Millions and billions of years

[Simmeh]

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.

 

[Sayre]

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?

 

[juvenissun]

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?

This question is only valid to animals.
Human can do much much better.
Do all atheists strongly believe that the earth is millions and billions years of old? Why?

 

[lesliedellow]

There is not much point in trying to argue with a creationist who makes a flat assertion that radiometric dating is unreliable, with no evidence to back it up, other than what he has heard from other creationists, who are themselves relating what they heard from other creationists, and so on, until you get back to the source. The source being somebody who failed science in High School.

 

[PersephonesTear]

There is no way to communicate meaningfully on this subject with someone who refuses to accept factual evidence as truth. The ability to see a spiritual truth for what it is and weigh it against the realities of our physical world is going to require a radical shifting in your friend's world view before he can even begin to grasp the basics of your side of the "argument."

Sorry if it bums you out, but you might as well be talking to him in Greek.

 

[Subduction Zone]

Those are the arguments of convicted liar Kent Hovind. You could have your friend sit down and watch this video which deals with these specific lies of Kent Hovind:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=APEpwkXatbY

 

[lasthero]

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.

I notice a lot of YECs are adopting this argument, and I don't really see the sense in it. It's a really, really bad argument if you give it even a little bit of scrutiny.

Yes, things don't come with name tags telling us how old they are. And babies are't born with name tags telling us who their father is. And murderers don't leave notes on their victims telling us how they were killed and who did. So? So what?

If someone tried to argue that DNA tests weren't enough to prove they were their baby's father, they'd be laughed at. If a lawyer tried to protect his client by pointing out that no one in the courtroom was there to witness the murder, he'd never find work again. It's every bit as stupid an argument.

 

[lifepsyop]

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.

Simmeh, in short, the old-earth researchers already "know" roughly what dates they are looking for, before they apply dating methods. So, from the outset, the research is tainted with a cloud of confirmation bias and non-objectivity.

Next, this is generally how the dating game works: Good date = Credit Dating Method. Bad date = Blame Nature. That is, if you don't get the date you're looking for, you can appeal to a plethora of known or unknown natural processes that contaminated the sample. These are not blind tests. It is a one-way ratchet of subjective data selection towards confirming old-earth dating conventions and discarding unfavorable data.

Evolutionists will often tout "consilience" of data. Not only is that "consilience" the result of first subtracting the non-consilient, but if you examine the literature you will find that the same types of consilience are also rationalized as being pure happenstance if it results in unfavorable dates.

All of this is a product of empirical science taking a backseat to evolutionary/uniformitarian philosophy.

 

[Subduction Zone]

Simmeh, in short, the old-earth researchers already "know" roughly what dates they are looking for, before they apply dating methods. So, from the outset, the research is tainted with a cloud of confirmation bias and non-objectivity.

Next, this is generally how the dating game works: Good date = Credit Dating Method. Bad date = Blame Nature. That is, if you don't get the date you're looking for, you can appeal to a plethora of known or unknown natural processes that contaminated the sample. These are not blind tests. It is a one-way ratchet of subjective data selection towards confirming old-earth dating conventions and discarding unfavorable data.

Evolutionists will often tout "consilience" of data. Not only is that "consilience" the result of first subtracting the non-consilient, but if you examine the literature you will find that the same types of consilience are also rationalized as being pure happenstance if it results in unfavorable dates.

All of this is a product of empirical science taking a backseat to evolutionary/uniformitarian philosophy.

And here is another example of a creationist if not outright lying at the very least bending the truth to the breaking point.

In another thread he made this claim and found one example of a bad date that was thoroughly explained to him. Geology can get quite complicated and mistakes can be made. lifepsyop has not found a valid complaint to date. He makes sweeping over generalizations from very rare contradictions.

If he had anything of note he would have linked it.

 

[AV1611VET]

Hi, Simmeh! Welcome aboard!

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.

I'm not a YEC myself, but in their defense, let me make this point:

There are some 80 different ways to date the history of this earth/universe, and scientists use only the four or five that give them the deep time that is required to make all their other interpretations of data corroborate -- then reject the rest with some goofy techno-explanation that doesn't hold water.

Everything from salinity in the oceans to the magnetosphere to the depth of moondust gets rejected on some minor technicality.

Add to that the atrocities that are being committed because scientists have mitigated the sacredness of life by reducing it to terminology forged from textbooks; and add to that a well-developed PR system to explain away errors of the past and create a No True Scotsman philosophy, and you can see that I don't have much respect for the scientific community of today.

 

[Sayre]

Hi, Simmeh! Welcome aboard!

I'm not a YEC myself, but in their defense, let me make this point:

There are some 80 different ways to date the history of this earth/universe, and scientists use only the four or five that give them the deep time that is required to make all their other interpretations of data corroborate -- then reject the rest with some goofy techno-explanation that doesn't hold water.

Everything from salinity in the oceans to the magnetosphere to the depth of moondust gets rejected on some minor technicality.

Add to that the atrocities that are being committed because scientists have mitigated the sacredness of life by reducing it to terminology forged from textbooks; and add to that a well-developed PR system to explain away errors of the past and create a No True Scotsman philosophy, and you can see that I don't have much respect for the scientific community of today.

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.

 

[Sayre]

This question is only valid to animals.
Human can do much much better.
Do all atheists strongly believe that the earth is millions and billions years of old? Why?

What? Why only valid for animals?

 

[essentialsaltes]

as if to imply that something cannot be dated unless it is marked specifically by a human.

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.

 

[lasthero]

Do all atheists strongly believe that the earth is millions and billions years of old? Why?

For the same reason they believe the Earth is round and goes around the Sun: That's what the evidence shows.

 

[Subduction Zone]

Hi, Simmeh! Welcome aboard!

I'm not a YEC myself, but in their defense, let me make this point:

There are some 80 different ways to date the history of this earth/universe, and scientists use only the four or five that give them the deep time that is required to make all their other interpretations of data corroborate -- then reject the rest with some goofy techno-explanation that doesn't hold water.

Everything from salinity in the oceans to the magnetosphere to the depth of moondust gets rejected on some minor technicality.

Add to that the atrocities that are being committed because scientists have mitigated the sacredness of life by reducing it to terminology forged from textbooks; and add to that a well-developed PR system to explain away errors of the past and create a No True Scotsman philosophy, and you can see that I don't have much respect for the scientific community of today.

This is why you are called YEC.

What do you expect when you quack nonsense and lies like this?

There are no ways to date the Earth or universe that indicates a young Earth. Why don't you bring them up one at a time so we can look at these "minor technicality"'s that cause scientists to reject them. I bet there are no minor technicalities at all.

 

[Aman777]

For the same reason they believe the Earth is round and goes around the Sun: That's what the evidence shows.

Dear Lasthero, Amen. It's also what Scripture shows IF you have the proper understanding of it. A good example is that Scripture shows that the Big Bang of our Cosmos, was on the THIRD Day. Gen 2:4 God Bless you.

In Love,
Aman

 

[OldWiseGuy]

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.

Ask him if his denomination requires him to teach YEC regardless of his personal feelings. Many times the controversy isn't really the age of the earth but it's origin, whether purposefully 'created' or just another cosmic accident.
Genesis 1:2 opens the door for OEC, GAP theory, Gen1 being a restoration rather than a new creation.

 

[Simmeh]

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?

I can see how that discussion would go with him. We actually touched the topic of the Bible at one point, and he told me that I "didn't know that it was folk tales written by Bronze Age Canaanite sheepherds," much in the same way he said no one knows the true age of the earth. It seemed like a strange argument, though in hindsight he may have been reacting to the 'folk tales' part. Lesson learned: derogatory terms (or those that could be perceived as such) don't always make great arguments.

Either way, I imagine a drawn out discussion about the validity of the Bible would end up with much the same results as the one about the age of the earth.

This question is only valid to animals.
Human can do much much better.
Do all atheists strongly believe that the earth is millions and billions years of old? Why?

I would say I 'believe' the world is billions of years old in the same I would say I 'believe' that if I drop my pen that it will fall towards the floor.

There is not much point in trying to argue with a creationist who makes a flat assertion that radiometric dating is unreliable, with no evidence to back it up, other than what he has heard from other creationists, who are themselves relating what they heard from other creationists, and so on, until you get back to the source. The source being somebody who failed science in High School.

There is no way to communicate meaningfully on this subject with someone who refuses to accept factual evidence as truth. The ability to see a spiritual truth for what it is and weigh it against the realities of our physical world is going to require a radical shifting in your friend's world view before he can even begin to grasp the basics of your side of the "argument."

Sorry if it bums you out, but you might as well be talking to him in Greek.

Yes, I gathered. I'm newer to the office than most (also 20 years younger than the next guy up), and I got told early on to just not have these discussions with him. I still don't know why I allowed myself to get dragged into that one - or how it even got that way to begin with. We were talking about human development and why Eurasian civilizations progressed faster than Mesoamerican ones, and somehow it turned into a discussion about the age of the earth.

 

[Simmeh]

Those are the arguments of convicted liar Kent Hovind. You could have your friend sit down and watch this video which deals with these specific lies of Kent Hovind:

snip

He did know who Kent Hovind was, and I would imagine that this was how my co-worker 'learned' about radiometric dating. I also know who Kent Hovind is and all the lovely details of his ministry, but I refrained from bringing that stuff up - I have to work with this fellow every day, and I'm not one for big arguments, so I try to remain civil.

I notice a lot of YECs are adopting this argument, and I don't really see the sense in it. It's a really, really bad argument if you give it even a little bit of scrutiny.

Yes, things don't come with name tags telling us how old they are. And babies are't born with name tags telling us who their father is. And murderers don't leave notes on their victims telling us how they were killed and who did. So? So what?

If someone tried to argue that DNA tests weren't enough to prove they were their baby's father, they'd be laughed at. If a lawyer tried to protect his client by pointing out that no one in the courtroom was there to witness the murder, he'd never find work again. It's every bit as stupid an argument.

This was my line of thought too. I didn't really get a chance to say something to the effect of 'people lie', or that I think asking 'were you there?' is intellectually dishonest, but those were definitely the thoughts in my head

Simmeh, in short, the old-earth researchers already "know" roughly what dates they are looking for, before they apply dating methods. So, from the outset, the research is tainted with a cloud of confirmation bias and non-objectivity.

Next, this is generally how the dating game works: Good date = Credit Dating Method. Bad date = Blame Nature. That is, if you don't get the date you're looking for, you can appeal to a plethora of known or unknown natural processes that contaminated the sample. These are not blind tests. It is a one-way ratchet of subjective data selection towards confirming old-earth dating conventions and discarding unfavorable data.

Evolutionists will often tout "consilience" of data. Not only is that "consilience" the result of first subtracting the non-consilient, but if you examine the literature you will find that the same types of consilience are also rationalized as being pure happenstance if it results in unfavorable dates.

All of this is a product of empirical science taking a backseat to evolutionary/uniformitarian philosophy.

That sounds a bit backwards from the scientific method that I'm used to seeing. Do you have a specific example of a respected scientist submitting a paper that ended up passing peer review which started with the assumption 'these fossils are 350 million years old' and then dismissing all the outliers after he/she got a different result?

And here is another example of a creationist if not outright lying at the very least bending the truth to the breaking point.

In another thread he made this claim and found one example of a bad date that was thoroughly explained to him. Geology can get quite complicated and mistakes can be made. lifepsyop has not found a valid complaint to date. He makes sweeping over generalizations from very rare contradictions.

If he had anything of note he would have linked it.

Oh.

 

[lifepsyop]

I would say I 'believe' the world is billions of years old in the same I would say I 'believe' that if I drop my pen that it will fall towards the floor.

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.