Sanctifying the age of the earth/universe

Jimmy D · Jun 1, 2019

lifepsyop said:
That was kind of my point. Decomposition rates afford very precise dates relative to the billions of years found in evolutionary timescales.

So we have learned that dinosaurs probably died only within the last million years (because there's so much preserved organic material found in their remains that should have been long gone) ...

Where did you get that figure of a million years from?

tas8831 · Jun 7, 2019

Not so sure it is a good use of time to try to talk down someone with a history of abusing psychedelics. If history is a guide, the creationist will eventually start being grotesquely condescending to hide his ignorance when he has run out of phony witticisms and the repeated unsupported or erroneous assertions no longer slow down the critics, then he will split. Only to come back a few weeks or months later, having concocted yet another pre-fabricated anti-evolution series of lies and nonsense to prop up his failing 'faith.'

It is very cyclical.

tas8831 · Jun 7, 2019

lifepsyop said:
One knee-jerk response might be "because different data agree with each other" ... but that is simply not true. There are countless features or phenomena in the universe that do NOT agree with conventional age estimates and these are simply explained away as unreliable, or when all explanation fails.... anomalous.

And no examples provided. Typical.

I note that there are both YOUNG earth creationists and OLD earth creationists. Both claim scriptural justification.

Funny how you never seem to start threads with condescending, overly-lengthy diatribes about this very real, very important....anomaly... in Christianist belief.

tas8831 · Jun 7, 2019

lifepsyop said:
But we're not discussing supposed minimum ages of the universe.. you're changing the subject.

The age of the earth has been sanctified as 4.5 billion years.
The age of the universe has been sanctified as 13.7 billion years.

These ages have been decreed as beyond any question by the 'scientific community', (ignoring issues raised in the OP... that they are largely based on assumptions about the past.)

Evidence for this sanctification?

You are very good at making these pronouncements, not so good at making real arguments.

tas8831 · Jun 7, 2019

lifepsyop said:
Look at something like the belief in Abiogenesis. There is nothing happening on earth today that suggests life can generate itself from non-life. Yet belief that Abiogenesis actually happened is faithfully and slavishly adhered to by the scientific community with absolutely zero room for criticism.

Look at something like the belief in Creation. There is nothing happening on earth today that suggests life can be generated from dust by an invisible deity for which there is no evidence.. Yet belief that Creation actually happened is faithfully and slavishly adhered to by the anti-scientific community with absolutely zero room for criticism.

You are not as good at this as your fellow creationists, doubtless, have told you you are.

HitchSlap · Jun 7, 2019

lifepsyop said:
Why should we believe that the same institutions that still can't figure out where the Earth's oceans came from (among countless other features and phenomena), have also irrefutably demonstrated that the Earth is 4.5 billion years old.

Only recently has the geologic community rejected uniformitarianism as an unjustified limitation on scientific inquiry into Earth's history, as it constrains past geologic rates and conditions to those of the present. After bitterly resisting the widespread evidence of past earth catastrophe, geologists finally came around to realizing their prior assumptions were wrong.

So why can't today's evolutionists and old-earth believers accept the possibility that radioactive decay rates may have been different in the past as well? Why must the radioactive uniformitarian assumption to be removed from questioning? Why is this particular uniformitarian assumption regarded as a sanctified truth of the universe?

One knee-jerk response might be "because different data agree with each other" ... but that is simply not true. There are countless features or phenomena in the universe that do NOT agree with conventional age estimates and these are simply explained away as unreliable, or when all explanation fails.... anomalous.

Now for a question I think the evolutionists know the answer to, whether they want to admit it or not:

IF radiometric dating methods generally returned ages that could not possibly accomodate the time required for an evolutionary narrative, would you accept it as a disproof of Evolution (universal common descent).... OR... would you simply assume that the dating method is unreliable? (due to past fluctuations in decay rates, contamination, or some other anomaly)

Are you doing this very thing for any phenomena that might demonstrate evidence of a younger earth/solar system, etc. ? (e.g. when we find original undecayed protein in dinosaur fossils, or likewise discovering features of a planet in our solar system which should have decayed a long, long time ago if the body were that old)

(substantive responses only please. If all you have is emotional hand-waving or a snide flippant comment then please just move along)

Unless you can provide a source justifying your assertions (not typical creo nonsense), then there's zero reason for me to even entertain the OP.

Steve Petersen · Jun 8, 2019

Radioactive decay rates: evidence of constancy.

CF210: Constancy of Radioactive Decay Rates

Steve Petersen · Jun 8, 2019

ROASTING ADAM-Creationism's Heat Problem

Dr. Joseph Meert – Department of Geological Sciences

From the Institute for Creation Research: The First Young-Earth Conference on Radioisotopes

One major obstacle to accelerated decay is an explanation for the disposal of the great quantities of heat which would be generated by radioactive decay over short periods of time. For example, if most of the radioactive decay implied by fission tracks or quantities of daughter products occurred over the year of the Flood, the amount of heat generated would have been excessive, given present conditions.

pitabread · Jun 8, 2019

lifepsyop said:
Okay... just as a thought-experiment, what if it was demonstrated that the topology of the entire earth today is largely the result of a global catastrophe that occurred only several thousand years ago?

The fundamental problem with the YEC Flood scenario has always been energy. The amount of energy release would have eradicated everything on the planet, boiled off the oceans, and resulted in a sterile ball of rock.

The only way around that is to invoke arbitrary supernatural miracles at which point you've left the realm of real-world evidence.

pitabread · Jun 8, 2019

lifepsyop said:
So we have learned that dinosaurs probably died only within the last million years (because there's so much preserved organic material found in their remains that should have been long gone) ...

[ citation needed ]

lasthero · Jun 8, 2019

pitabread said:
[ citation needed ]

It’s worth noting that, to the best of my knowledge, we’ve never recovered dinosaur DNA - fragments of it, but never the real stuff. This is interesting, because we have recovered DNA from things before - DNA can last around 7 million years. We have DNA from things like mammoths, for instance.

But never dinosaurs. In fact, if the Earth is only 6,000 years old, we should be able to find DNA in just about anything we find.

pitabread · Jun 8, 2019

lasthero said:
But never dinosaurs. In fact, if the Earth is only 6,000 years old, we should be able to find DNA in just about anything we find.

The predictable creationist response to this is that dinosaur DNA is being found, it's just being covered up by the evil evolutionist conspiracy. Everything that contradicts creationism can be explained away with conspiracies.

ruthiesea · Jun 8, 2019

Jimmy D said:
Why do you use the word “sanctified”? Might I suggest an online dictionary...

sanctify | Definition of sanctify in English by Oxford Dictionaries

Where did you read that?

Science does not accept such findings as being 100% correct. We are always learning new information that can affect present conclusions.

Ophiolite · Jun 8, 2019

pitabread said:
The predictable creationist response to this is that dinosaur DNA is being found, it's just being covered up by the evil evolutionist conspiracy. Everything that contradicts creationism can be explained away with conspiracies.

And creationists just never give us credit for how difficult it is to maintain this conspiracy in complete secrecy. I mean all it would take for the whole thing to blow up in our faces was if some incompetent participant in the conspiracy were to acknowledge its existence in some public place, such as an internet forum. Fortunately the chances of that happening are essentially zero!

USincognito · Jun 8, 2019

lifepsyop said:
That alone says a lot. It's why people aren't kidding when they call Evolution a religion.

Yeah, and your comment makes doing that even more laughable because:
- you missed the point he was making and got triggered by his use of the word abiogenesis
- he was talking about the origin of life and yet you refer to evolution
- there's more evidence for evolution than for plate tectonics but Creationists only obsessively call evolution a "religion"

(cosmic evolution, stellar evolution, organic, biological, etc.)

Oh, you're a Hovind fan. That explains everything.

USincognito · Jun 8, 2019

lifepsyop said:
Only recently has the geologic community rejected uniformitarianism as an unjustified limitation on scientific inquiry into Earth's history, as it constrains past geologic rates and conditions to those of the present.

When did that happen? Because I'm not aware of geologists rejecting uniformitarianism.

lifepsyop said:
After bitterly resisting the widespread evidence of past earth catastrophe, geologists finally came around to realizing their prior assumptions were wrong.

Oh, you don't know what uniformitarianism means. I means that the same processes at work today worked the same way in the past. That would include earthquakes, floods, hurricanes, tsunamis and other catastrophes. A when did geologists "bitterly resist" things like those happening in the past? Or is this some allusion to the Flood which never happened?

USincognito · Jun 8, 2019

lifepsyop said:
So why can't today's evolutionists and old-earth believers accept the possibility that radioactive decay rates may have been different in the past as well?

- The Oklo natural nucelar reactor shows that decay rates haven't changed for 1.8 billion years.
- SN 1987a shows that decay rates haven't change in 168,000 years.
- For decay rates to change, there would need to be a change in the weak nuclear force which YECs would need to explain as well.

USincognito · Jun 8, 2019

lifepsyop said:
The age of the earth has been sanctified as 4.5 billion years.
The age of the universe has been sanctified as 13.7 billion years.

These ages have been decreed as beyond any question by the 'scientific community', (ignoring issues raised in the OP... that they are largely based on assumptions about the past.)

This is that dumb "evolution is a religion" thing again, isn't it?

USincognito · Jun 8, 2019

lifepsyop said:
Belief in Abiogenesis is simply a necessity for an evolutionary worldview, and therefore, uncontested, absolutely removed from the bounds of 'scientific' debate.

Abiogenesis is a hypothesis, not a belief.
Abiogenesis is not a necessity for evolution. Evolution happens regardless of the origin of life on earth.
There is no evolutionary worldview just as there is not plate tectonic worldview or germ theory worldview. It simply is a Creationist phantasm that exists nowhere other than their imaginations.
A frankly laughable fantasy that bears no connection to reality.

Ophiolite · Jun 8, 2019

USincognito said:
When did that happen? Because I'm not aware of geologists rejecting uniformitarianism.

lifepsyop is misrepresenting a genuine paradigm shift. The potential role of impacts, or other extreme events was generally considered insignificant, or non-existent. The approach to geology was represented by the phrase "The present is the key to the past". All observed geological features were explicable by processes that could be examined at work today. Exceptions were noted, but not accorded much weight.

The strength of this viewpoint was a direct consequence of the 19th century battle between uniformitarian thinking and catastrophism. Old style catastrophism attributed most features to catastrophe and saw little relevance to the importance of gradual, but persistent mechanisms such as weathering of rock outcrops.

Arguably the pendulum swung to far. The recognition of the probable role of asteroid impact in the demise of the dinosaurs brought recognition that uniform processes could be periodically interrupted by the exceptional. That's what lifepsyop is misrepresenting.

Sanctifying the age of the earth/universe

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