Recent content by npetreley

Wonderful, Bear. So you prefer to set ground rules in your discussions that deliberately exclude the most important factor involved -- the ability to know what the starting conditions are. Congratulations, Bear. Your lack of intellectual honesty just made me realize how pointless it is to...

Here's a pro-evolution description of a straw man argument. http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/Temple/9917/evolution/strawman.html My argument: You were not there to witness how stalactites formed, therefore you don't know what conditions were present at the time that could affect the rate...

http://hrsbstaff.ednet.ns.ca/waymac/History%20V/timing_is_everything.htm That's problem #1. If C14 levels were lower 5,000 years ago, then anything that was buried 5,000 years ago will have an apparent date that is much older. C14 production is affected by many things, including even the...

Yes, let's be intellectually honest, rather than follow your strawman example above. We can observe the earth orbiting the sun here and now. We cannot observe how the stalactites formed, we can only observe how they form now. A proper analogy would be to ask HOW the earth entered its...

I guess that clinches it. We can all go home now.

No, no - you're misquoting. Watson asked Holmes, "From what school did you get your silly notion that evolution is actually true?" To which Holmes replied, "Elementary, my dear Watson."

No, I'm saying there's no way to know if no formations are over 4,000 years old. I have no problem with people speculating that they're 100,000 years old or whatever. But let's simply be honest here and admit it's all speculation.

How could you know if you weren't there to see the conditions that were present when they were formed? You can't. You have to speculate. Just make sure when you speculate that you understand that they can form quickly, and that the rate of formation TODAY may not be the same as the rate of...

What part of "if it is older than 50,000 years, there should be no detectable C14" are you having trouble understanding?

Gypsum forms flowers and needles, not stalactites. More important, Carlsbad Caverns is not a basement. From the previous link: Calcite is calcium carbonate, not gypsum. Here's a description of how caves are supposedly formed. Note that it assumes rain water, and therefore speculates based...

It's not reliable beyond 40,000 years because there shouldn't be any detectable C14 left by that time. That's the point.

Okay, thanks, I didn't see that. But I was responding to the comment that I was being hypocritical for rejecting a lawyer's quote.

What does that have to do with the price of tea in china? Back to reality: The queston was if it was possible for a stalactite to form quickly. And the answer is clearly yes. We know these formed quickly because they weren't there when people built the basements. In contrast, we don't...