My Igneous Challenge

AV1611VET said:

You're not following the conversation, are you?

Hang up the Arab phone.

Here is what I said:



I got that number by subtracting 2015 from 168,000.

But here is what you Arab-phoned it to:



165,985BC was 168,000 years ago -- not 165,000.

If you rounded it off, you rounded it down.

You're trying too hard to make me look wrong, and it's backfiring on you.

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I was just using a ball park number. What is wrong with that?

I also notice that you aren't dealing with the meat of the argument.

AV1611VET said:

I'm not playing your radiometric games.

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Then why did you start the game?

It's over my head, and you'll kill me with experience.

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I don't see why you can't learn how radiometric dating is done. All it requires is a willingness to learn.

If that bothers you, or you feel sorry for me, or whatever, I have this to say:

Welcome to the world of faith.

Learning how it operates can save you some needless negative emotions.

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I know many people of faith that accept the accuracy of radiometric dating.

http://asa3.org/ASA/resources/Wiens.html

AV1611VET said:

So do I.

They all do.

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You accept that a rock dated by K/Ar as being 30 million years old is an accurate measure of history for that rock? You agree that 30 million years has gone by since that rock solidified?

AV1611VET said:

Good observation.

I'm not playing your radiometric games.

It's over my head, and you'll kill me with experience.

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Then why in god's name would you start this thread? If you have no interest in understanding the subject, why start the thread?

Let's make it clear here. Radiometric dating as currently applied to rocks measures the time since the rock solidified, as this is essentially when a "snapshot" of the radioactive elements therein solidified and could not be mixed back in. We have no way of measuring it beforehand, at least not with radiometric dating.

An analogy to carbon dating is apt here: in living organisms, there is a carbon exchange going on that constantly replenishes the relative amounts of C14 and C12 within the organism. When the organism dies, this exchange stops, and the C14 starts to decay into C12. If the organism, hypothetically, lives for thousands of years, radiocarbon dating can get you a rough date of death, but it cannot give you a date of birth, because it has no way of measuring that, because before it died, it kept a more-or-less constant rate of C12 and C14 (with some noteworthy exceptions which Kent Hovind likes to lie about). It was only after it died that the C14 started to decay without being replaced.

Similarly, argon-argon and argon-potassium dating methods rely on isotopes which, before the rock solidifies, can be replenished from the surrounding magma. However, once it solidifies, we have our "snapshot", the isotopes stop being mixed and replenished, and start to decay. This doesn't really give us any way of knowing how old the lava was, but it does give us a way of knowing when the rocks solidified. Make any sense?

It's over my head, and you'll kill me with experience.

If that bothers you, or you feel sorry for me, or whatever, I have this to say:

Welcome to the world of faith.

Learning how it operates can save you some needless negative emotions.

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What a bizarre answer. You seem to understand that you don't get it - that you know very little about radiocarbon dating. Furthermore, you seem to understand that someone else who is trying to help you understand it does get it. And yet you respond by essentially saying "this is how faith works", which I agree with by the way, but you say this as if it was a good thing. See, I don't understand this. It seems to me like you're using your faith to avoid an understanding of reality. That's... disappointing. I mean, if I used this argument when talking about running a red light with the grille of the mac truck that ran my ass over, I somehow feel like it would lose a bit of its poignancy.

"I realize that I don't understand this whole 'stop on red' thing, but I have faith that the light was actually green."
"HONK HONK."
"Also, apparently my bones are sticking out. Not sure that's a good thing, but I have faith that my femur is supposed to jut out of my skin in two different directions."

The Cadet said:

What a bizarre answer. You seem to understand that you don't get it - that you know very little about radiocarbon dating. Furthermore, you seem to understand that someone else who is trying to help you understand it does get it. And yet you respond by essentially saying "this is how faith works", which I agree with by the way, but you say this as if it was a good thing. See, I don't understand this. It seems to me like you're using your faith to avoid an understanding of reality. That's... disappointing. I mean, if I used this argument when talking about running a red light with the grille of the mac truck that ran my ass over, I somehow feel like it would lose a bit of its poignancy.

"I realize that I don't understand this whole 'stop on red' thing, but I have faith that the light was actually green."
"HONK HONK."
"Also, apparently my bones are sticking out. Not sure that's a good thing, but I have faith that my femur is supposed to jut out of my skin in two different directions."

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I think unfortunately when we run into examples of 'faith' no longer being just a religious conviction or commitment, but being used as a way of justifying denial of reality then we find ourselves in territory that is a little more troubling and one which most of us lack the requisite training to tackle.

AV1611VET said:

Speaking of denying reality ...

2 Kings 6:17 And Elisha prayed, and said, LORD, I pray thee, open his eyes, that he may see. And the LORD opened the eyes of the young man; and he saw: and, behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha.

At least I accept 95% of science's conclusions -

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It's not what one cherry-picks to accept that is being pointed out, but rather using faith as a justification for denial of reality that is a little more troubling.

AV1611VET said:

- can you say the same for Christians?

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Interesting. Are you distinguishing yourself from christians now?

AV1611VET said:

I can guarantee you that our reality is much, much larger than the reality of empiricists.

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Oh yes? Your reality? You ought to bear in mind before making such assertions that no one's fantasy world, however gratifying, can compete with reality. And saying that your reality is so much better and bigger and blah blah blah doesn't alter one jot the problem of using 'faith' as a justification of denial of reality.

AV1611VET said:

Science is myopic and can only see as far as their lenses will take them.

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You are assuming that their world is only comprised of what you think you know about it.

AV1611VET said:

There's much more to this universe than meets the eye.

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Particularly yours.

AV1611VET said:

Because I'm interested in the age of the lava that created lava rocks, not deep time.

My op is only looking for a number, not a paragraph about the passage of time.

(Welcome to CF, by the way.)

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Thanks for the welcome. I don't know the answer to your question. I don't know that it's something we can find out (any more than we can know how old any individual atom in your body is), and I'm not sure why it's particularly relevant.

AV1611VET said:

I can guarantee you that our reality is much, much larger than the reality of empiricists.

Science is myopic and can only see as far as their lenses will take them.

There's much more to this universe than meets the eye.

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Right, and the moment you demonstrate that that is the case, we'll have something to talk about. I don't think you can, though, because I have yet to find a single epistemology involving the supernatural which is internally coherent.

AV1611VET said:

You think what you want, Mr Strawberry.

But the fact is, whenever I see someone talk about how we Christians deny reality, I usually say to myself, "If they only knew."

While empiricists are out there with their SETI arrays trying to hear a YAHOO! from space, we Christians already know that space is populated with angels.

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"Know"? How do you "know" this?

AV1611VET said:

You think what you want, Mr Strawberry.

But the fact is, whenever I see someone talk about how we Christians deny reality, I usually say to myself, "If they only knew."

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I'm afraid we have a fairly good idea.

AV1611VET said:

While empiricists are out there with their SETI arrays trying to hear a YAHOO! from space, we Christians already know that space is populated with angels.

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Angels? How weak. That's not even good material for a teenage fantasy novel. Bigger and better, oh dear.

Look, self-gratification feels good but it doesn't compete with reality. (I hope you can think of an example in your own life experience that proves this. It's not difficult.) That you willingly lead us to this point is telling. Fantasy as an alternative to and an enrichment of reality is a part of all our lives. But when something like faith is used as a justification for denial of reality then we are, as I said, in territory that is more troubling.

AV1611VET said:

Because I'm interested in the age of the lava that created lava rocks, not deep time.

My op is only looking for a number, not a paragraph about the passage of time.

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It became lava when it erupted. Which would have been almost immediately before it cooled.

I think the question you meant to ask was 'how old was the magma which erupted as lava and cooled to form these rocks?'

Even if we had a way to determine that, there would be no single answer. The constituent parts of that magma would have become magma at a huge range of different times, before being churned together beneath the Earth's surface.

AV1611VET said:

Through faith.

Hebrews 11:3 Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.

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Could you please define the term "faith"? I'm not sure any definition I could draw from that context actually works.