6000 years?

[llDayo]

Evil Atheist Conspiracy?

Corrected.

 

[Beastt]

Scientist could never explain God, Nor why Adam lived over 900 years.
But the bible can, They had free access to "The tree of life"
While living in the garden of Eden, they couldn't get sick, and couldn't die as long as they had this fruit.
When man sinned, he fell, and as a result was punished.
One of the punishments was they were taken from Eden and where not able to eat the fruit of "the tree of life since God had placed cherubims to guard it.
So man aged, and there was a decline Adam's children would have also benifieted from the fruit their parents had eaten, and this was paced on until depleted, that's why the years of mans life have declined since Adam.

There appears to be a misconception concerning what it means to explain something. The Bible very conveniently fails to explain most of its claims. That's likely because it was written by men who couldn't themselves explain how the claims they made could possibly be true.

Saying that there was a tree of life doesn't explain how it kept the effects of oxygen and caloric metabolization from causing decay of the cells themselves. That would be an explanation. When the Bible says there was a tree of life, what it's saying in essence is "there was a magic tree". Science strives to explain the mechanisms, the Bible claims only the result. Anyone can write claims without supporting the mechanisms.

I know you won't find this very compelling because it appears you have already chosen your beliefs. But human skeletal remains and fossils show us nothing about anything found so far which would indicate that the tissues of men 6,000 years ago aged differently than we do. It's just another unsupported Biblical claim like the idea that there was no rain on Earth before the flood. I suppose it's not surprising that those who most readily deny the findings of science are usually those who understand the least about how science works.

The Bible continually and repeatedly shows itself to have been written only by men with no real knowledge of how nature works. Planets and stars don't form within a 24-hour period. Planets without atmospheres don't contain water unless it is frozen. The shifting of valleys and mountains and creation of oceans doesn't occur in a day. There is not, nor has there ever been a layer of water above the atmosphere of the Earth. The Earth was never covered completely with water and it's not possible to fit two of every Earth species aboard a ship the size of Noah's ark. If it were possible to completely flood the Earth, it's highly unlikely that any fish species would survive. Even small floods today clog the water with so much silt and debris that the fish are unable to breathe and they die. If we had enough water to completely cover the planet, that water would have to still be here today. It isn't. The Earth doesn't lose more water than it gains. It actually gains a small amount on a daily basis. Water is only lost at a molecular level at the poles while it is gained from the ice frozen in small comets and meteors which evaporate in our atmosphere.

You can read the Bible and just accept it because you believe it was written by God but there is absolutely no proof of that. One could read the Dr. Suess series and proclaim them to be God's truth but science would still show you to be incorrect. Science works and it shows us that the Bible is a fake. If science didn't work, we'd never be able to send men to the moon or probes to Mars. We'd not be communicating using computers which fit on a desktop and we wouldn't have the ability to unleash the power of the atom.

If you prefer, it is certainly your right to believe the Bible rather than science. But in doing so you should also continue to believe that the Earth is flat and the center of the universe, men have never been to the moon, it was just a clever fake and that lightning bolts are an indication that God is angry.

Denial of the explained and testable mechanisms offered through science based on the claims of a book of questionable origin is just that -- it is denial, a well-known psychosis.

 

[Mechanical Bliss]

This thread had the potential to be constructive--and it certainly wasn't wagsbags' fault that it went awry so quickly.

The thread became inundated with empty rhetoric, emotional objections, and ultimately distractions from the initial topic which was about the age of the earth (not evolution).

It seems to be an all too common trend that when creationists are given the opportunity to substantiate a specific claim or address a specific refutation, they try every evasive maneuver in the book. The next thing you know, the thread has gone on for pages and pages and the original intent is lost.

We all really need to stop laying the troll food out there and start being more firm in keeping discussions on track (and help from the mods in keeping threads on topic could help also). Side discussions can be done in other/new threads. The problem is that the rhetoric and emotional rants of creationism end up being encouraged by merely entertaining them when we should put them in other threads and force the real issue of the discussion to be dealt with.

Now I don't mean to get on a soapbox about it or act like I know what's best for the forum and am ordering everyone else to do, but I'm just suggesting that some changes be made in how things are handled because threads spin out of control like this often. We need to be more strict and prevent trolling. Note that the OP wasn't even addressed by any of the YECists from what I saw, just total evasion all around.

 

[wagsbags]

I agree so the question remains. How do you explain the agreement between dozens of different methods? And still waiting on the light from distant stars explanation...

 

[dad]

I'm glad you agree. I do think it's amazing that a few Christians will continually argue for a YEC view, basing their entire argument on one book written by men, rather than the overwhelming evidence for the contrary

What is amazing, of course is the dates they dream up, on evolutionary assumptions. My, if some of these conspricy nuts were right, supporting some of these insituions of evulution would be worthy of support from the rockerfellers, or rothchilds!
But, I don't think some of the advanced witches, and satanists, would really not believe in the supernatural, considering their god? Maybe some of the high school beginners who don't yet know what's really goin on.
But, all these dates try to say, 'if there were no God, this is how old we currently think things would be from present conditions'. A relgion of unbelief in God, pure and simple, it seems to me.

 

[wagsbags]

First of all, who said anything about evolution?

Second of all, your last comment seems to imply that your only argument for why these dates are wrong is that their is a God. And if there weren't these dates (4.5 billion years) would be correct. Is that right?

 

[dad]

Ok so 6000 years people how do you explain the excellent agreement between dozens of methods?

If I went to ten doctors they would all agree I am a certain age. Because it's true. I see it as looking at some things that have experienced decay, and simply getting it wrong on the dates. If you see a fossil in a rock formation, then presume to say, 'it must be so many hundred million years old, because the rock is, this is an assumption. Then, if you turn around and say the fossil is old, because the rock is old, you get absurd conclusions. If we assume that decay must have always been like it is now, what do we really base this on? If The whole physical universe really started to decay, or if some other process was turned then into decay, how would we know? If the world was covered in water, how could we look at say, how much it now rains, and then figure it would take so many millions of years to flood the world? If we ignore the key to understand all this, (the spiritual element), we have lost the main part of the equation! No wonder the answers will be screwed up!
Of all those 'dozens of methods' how many factor in what the unseen world, and known history right back to Adam? No, it seems sometimes, that the main thrust, really, is trying to find things that seem contrary.

 

[LifeToTheFullest!]

dad, your logic stuns me.

 

[Mechanical Bliss]

What is amazing, of course is the dates they dream up, on evolutionary assumptions.

Radiometric dates are neither dreamt up nor based upon any assumptions from evolutionary biology. Your claim illustrates that you simply don't know what you're talking about.

But, all these dates try to say, 'if there were no God, this is how old we currently think things would be from present conditions'. A relgion of unbelief in God, pure and simple, it seems to me.

In reality, radiometric dates say, "whether or not any god(s) exists, based upon the evidence, this is how old X is. It's not a religion, and it has nothing to do with the Christianity vs. atheism debate that you are trying to sidetrack the discussion into to make it an emotional rahter than evidentiary one. Again, your claim illustrates that you simply don't know what you're talking about.

 

[dad]

Second of all, your last comment seems to imply that your only argument for why these dates are wrong is that their is a God. And if there weren't these dates (4.5 billion years) would be correct. Is that right?

No they only seem that way when looking at a little physical portion of the available evidence. If there were no God, nothing in our universe could exist at any age, He made it. It might be best to focus in on some particular thing you think may indicate the world is not about 6000 yrs old. (rather than a general statement of faith)

 

[Krysia]

[/color][/size][/font]
What is amazing, of course is the dates they dream up, on evolutionary assumptions. My, if some of these conspricy nuts were right, supporting some of these insituions of evulution would be worthy of support from the rockerfellers, or rothchilds!
But, I don't think some of the advanced witches, and satanists, would really not believe in the supernatural, considering their god?

This should be corrected to say "gods." Witches and Satanists worship different Gods. Just FYI

Maybe some of the high school beginners who don't yet know what's really goin on.

But, all these dates try to say, 'if there were no God, this is how old we currently think things would be from present conditions'. A relgion of unbelief in God, pure and simple, it seems to me.

:o My God, your stubborness in adhering to a complete and utter fallacy, regardless of solid evidence to the contrary, is beyond my ability to fathom. Thank the Goddess there are only a few of you out there - otherwise I would despair for the sanity of all of mankind.

 

[dad]

Radiometric dates are neither dreamt up nor based upon any assumptions from evolutionary biology

Of course not the 'biology dept' of evolutionary teachings. Evo in the broader sense of old age science.

 

[llDayo]

What is amazing, of course is the dates they dream up, on evolutionary assumptions. My, if some of these conspricy nuts were right, supporting some of these insituions of evulution would be worthy of support from the rockerfellers, or rothchilds!
But, I don't think some of the advanced witches, and satanists, would really not believe in the supernatural, considering their god? Maybe some of the high school beginners who don't yet know what's really goin on.
But, all these dates try to say, 'if there were no God, this is how old we currently think things would be from present conditions'. A relgion of unbelief in God, pure and simple, it seems to me.

Evolution has nothing to do with dating different earth strata, and for your information, it was Christian geologists, BEFORE THE TIME OF DARWIN AND EVOLUTIONARY THEORY, who observed the Earth appeared to be much older than though. From http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/icr-visit/bartelt3.html:

The sequences in the column were deciphered and arranged by Christian creationist geologists of the early 19th century, way before Darwin. For example, William Smith (1769-1839) was a land surveyor and civil engineer who participated in building projects all over England. He constructed a geological map of England in 1799, observing that England was constructed of strata which were never inverted, and that even at great distances "each stratum contained organized fossils peculiar to itself, and might, in cases otherwise doubtful, be recognized and discriminated from others like it, but in a different part of the series, by examination of them" (quoted in Geikie 1897:224). His results, published in 1816 in Strata Identified by Organized Fossils, demonstrated that fossils were not randomly buried, as in a flood, but always occurred in a definite order in the geologic column. Marine species were often found between strata containing terrestrial species -- a real blow to flood geology. Smith never formulated a theory of fossil deposition and was, in fact, a literal creationist. "Neither Smith nor Townsend (Rev. Joseph - a publisher of Smith's results) grasped the idea that time was involved in laying down the successive strata, and thought they had contributed support to Mosaic cosmogony" (Haber 1959:248).

So your claim that Evolution is used as an assumption for dating methods is wrong.

 

[Mechanical Bliss]

No they only seem that way when looking at a little physical portion of the available evidence. If there were no God, nothing in our universe could exist at any age, He made it. It might be best to focus in on some particular thing you think may indicate the world is not about 6000 yrs old. (rather than a general statement of faith)

It might be best for you to stop posting if your arguments are going to be purely emotional. You are falling into the same trap you did in the cold core thread where you essentially ignored any evidence and fell back on the argument that "the core must be cold and composed of water/sapphire/diamond/jewels/gold because I want it to be." The above quoted post, for example, is just emotional posturing, not an attempt to address the specific parts of the discussion.

Neither wagsbags nor anyone here has made a "general statement of faith" regarding the age of the earth. You and other young earth creationists have done that. It's psychological projection on your part.

Furthermore, the thread is not about wagsbags presenting evidence. However he did present an example of evidence that contradicts YECism. The point of his thread seems to be to place the burden on YECists for a change (after all, there are numerous threads on the forum dealing with specific refutations of YECism).

In this thread, the onus is on you to provide evidence (not emotions or rhetoric about science education being about teaching students to be gods or sidetracking into atheism vs. theism) for a 6000 year old earth and to address his example of correlating radiometric dates.

 

[dad]

This should be corrected to say "gods." Witches and Satanists worship different Gods.

Did any of those gods help the big bang along a little, or create the universe? Would they decay at all, or is radiometric decay rates not really universally applicable?

 

[Krysia]

If you see a fossil in a rock formation, then presume to say, 'it must be so many hundred million years old, because the rock is, this is an assumption. Then, if you turn around and say the fossil is old, because the rock is old, you get absurd conclusions. If we assume that decay must have always been like it is now, what do we really base this on? If The whole physical universe really started to decay, or if some other process was turned then into decay, how would we know? If the world was covered in water, how could we look at say, how much it now rains, and then figure it would take so many millions of years to flood the world? If we ignore the key to understand all this, (the spiritual element), we have lost the main part of the equation! No wonder the answers will be screwed up!

For a Christian perspective, please read the following (why do I think you won't? )

Radiometric Dating: A Christian Perspective​

http://www.asa3.org/ASA/resources/Wiens.html#page%2022

Here is an excerpt, but please read the WHOLE ARTICLE:

It is important to note that an apparent old Earth is consistent with the great amount of scientific evidence.


Rightly Handling the Word of Truth
​

As Christians it is of great importance that we understand God's word correctly. Yet from the middle ages up until the 1700s people insisted that the Bible taught that the Earth, not the Sun, was the center of the solar system. It wasn't that people just thought it had to be that way; they actually quoted scriptures: "The Earth is firmly fixed; it shall not be moved" (Psalm 104:5), or "the sun stood still" (Joshua 10:13; why should it say the sun stood still if it is the Earth's rotation that causes day and night?), and many other passages. I am afraid the debate over the age of the Earth has many similarities. But I am optimistic. Today there are many Christians who accept the reliability of geologic dating, but do not compromise the spiritual and historical inerrancy of God's word.

Common Misconceptions Regarding Radiometric Dating Methods:

1. Radiometric dating is based on index fossils whose dates were assigned long before radioactivity was discovered.
This is not at all true, though it is implied by some young-Earth literature. Radiometric dating is based on the half-lives of the radioactive isotopes. These half-lives have been measured over the last 40-90 years. They are not calibrated by fossils.

2. No one has measured the decay rates directly; we only know them from inference.

Decay rates have been directly measured over the last 40-100 years. In some cases a batch of the pure parent material is weighed and then set aside for a long time and then the resulting daughter material is weighed. In many cases it is easier to detect radioactive decays by the energy burst that each decay gives off. For this a batch of the pure parent material is carefully weighed and then put in front of a Geiger counter or gamma-ray detector. These instruments count the number of decays over a long time.

3. If the half-lives are billions of years, it is impossible to determine them from measuring over just a few years or decades.

The example given in the section titled, "The Radiometric Clocks" shows that an accurate determination of the half-life is easily achieved by direct counting of decays over a decade or shorter. This is because a) all decay curves have exactly the same shape (Fig. 1), differing only in the half-life, and b) trillions of decays can be counted in one year even using only a fraction of a gram of material with a half-life of a billion years. Additionally, lavas of historically known ages have been correctly dated even using methods with long half-lives.

4. The decay rates are poorly known, so the dates are inaccurate.

Most of the decay rates used for dating rocks are known to within two percent. Uncertainties are only slightly higher for rhenium (5%), lutetium (3%), and beryllium (3%), discussed in connection with Table 1. Such small uncertainties are no reason to dismiss radiometric dating. Whether a rock is 100 million years or 102 million years old does not make a great deal of difference.

5. A small error in the half-lives leads to a very large error in the date.

Since exponents are used in the dating equations, it is possible for people to think this might be true, but it is not. If a half-life is off by 2%, it will only lead to a 2% error in the date.

6. Decay rates can be affected by the physical surroundings.

This is not true in the context of dating rocks. Radioactive atoms used for dating have been subjected to extremes of heat, cold, pressure, vacuum, acceleration, and strong chemical reactions far beyond anything experienced by rocks, without any significant change. The only exceptions, which are not relevant to dating rocks, are discussed under the section, "Doubters Still Try", above.

7. A small change in the nuclear forces probably accelerated nuclear clocks during the first day of creation a few thousand years ago, causing the spuriously old radiometric dates of rocks.

Rocks are dated from the time of their formation. For it to have any bearing on the radiometric dates of rocks, such a change of nuclear forces must have occurred after the Earth (and the rocks) were formed. To make the kind of difference suggested by young-Earth proponents, the half-lives must be shortened from several billion years down to several thousand years--a factor of at least a million. But to shorten half-lives by factors of a million would cause large physical changes. As one small example, recall that the Earth is heated substantially by radioactive decay. If that decay is speeded up by a factor of a million or so, the tremendous heat pulse would easily melt the whole Earth, including the rocks in question! No radiometric ages would appear old if this happened.

8. The decay rates might be slowing down over time, leading to incorrect old dates.

There are two ways we know this didn't happen: a) we have checked them out with "time machines", and b) it doesn't make sense mathematically. Both of these points are explained in the section titled, "Can We Really Believe the Dating Systems?"

9. We should measure the "full-life" (the time at which all of the parent is gone) rather than the half-life (the time when half of it is gone).

Unlike sand in an hourglass, which drops at a constant rate independent of how much remains in the top half of the glass, the number of radioactive decays is proportional to the amount of parent remaining. Figure 1 shows how after 2 half-lives, 1/2 x 1/2 = 1/4 is left, and so on. After 10 half-lives there is 2-10 = 0.098% remaining. A half-life is more easy to define than some point at which almost all of the parent is gone. Scientists sometimes instead use the term "mean life", that is, the average life of a parent atom. The mean life is always 1/ln(2) = 1.44 times the half-life. For most of us half-life is easier to understand.

10. To date a rock one must know the original amount of the parent element. But there is no way to measure how much parent element was originally there.

It is very easy to calculate the original parent abundance, but that information is not needed to date the rock. All of the dating schemes work from knowing the present abundances of the parent and daughter isotopes. The original abundance N0, of the parent is simply N0 = N ekt, where N is the present abundance, t is time, and k is a constant related to the half life.

11. There is little or no way to tell how much of the decay product, that is, the daughter isotope, was originally in the rock, leading to anomalously old ages.

A good part of this article is devoted to explaining how one can tell how much of a given element or isotope was originally present. Usually it involves using more than one sample from a given rock. It is done by comparing the ratios of parent and daughter isotopes relative to a stable isotope for samples with different relative amounts of the parent isotope. For example, in the rubidium-strontium method one compares rubidium-87/strontium-86 to strontium-87/strontium-86 for different minerals. From this one can determine how much of the daughter isotope would be present if there had been no parent isotope. This is the same as the initial amount (it would not change if there were no parent isotope to decay). Figures 4 and 5, and the accompanying explanation, tell how this is done most of the time. While this is not absolutely 100% foolproof, comparison of several dating methods will always show whether the given date is reliable.

12. There are only a few different dating methods.

This article has listed and discussed a number of different radiometric dating methods and has also briefly described a number of non-radiometric dating methods. There are actually many more methods out there. Well over forty different radiometric dating methods are in use, and a number of non-radiogenic methods not even mentioned here.

13. "Radiation halos" in rocks prove that the Earth was young.

This refers to tiny halos of crystal damage surrounding spots where radioactive elements are concentrated in certain rocks. Halos thought to be from polonium, a short-lived element produced from the decay of uranium, have been found in some rocks. A plausible explanation for a halo from such a short-lived element is that these were not produced by an initial concentration of the radioactive element. Rather, as water seeped through cracks in the minerals, a chemical change caused newly-formed polonium to drop out of solution at a certain place and almost immediately decay there. A halo would build up over a long period of time even though the center of the halo never contained more than a few atoms of polonium at one time. "Hydrothermal" effects can act in ways that at first seem strange, such as the well-known fact that gold--a chemically un-reactive metal with very low solubilities--is concentrated along quartz veins by the action of water over long periods of time. Other researchers have found halos produced by an indirect radioactive decay effect called hole diffusion, which is an electrical effect in a crystal. These results suggest that the halos in question are not from short-lived isotopes after all.

At any rate, halos from uranium inclusions are far more common. Because of uranium's long half-lives, these halos take at least several hundred million years to form. Because of this, most people agree that halos provide compelling evidence for a very old Earth.

14. A young-Earth research group reported that they sent a rock erupted in 1980 from Mount Saint Helens volcano to a dating lab and got back a potassium-argon age of several million years. This shows we should not trust radiometric dating.

There are indeed ways to "trick" radiometric dating if a single dating method is improperly used on a sample. Anyone can move the hands on a clock and get the wrong time. Likewise, people actively looking for incorrect radiometric dates can in fact get them. Geologists have known for over forty years that the potassium-argon method cannot be used on rocks only twenty to thirty years old. Publicizing this incorrect age as a completely new finding was inappropriate. The reasons are discussed in the Potassium-Argon Dating section above. Be assured that multiple dating methods used together on igneous rocks are almost always correct unless the sample is too difficult to date due to factors such as metamorphism or a large fraction of xenoliths.

 

[Krysia]

(CONT.)

15. Low abundances of helium in zircon grains show that these minerals are much younger than radiometric dating suggests.

Zircon grains are important for uranium-thorium-lead dating because they contain abundant uranium and thorium parent isotopes. Helium is also produced from the decay of uranium and thorium. However, as a gas of very small atomic size, helium tends to escape rather easily. Researchers have studied the rates of diffusion of helium from zircons, with the prediction from one study by a young-Earth creationist suggesting that it should be quantitatively retained despite its atomic size. The assumptions of the temperature conditions of the rock over time are most likely unrealistic in this case.

16. The fact that radiogenic helium and argon are still degassing from the Earth's interior prove that the Earth must be young.

The radioactive parent isotopes, uranium and potassium, have very long half-lives, as shown in Table 1. These parents still exist in abundance in the Earth's interior, and are still producing helium and argon. There is also a time lag between the production of the daughter products and their degassing. If the Earth were geologically very young, very little helium and argon would have been produced. One can compare the amount of argon in the atmosphere to what would be expected from decay of potassium over 4.6 billion years, and in fact it is consistent.

17. The waters of Noah's flood could have leached radioactive isotopes out of rocks, disturbing their ages.

This is actually suggested on one website! While water can affect the ability to date rock surfaces or other weathered areas, there is generally no trouble dating interior portions of most rocks from the bottom of lakes, rivers, and oceans. Additionally, if ages were disturbed by leaching, the leaching would affect different isotopes at vastly different rates. Ages determined by different methods would be in violent disagreement. If the flood were global in scope, why then would we have any rocks for which a number of different methods all agree with each other? In fact, close agreement between methods for most samples is a hallmark of radiometric dating.

18. We know the Earth is much younger because of non-radiogenic indicators such as the sedimentation rate of the oceans.

There are a number of parameters which, if extrapolated from the present without taking into account the changes in the Earth over time, would seem to suggest a somewhat younger Earth. These arguments can sound good on a very simple level, but do not hold water when all the factors are considered. Some examples of these categories are the decaying magnetic field (not mentioning the widespread evidence for magnetic reversals), the saltiness of the oceans (not counting sedimentation!), the sedimentation rate of the oceans (not counting Earthquakes and crustal movement, that is, plate tectonics), the relative paucity of meteorites on the Earth's surface (not counting weathering or plate tectonics), the thickness of dust on the moon (without taking into account brecciation over time), the Earth-Moon separation rate (not counting changes in tides and internal forces), etc. While these arguments do not stand up when the complete picture is considered, the case for a very old creation of the Earth fits well in all areas considered.

19. Only atheists and liberals are involved in radiometric dating.

The fact is that there are a number of Bible-believing Christians who are involved in radiometric dating, and who can see its validity firsthand. A great number of other Christians are firmly convinced that radiometric dating shows evidence that God created the Earth billions, not thousands, of years ago.

20. Different dating techniques usually give conflicting results.

This is not true at all. The fact that dating techniques most often agree with each other is why scientists tend to trust them in the first place. Nearly every college and university library in the country has periodicals such as Science, Nature, and specific geology journals that give the results of dating studies. The public is usually welcome to (and should!) browse in these libraries. So the results are not hidden; people can go look at the results for themselves. Over a thousand research papers are published a year on radiometric dating, essentially all in agreement. Besides the scientific periodicals that carry up-to-date research reports, specific suggestions are given below for further reading, both for textbooks, non-classroom books, and web resources.

 

[Mechanical Bliss]

[/font]
Of course not the 'biology dept' of evolutionary teachings. Evo in the broader sense of old age science.

There is no such thing. Again, you are illustrating that you don't know what you're talking about. Perhaps you should educate yourself on the basics involved in these discussions before continuing to post any further.

 

[llDayo]

If there were no God, nothing in our universe could exist at any age, He made it.

Now YOU are the one making assumptions! Without any evidence a god does or has existed we can rightfully say one is not needed. Therefore, our very existence is proof of one not existing.

It might be best to focus in on some particular thing you think may indicate the world is not about 6000 yrs old. (rather than a general statement of faith)

It might be best to focus on some actual evidence that the world is only around 6000 yrs old, which would disproving major areas of sciences. (rather than a general statement of faith)

 

[Krysia]

Did any of those gods help the big bang along a little, or create the universe? Would they decay at all, or is radiometric decay rates not really universally applicable?

Yes, my religion adheres to a creationist viewpoint: the Universe was created by the God and Goddess. I believe that radiometric decay rates are definitely universally applicable, regardless of religious viewpoints. As you can see in my previous post, you can accept both an old Earth/evolutionary viewpoint as well as a Creationist viewpoint. They do NOT have to conflict.