it has to be taken on faith.

 

[rmwilliamsll]

get the impression that most TE don't want to admit they have to accept many claims about evolution by faith.

for the purpose of specific discussion topics, what is one of these claims made by TofE that has to be accepted by faith, which i take to mean that there is either no or inadequate scientific evidence for it.

 

[random_guy]

Actually I believe in the existance of God because of the evidence long before I became a christian. This idea faith isn't based by evidence is complete nonsense. The scriptures point out the existance of God is clearly pointed out in his creation that they are without an excuse. Having faith in God isn't blind faith at all.

When I talk about evidence, I mean scientific evidence. Scriptures aren't considered scientific evidence. And since science can't prove/disprove that God exists, there is no evidence for/against His existence. However, regardless of this fact, I still believe in Him.

I get the impression that most TE don't want to admit they have to accept many claims about evolution by faith.

Please point out a claim I have made in any my posts that isn't backed up by scientific evidence when it comes to evolution.

 

[Graham4C]

and what happens if there was ALREADY carbon 12 in the bone to start off with.

also, just a general question, how does carbon 14 get into your finger-bone if you inhale it in?

 

[random_guy]

quite simply:

The sun’s diameter. (22,5 mil) The sun is burning fuel at a rate of 5000 tonnes per second. More than a hundred observers from the Royal Greenwich Observatory and the U.S Naval Observatory have made direct visual measurements that the sun is shrinking at a rate of 0,1% every century or 5 feet per hour. After just a few million years the sun would start to suck in the inner planets. At a rate of just 1/7th of this measurement, the sun would be touching the earth about 158 million years ago.

Can anyone find an explanation for this. The earth cannot possibly be millions and billions of years old.

Hmmmm, I'm guessing this is based off of really old data or that Creationists are misusing data. Why don't you link to a scientific site or a scientific paper. I'll start off, from nasa's website.

(For an overview of the controversy over solar diameter variations, I recommend John Gribbin's pre-SOHO book, Blinded By the Light: The Secret Life of the Sun, published in 1991)
The Sun is not currently expanding or contracting to any measurable extent. It may in fact be shrinking or swelling, but we have no hard data with which to conclude that.
It is vibrating, however:
http://helios.tuc.noao.edu/helio.html
(Global Oscillation Network Group)
http://soi.stanford.edu
(The Solar Oscillations Investigation)

In addition, we expect that the Sun will someday expand into a red giant phase, but that won't be for another 4 billion to 5 billion years or so.
Go back to "Sun" questions and answers.

EDIT: I just realized something. I highly doubt that 5 ft per hour is a constant. Take an example of a shrinking spherical ballon. If the rate of air is constantly loss, then at first, the radius will slowly decrease. As the balloon gets smaller, then the rate of radius loss will increase. This is because volume is proportional to the radius^3. Why don't you back up your statement that the Sun shrinks 5 ft per hour with some actual scientific references and papers and then show that it's also a constant rate of decrease.

 

[rmwilliamsll]

and what happens if there was ALREADY carbon 12 in the bone to start off with.

also, just a general question, how does carbon 14 get into your finger-bone if you inhale it in?

almost all the C in your body is C-12.

How does any C get into your bones?
You get your C from your food not from the atmosphere.
plants get most of their C from the atmosphere, via photosynthesis.
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Library/CarbonCycle/carbon_cycle2.html

i am curious, is anyone else surprised that people who speak so strongly with such certainty that TofE is wrong wrong wrong, also ask surprising questions? now i never want to discourage people from asking questions, but to appear on the forum, post Hovindisms, then demonstrate that they haven't even tried to education themselves about the issues, isn't something odd?

to Graham4C:
start over your process of learning here.
google C14 dating, study a couple of the links. learn the basic science. then when you read a YECist site that tells you C14 decays into C12 you will be prepared to say "no it doesn't, that is wrong". Then ask your questions again here from your reading. Understand the C cycle, understand the principles behind C14 dating then criticize them from a position of knowledge not a position of ignorance.

 

[mark kennedy]

Every now and then it's good to refresh ppls memory about what we're talking about. There are more things i'll add to this as i think of more and as ppl suggest things.

Evolution-The change of alleles in populations over time.

Many well educated Christian theologens embrace evolution as truth.

The concept of mankind descending from a naturally selected race of apes is unknown to traditional Christian theism. It does not exist in any doctrine, revelation and certainly is not the result of Biblical hermeneutics.

"We believe in one God the Father, the Almighty, creator of heaven and earth, and of all that is, seen and unseen." (The Nicene Creed, 4th century)

Evolution is an expression of naturalistic assumptions and a definition of science as purely naturalistic causation. Evolutionists are not ambiquise about this and to say that evolution as natural history is not opposed to Christian theism is to misunderstand both.

"Darwin wanted to establish... that the species — including human beings — were created by, and evolve according to, processes that are entirely natural, chance-generated, and blind." (Louis Menand)

Evolution is not a philosophy,

Evolution as properly defined by science is simply the change of alleles in populations over time. Evolution as the descent of complex living systems from simplier on the other hand is metaphysics, plain and simple. What is more evolutionists are determined to blend evolution as natural science with evolution as natural history. Darwin was the first to propose the single common ancestor model and that was his sole contribution to modern science. He gave evolutionary biology not a methodology but a metaphysical term that transended all of life from it's primordial beginnings. He called it, "The Origin of Species by means of Natural Selection
or, the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life"

it's not anti-God, it's not religious.

"I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created parasitic wasps with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of Caterpillars." (Darwin, On the Origin of Species)

"A whale's flipper, a man's arm, a bird's wing, and a dog's foreleg...perform functions about as different and varied as styles of locomotion in vertebrates can be, yet all are built of the same bones. Why would God have used the same building blocks, and distorted and twisted them in such odd ways, if He had simply set out to make the best swimming, running, and flying machines? The common structure must reflect common descent from an ancestor possessing these bones." (Biology textbook 'A View of Life', Salvador Luria, Stephen Jay Gould, and Sam Singer)

Both Darwin and modern Darwinians reject God as the creator, they are in fact explicit in their statements.

It is science, and only deals with the natural world just like meteorology, physics, and motorcycle repair.

It is nothing like those particular disciplines since they rely on directly observed and demonstrated inquiry. Natural history looks at evolution over months or years and and projects it over billions of years, no true science would get away with this.