ernest_theweedwhackerguy said:
I'd have to say that you were lied to, my friend. The same mammoth type animal, was dated. His back and front sides. Both sides were 20 thousand years apart. Whats the difference between the different stalactytes? Enlighten me. -
ernest, the mammoth thing is a lie. The original paper that discusses it clearly shows that the dates were not from the same animal.
http://members.cox.net/ardipithecus/evol/lies/lie001.html
During your time here, you have used the following poor arguments
1) Moon dust accumulation shows a young earth (this has been shown to be in error.
2) 2nd law of thermodynamics and matter can't be created and destroyed (has nothing to do with the mechanisms of evolution)
3) mammoth dating (a false claim that has been passed around by creationists that is false)
4) Rapid Stalactite formation on Lincoln Memorial (which is a poor analogy to natural stalactites)
I would encourage you to take a look at your sources and evaluate them more critically. Wherever you are getting your information from, it is obviously not a good source of information. You might also try to just ask questions instead of making claims that you heard and are repeating without reading any material on them or investigating them for yourself first.
Now, on to the stalatites:
The stalactites from the lincoln memorial are formed from the disolving calcium carbonate used in the cement (whichh is already loose, porous, and crushed) that holds it together. The cement already has the material needed in high concentration crushed and loose, in a cave stalactite, the material is much less poreous and more water needs to drip to build up the levels of calcium carbonate in the stalactites. The stalactites at the lincoln memorial are also caused by rain, not groundwater. The steps from which they come are exposed to lots of water during rain and cleaning. Cave stalactites are not formed by this type of activity and are formed by slow seepage of ground water (that is not as acidic as the rain in DC) and this causes a slow drip (not occacional runnof as with a rain).
You can't compare the lincln memorial stalactites to natural ones because they weren't formed the same way, formed by natural materials, and are not in caves. The environments are completely different.
Why don't we see stalactites forming in 50 years in nature? Why don't we see them all forming rapidy 100 years in nature? Because the natural process takes time. Scientists say that natural stalactites grow about and inch every thousand years because we can directly measure them growing now. Some are faster, but some are much, much slower. Your comparison is invalid because just because one example can be shown (even if faulty) of rapid growth, that doesn't mean that they all can or do grow that rapidly. We don't observe this rapid development in all natural stalactites, do we?
edited to add:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/hovind/howgood-yea2.html
Many people have found that stalactites forming on concrete or mortar outdoors may grow several centimeters each year. Stalactite growth in these environments, however, bears little relation to that in caves, because it does not proceed by the same chemical reaction. Although cement and mortar are made from limestone, the same rock in which the caves form, the carbon dioxide has been driven off by heating. When water is added to these materials, one product is calcium hydroxide, which is about 100 times as soluble in water as calcite is. A calcium hydroxide solution absorbs carbon dioxide rapidly from the atmosphere to reconstitute calcium carbonate, and produce stalactites. This is why stalactites formed by solution from cement and mortar grow much faster than those in caves. To illustrate, in 1925, a concrete bridge was constructed inside Postojna Cave, Yugoslavia, and adjacent to it an artificial tunnel was opened. By 1956, tubular stalactites 45 centimeters long were growing from the bridge, while stalactites of the same age in the tunnel were less than 1 centimeter long.
