Millions and billions of years

[AV1611VET]

and I got told early on to just not have these discussions with him.

I can sympathize with him:

Pay no attention to AV... he knows what he is doing (poe!) but he doesn't do a very good job of it.

 

[Sayre]

Are you supposed to be the "open-minded" one in the events you recounted? It doesn't sound like you're willing to question the age of the earth any more than your co-worker is. You are probably more religiously committed to 'billions of years' then many creationists are about a young earth.

Are you open minded to a flat earth? You are probably more religiously committed to a round earth than many flat earth society members are to a flat earth.

 

[Simmeh]

snip

Hi Simmeh,

Pay no attention to AV... he knows what he is doing (poe!) but he doesn't do a very good job of it.

Even the dreaded AiG tells creationists not to use the moondust argument anymore:
Moon-Dust Argument No Longer Useful - Answers in Genesis

but he won't care because he isn't interested in truth. He just wants to play this silly parody game that no one else cares about.

Yes, I figured as much. I had been reading this forum for about a week before posting.

Incidentally, the moon dust argument came up at a different time in my life - high school, where my Old Testament Studies class started off with a gang-up debate about evolution vs. creationism. And by 'gang-up', I mean the four-sided debate featured three versions of creationism and then naturalistic evolution - and guess which poor guy was defending the latter?

Other things leave marks of the passage of time. You could ask whether tree rings show the passage of time with reasonable accuracy.

The patterns of thick and thin rings show when there were 'good' and 'bad' years for the tree growing, and these patterns can be matched with other trees to build up a continuous sequence of age.
Dendrochronology has built up fully anchored chronologies that extend back 11,000 years. If he is a strict 6000 year guy, this presents a problem.

Other methods of time measurement that people have used are water clocks and hourglasses. If you know how fast the water or sand is flowing through the hole, and how much water or sand is in the bottom. Then you can calculate when it started flowing.

Radiometric dating is calculated almost exactly the same way. We know the rate that one isotope transforms into another, and we measure how much of the 'daughter' nucleus is in the sample, and that allows us to calculate when the process began.

See, I think he actually knows a lot of this stuff, he's just wilfully ignoring it. I pointed to radioactive half-lives and such, but he still responded with, "but how do you know?" which was often followed by, "so why can't it be god?" I don't doubt he knows about dendochronology as well. And I'm sure he's familiar with other things that point to an old earth - at least one that's older than 6000 years. He does not lack intelligence, by any means. I just think he may be so rooted in his faith that nothing could supplant it - something I evidently was not.

I suppose I could try pointing out dendochronology, but I do expect to get a 'god works in mysterious ways' type answer - or 'how do you know?' once again.

 

[AV1611VET]

Incidentally, the moon dust argument came up at a different time in my life - high school, where my Old Testament Studies class started off with a gang-up debate about evolution vs. creationism. And by 'gang-up', I mean the four-sided debate featured three versions of creationism and then naturalistic evolution - and guess which poor guy was defending the latter?

I have a thread on moondust here: 1

AiG ... I think it is ... says we Christians aren't supposed to be using the moondust argument anymore, but they aren't my boss.

 

[Aman777]

Are you open minded to a flat earth? You are probably more religiously committed to a round earth than many flat earth society members are to a flat earth.

Dear Readers, Adam's Earth was Flat. The highest mountain's elevation on Adam's Earth was only 22 1/2 feet. Gen 7:20 The description of HOW God made Adam's Earth is told in Gen 1:9-10

Gen 1:9¶ And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so.
Gen 1:10 And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good.

Remember that God had previously made a Firmament or Boundary of the first world and placed it into water. Genesis 1:6-8 God called this Firmament "heaven" on the 2nd Day.

The above verses are describing HOW Adam's Earth was made on the 3rd Day. First, God put water into the firmament and then dry land, which God called Earth. Find a firmament like, say, a Fish Bowl. First put in water, and then dry ground, and then you should be able to see that you have made a FLAT Earth, like Adam's Earth, which was much smaller than our Cosmos. It had fountains of water beneath it and it was in the middle of water. It was also "clean dissolved" in the Flood. Isa 24:19 God Bless you.

In Love,
Aman

 

[EternalDragon]

Yes, I figured as much. I had been reading this forum for about a week before posting.

Incidentally, the moon dust argument came up at a different time in my life - high school, where my Old Testament Studies class started off with a gang-up debate about evolution vs. creationism. And by 'gang-up', I mean the four-sided debate featured three versions of creationism and then naturalistic evolution - and guess which poor guy was defending the latter?



See, I think he actually knows a lot of this stuff, he's just wilfully ignoring it. I pointed to radioactive half-lives and such, but he still responded with, "but how do you know?" which was often followed by, "so why can't it be god?" I don't doubt he knows about dendochronology as well. And I'm sure he's familiar with other things that point to an old earth - at least one that's older than 6000 years. He does not lack intelligence, by any means. I just think he may be so rooted in his faith that nothing could supplant it - something I evidently was not.

I suppose I could try pointing out dendochronology, but I do expect to get a 'god works in mysterious ways' type answer - or 'how do you know?' once again.

Really? Tree ring dating only goes back a maximum (and I mean the upper, upper limit) is 11,000 years. That is assuming normal growth patterns for those trees in all those thousands of years.

The Bristlecone Pine is the oldest living tree I believe at only 5,063 years old, so where they come up with the 11,000, I don't know.

 

[MarkT]

Good day,

I had a discussion with a co-worker yesterday, with regards to human development which migrated, as these things do, into a discussion about how a scientist can 'know' that something is millions or billions of years old.

As a bit of background, I am a deconverted Christian with a chemical engineering degree. I normally don't engage in these discussions because I am not a trained cosmologist/biologist/palaeontologist/archaeologist, and I don't like overstepping the bounds of my personal knowledge. The only time I would get involved is if thermodynamics comes up, because that is something I do have advanced knowledge of. My co-worker is a YEC-ist who is also a pastor at a church in addition to our shared job.

The premise of his argument was that we don't (or rather, can't) know that something is millions or billions of years old because there is no 'date' on it. He was aware of radiometric dating, but he didn't seem to believe that those were correct - he used the example of knowing the date of a shipwreck by seeing the date on a coin there, as if to imply that something cannot be dated unless it is marked specifically by a human. He also attempted to cast doubt on radiometric dating by bringing up a mammoth that gave two different dates depending on which part of the animal was tested.

The mammoth claim was easy enough to deal with - a quick search brought up that he was apparently referring to a Kent Hovind lecture where Mr. Hovind was misrepresenting a palaeontological paper. The claim about 'how do you know' was more troublesome, as I couldn't find the correct words to sound convincing. To me, it sounds like he was using a 'were you there?' style argument a la Ken Ham, as if a recorded eyewitness account is more reliable than evidence that can be repeatedly tested. I also believe that his shipwreck analogy fails because there is more than one explanation for a coin of a certain age being on that ship.

So then, I'd like to hear more about this argument - what's been said, what can still be said, what we know, what we don't, etc. - from both sides. I don't know if I plan on engaging my co-worker in this sort of discussion again, but I'm still interested in learning what the argument is.

The assumption is the earth was formed by magma/lava/volcanoes, but according to the Bible, God made the firmament (the crust) the dry land and the seas. If God did make the firmament, then every dating method being used to date the crust goes out the window.

The implication here is that the proportions of lead to uranium etc. in the crust have always been what they are ever since the Creation.

 

[Strathos]

Radiometric dating is calibrated similar to the way they create thermometers. By observing the properties of the mercury and experimenting with it, they can construct a tube that will cause it to expand or contract when subjected to certain temperatures, and can thus create a scale for the thermometer, the result is an accurate instrument. The same type of logic is used to calibrate radiometric dating methods.

 

[Simmeh]

Are you supposed to be the "open-minded" one in the events you recounted? It doesn't sound like you're willing to question the age of the earth any more than your co-worker is. You are probably more religiously committed to 'billions of years' then many creationists are about a young earth.

Do you always make baseless assumptions about the character and views of people you don't know?

I have questioned the age of the earth. Notice the first post I said I was deconverted? I meant it. I was raised Christian. My extended family is Christian. I attended private Christian grade school and high school. I grew up reading Bible stories and listening to Adventures in Odyssey rather than reading Goosebumps and watching Power Rangers. I remember having a moment of cognitive dissonance when I was 6 or 7 years old, when I read a book about dinosaurs that mentioned these millions of years. This didn't fit with anything I was told - and so I was forced to ask questions.

But I did more than just ask questions - I went looking for answers. Asking questions is great and all, but it amounts to nothing if you don't seek the answers to them. So I read science books. I watched and listened to people give their evidence and arguments. I made a point of paying attention in class. I asked people I respected, people I admired, people I trusted for their views.

And you know what answer I came to? That the world is several orders of magnitude older than what I had been taught in Sunday school.

But did I stop asking questions? No. I reached this answer when I was 16, a full decade ago - and this wasn't even the point of my deconversion from Christianity. Even today I still check these things out. If there was very strong evidence for a younger earth, or something happened that would bring the sum total of all the old earth evidence into question, I would re-investigate. I would critically analyse what this new information is, and what people are saying about it. And if, in the end, everything did point to a young earth, I would accept that, and reject the old earth. That is my duty, not only as someone who has studied science, but as a human being.

 

[Simmeh]

Really? Tree ring dating only goes back a maximum (and I mean the upper, upper limit) is 11,000 years. That is assuming normal growth patterns for those trees in all those thousands of years.

The Bristlecone Pine is the oldest living tree I believe at only 5,063 years old, so where they come up with the 11,000, I don't know.

I think the idea was to first get him to admit that the world is more than 6000 years old, and then move on from there. I haven't looked too much into dendochronology, but it is Saturday - so why not learn something?

The assumption is the earth was formed by magma/lava/volcanoes, but according to the Bible, God made the firmament (the crust) the dry land and the seas. If God did make the firmament, then every dating method being used to date the crust goes out the window.

The implication here is that the proportions of lead to uranium etc. in the crust have always been what they are ever since the Creation.

Yes, I'm familiar with this. Raised in a Christian household, and all.

 

[Papias]

I hope no one is taking moon dust, ocean salinity, and similar PRATTS seriously....

 

[anyathesword]

The "were you there" argument is in the bible in the book of Job. No one was there for creation - nor for the resurrection (strange hey - no one got to see it!) so just ask him - how do you know the resurrection happened? Were you there?

People were there to witness it and record what happened. Jesus was in the tomb and the next day he wasn't..plus an Angel came to Mary to tell her Jesus went to Heaven.

 

[Papias]

Simmeh-

The most telling fact is that there are literally dozens of methods, which confirm each other.

It's a common situation where two or more methods can be used on the same sample. When they are, those different methods give dates that agree with each other, even though the methods are all based on different ways of testing age - with many of them not being radioactive at all. So, if the methods are "wrong" and "unreliable", then they "just happen" to be giving the same "wrong" answer that the other methods are giving, over thousands of samples, and at least hundreds of thousands of tests.

I can give more detail later - gotta take a scout group swimming now - but that's the gist of it. Deniers of our known age history don't have a leg to stand on.

Papias

 

[anyathesword]

Good day,

I had a discussion with a co-worker yesterday, with regards to human development which migrated, as these things do, into a discussion about how a scientist can 'know' that something is millions or billions of years old.

As a bit of background, I am a deconverted Christian with a chemical engineering degree. I normally don't engage in these discussions because I am not a trained cosmologist/biologist/palaeontologist/archaeologist, and I don't like overstepping the bounds of my personal knowledge. The only time I would get involved is if thermodynamics comes up, because that is something I do have advanced knowledge of. My co-worker is a YEC-ist who is also a pastor at a church in addition to our shared job.

The premise of his argument was that we don't (or rather, can't) know that something is millions or billions of years old because there is no 'date' on it. He was aware of radiometric dating, but he didn't seem to believe that those were correct - he used the example of knowing the date of a shipwreck by seeing the date on a coin there, as if to imply that something cannot be dated unless it is marked specifically by a human. He also attempted to cast doubt on radiometric dating by bringing up a mammoth that gave two different dates depending on which part of the animal was tested.

The mammoth claim was easy enough to deal with - a quick search brought up that he was apparently referring to a Kent Hovind lecture where Mr. Hovind was misrepresenting a palaeontological paper. The claim about 'how do you know' was more troublesome, as I couldn't find the correct words to sound convincing. To me, it sounds like he was using a 'were you there?' style argument a la Ken Ham, as if a recorded eyewitness account is more reliable than evidence that can be repeatedly tested. I also believe that his shipwreck analogy fails because there is more than one explanation for a coin of a certain age being on that ship.

So then, I'd like to hear more about this argument - what's been said, what can still be said, what we know, what we don't, etc. - from both sides. I don't know if I plan on engaging my co-worker in this sort of discussion again, but I'm still interested in learning what the argument is.

I do not think they really know. I see articles over and over again about DNA and Oscteocytes in Dinosaurs who are suppossed to be millions of years old. We know that DNA does not decay this slow and that oscteocytes and blood cells don't survive so long. So the dating for the dinosaurs is not correct, it is based on human assumtions.

 

[MarkT]

Radiometric dating is calibrated similar to the way they create thermometers. By observing the properties of the mercury and experimenting with it, they can construct a tube that will cause it to expand or contract when subjected to certain temperatures, and can thus create a scale for the thermometer, the result is an accurate instrument. The same type of logic is used to calibrate radiometric dating methods.

You can't calibrate a radiometric clock to an unknown age.

 

[lifepsyop]

It's a common situation where two or more methods can be used on the same sample. When they are, those different methods give dates that agree with each other,

after you subtract the dates that don't agree and blame them on contamination.

So, if the methods are "wrong" and "unreliable", then they "just happen" to be giving the same "wrong" answer that the other methods are giving,

This exact explanation is actually used in the literature. It is referred to as a "fortuitous" concordance. When different dating methods agree with each other, but still give an unwelcome date, then they are discarded as a coincidence.

over thousands of samples, and at least hundreds of thousands of tests.

minus the "contaminated" samples

Deniers of our known age history don't have a leg to stand on.

Old-earth believers are typically oblivious to the world of subjectivity their dogma is found in.

 

[Simmeh]

Simmeh-

The most telling fact is that there are literally dozens of methods, which confirm each other.

It's a common situation where two or more methods can be used on the same sample. When they are, those different methods give dates that agree with each other, even though the methods are all based on different ways of testing age - with many of them not being radioactive at all. So, if the methods are "wrong" and "unreliable", then they "just happen" to be giving the same "wrong" answer that the other methods are giving, over thousands of samples, and at least hundreds of thousands of tests.

I can give more detail later - gotta take a scout group swimming now - but that's the gist of it. Deniers of our known age history don't have a leg to stand on.

Papias

That should be interesting, especially considering the very next post in this topic...

I do not think they really know. I see articles over and over again about DNA and Oscteocytes in Dinosaurs who are suppossed to be millions of years old. We know that DNA does not decay this slow and that oscteocytes and blood cells don't survive so long. So the dating for the dinosaurs is not correct, it is based on human assumtions.

If what Papias is correct, there are dozens of different ways to date things. If there are more methods than the one you mentioned, how does this one method not working on dinosaur fossils invalidate all the others?

 

[PsychoSarah]

You can't calibrate a radiometric clock to an unknown age.

Yes you can, because the rate of decay of radioactive materials is consistent at each stage that the material breaks down in.

 

[rjw]

Good day,

I had a discussion with a co-worker yesterday, with regards to human development which migrated, as these things do, into a discussion about how a scientist can 'know' that something is millions or billions of years old.

As a bit of background, I am a deconverted Christian with a chemical engineering degree. I normally don't engage in these discussions because I am not a trained cosmologist/biologist/palaeontologist/archaeologist, and I don't like overstepping the bounds of my personal knowledge. The only time I would get involved is if thermodynamics comes up, because that is something I do have advanced knowledge of. My co-worker is a YEC-ist who is also a pastor at a church in addition to our shared job.

The premise of his argument was that we don't (or rather, can't) know that something is millions or billions of years old because there is no 'date' on it. He was aware of radiometric dating, but he didn't seem to believe that those were correct - he used the example of knowing the date of a shipwreck by seeing the date on a coin there, as if to imply that something cannot be dated unless it is marked specifically by a human. He also attempted to cast doubt on radiometric dating by bringing up a mammoth that gave two different dates depending on which part of the animal was tested.

The mammoth claim was easy enough to deal with - a quick search brought up that he was apparently referring to a Kent Hovind lecture where Mr. Hovind was misrepresenting a palaeontological paper. The claim about 'how do you know' was more troublesome, as I couldn't find the correct words to sound convincing. To me, it sounds like he was using a 'were you there?' style argument a la Ken Ham, as if a recorded eyewitness account is more reliable than evidence that can be repeatedly tested. I also believe that his shipwreck analogy fails because there is more than one explanation for a coin of a certain age being on that ship.

So then, I'd like to hear more about this argument - what's been said, what can still be said, what we know, what we don't, etc. - from both sides. I don't know if I plan on engaging my co-worker in this sort of discussion again, but I'm still interested in learning what the argument is.

The "were you there?" argument is something of a creationist con.

There are lots of things creationists accept despite the fact that they cannot be there to directly observe some structure of process. Rather, they accept its reality based on the evidence. For example, they cannot be there to see that the earth does in fact have a core, and a semi-molten one at that. Rather, they accept the evidence. They cannot be there to directly observe that stars generate their energy by fusion reactions at their cores. Their cores are invisible to our direct observation, let alone the ions colliding with each other to fuse and liberate energy in the process. Rather, they accept the evidence. No creationist was there to directly observe the domestic dog microevolve from the wolf. Yet they accept this notion as scientific, based on the evidence.

There was a time in which no one had directly seen an atom. Now we can, thanks to electron microscopes. Ditto for the earth orbiting the sun, thanks to satellites. No one considered atomic theory and heliocentricism to be false, simply because direct observation could not be had. Rather, they considered these theories to be true, based on the evidence at hand.

And, in the end, creationists were not there to:-

1) See that God had any hand in the authorship of any text of the Bible, to see that

2) Whoever wrote those texts was recording something that actually happened, and if so,

3) Recorded it with 100% accuracy.

Why creationists are so enamoured to eyewitness reports, is also beyond me. Eyewitnesses are notoriously unreliable. Even groups of eyewitnesses can be unreliable.


In the end, it's the evidence that is important. How good it is. How well it ties in with other evidence. And so on.

 

[lasthero]

I see articles over and over again about DNA and Oscteocytes in Dinosaurs who are suppossed to be millions of years old.

You saw something from a creationist website. Did you actually read the real paper? Because I'll tell you right now, no dinosaur DNA has ever been found. Find the original scientific paper - not the creationist hackjob describing it - and show where they found DNA. Go on. I dare you.

We know that DNA does not decay this slow and that oscteocytes and blood cells don't survive so long. So the dating for the dinosaurs is not correct, it is based on human assumtions.

Even if we found DNA - which we haven't - that wouldn't mean dating for dinosaurs is not correct. You're basically saying that because we found some blood, that means every dating method every done and every technique we use to date things isn't correct. That doesn't even make a little bit of sense.

And what assumptions?