Other Radiometric Dating Methods

AV1611VET said:

The day I see an Internet scientist truly understand nothing, then I'll hang up my keyboard.

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You have not demonstrated an understanding of nothing either, so I don't think you would be the one to decide who's got the correct understanding.

AV1611VET said:

What do you think my Apple Challenge is?

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Tedious. Since you ask.

And how do you demonstrate an understanding of nothing, when people don't understand nothing?

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Are you absolutely sure you know something they don't?

How do I demonstrate an understanding of Russian, to someone who doesn't understand Russian, without having to invoke a third party?

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I don't know. Do you understand Russian?

AV1611VET said:

I know nothing.

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How do you know?

AV1611VET said:

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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Faith isn't knowledge.

So, how do you know?

I've waded back a few pages and can't find your wiki 'third party' link, so I've given up on that exciting lead for the moment.

But I did read with a half smile your description of your pastor:

AV1611VET said:

you don't know my pastor (God bless him). His tolerance level is ... shall we say ... kinda low.

People who come to our church with ... other ideas ... usually don't stay long.

He will sit and talk with you ... for about a minute; then you'll probably get a lecture about 'the authority of the Scriptures,' and that will be that.

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Your pastor sounds like a prize twit, to put it politely.

AV1611VET said:

What do you think my Apple Challenge is?

And how do you demonstrate an understanding of nothing, when people don't understand nothing?

How do I demonstrate an understanding of Russian, to someone who doesn't understand Russian, without having to invoke a third party?

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What keeps you from invoking a third party?

I guess it is the problem that you would have to chose from various "third parties", which possibly disagree with your "understanding".

But even if that guess is incorrect, my initial assertion stands: you have not demonstrated that you have an understanding of "nothing". Even less that you have an understanding better than mine.

AV wrote:

Originally Posted by Papias

If methods are wrong, they'll give wrong answers. It seems odd to suggest that they'll happen to all give the same "wrong" answer, again and again over hundreds of samples and thousands of tests.

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As my pastor says, of the eighty-some methods of dating the earth, evolutionists only pick the ones that give them the answers they're looking for, and discard the rest.
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Your point is that your pastor is as clueless as you are? You know that rational people don't put the statement of someone who is ignorant in a scientific field above the statements of actual experts, right?

First, this statement shows many simple falsehoods. For one, you are including methods that self-evidently show themselves to the useless. For instance, salt concentration in the ocean - looking at different ions gives wildly different 'Ages", ranging from a few decades to many dozens of millions of years. That shows that it's not a dating method at all, but rather just a creationist PRATT. Similarly, moon dust has been shown to be based on false data on the rate of gain of dust. And so on. In fact, many of these are so obviously stupid that even creationist sites (like AIG) have publically stated that they don't show a young earth.

Secondly, as has been pointed out, the idea that anyone is throwing out data based solely on the restults is nonsensical. One reason is that, as usual, it is an unsupported assertion - you didn't provide any evidence of such a wide conspiracy. Another is that the reward system in science prevents it by rewarding those who can defend surprising results. Your point is like claiming that millions of homeless people are conspiring to hide a winning powerball lottery ticket.

Thirdly, your response shows an egregious lack of understanding of probability and orders of magnititude. There simply isn't room for your proposed conspiracy, even if points 1 and 2 above weren't true. In other words, there aren't enough methods to choose from for the time spans available. A date could be anything - such as 12 years, 41 years, 432 years, 95400 years, 18.5 billion years, and so on. If even 80 some methods picked random numbers across the entire range (and longer, if these are really random, since they won't be contrained by the actual age of the universe), then not even two would be likely to agree.

Yet, we routinely see every applicable test used give the same answer, over hundreds of tests on thousands of samples. You simply couldn't do that even if you were throwing out testing methods based on the results.

This isn't too hard to understand AV. Anyone can see that your pastor's line doesn't make any sense.

Papias

AV1611VET said:

Can ex materia be verified?

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Yes.

razeontherock said:

This history is actually recorded, and we can authenticate what happened. There is NO WAY any of this went against what Moses thought.

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Nor did I say it did. Moses, if he was real, would have been a product of earlier jewish and proto-jewish thought and ideas.

The point still remains as to "what is Genesis intended to be, actually?"

It just doesn't matter! It survived the process of Jewish practice, including Jesus' own life. THAT is our role model!

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But it doesn't have to be literal truth. Which is my original point. Even to be meaningful to Christians or Christ himself.

(I can also spell out to you why it just doesn't matter who's hands actually penned the NT, or precisely when. I don't expect you to care right now)

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Well, I do care because everything about the development, the evolution, of Christian faith makes so much more sense when one looks at it dispassionately and without a vested need for some intrinsic supernatural holiness to it.

Not that that is anything a believer should even care about remotely. I find it interesting because once untethered from the "supernatural" it all appears to intricately human. And that kind of has its own beauty.

For you to surmise anything else, could only be seen as dishonesty. How can you, an unbeliever, possibly lay claim to knowing what the intent is?

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Well, as an unbeliever...or rather a non-believer, I can look at Genesis and see the parallels with countless other creation myths. I can see early civilizations trying to make sense of a world they didn't really understand. Nature can seem arbitrary and frightening, or big and overwhelming.

And yet those of us who "see the kingdom of God" do know, and also have the solemn duty of proclaiming Truth. Yes, even to those who simply don't get it.

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Well, you "know" the spiritual truth as you understand it from the Bible which itself has been pored over and interpretted and re-interpretted, imagined and re-imagined countless times by countless generations of people for whom contemplating the "Meaning" is an all-consuming life's calling.

In statistics you can "overanalyze" data. You can fit and check and test and pull apart the data until you find a "signal", a "meaning". But the danger is that in over-analyzing data you will sometimes stumble upon "signal" that is an artifact of random chance.

The Bible is a perfect platform for that. A mixture of histories, pseudo-histories, poetry, politics and supernatural writings and plenty of human psychology make for a heady mix of possible meanings.

I see from the single Bible itself so many different "congregations" of God's followers. Divisions, some subtle, some large. All predicated on one single book. That's an indicator that the book is "open to interpretation".

But then when I take a step back and ask "Where did this bible come from?" I am faced with a known history of it's coalescence from numerous ancient sources picked and chosen by early orthodoxy-generating groups (the early Church), some books jettisoned, some kept. Some considered "truth" some considered "apocryphal".

And from whence do these original manuscripts come? They go back lost in the mists of time and even before that the likely oral traditions go back even further.

Wouldn't it be better to listen to what the message actually has to say?

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Yes! But then that is often open to intepretation. Even the Gnostics sometimes claimed Paul, yet would Paul have claimed the gnostics? What is "the Third Heaven"?

Yes there's a reasonably clear "message" one can get from the BIble and it is made more clear through human agency of developing the "orthodoxy" based on it.

Are you sure you wouldn't like to put a B in the middle of that? (I have no idea what you mean, but ... P B & J?)

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There is something called the "Documentary Hypothesis" of the origins of the Torah. The idea, if I recall correctly, goes back to the 19th century. It basically is built on the idea, based on textual clues from the Torah itself that there were several different "authors" of parallel narratives that were later "redacted" or edited together.

J: The Yawhist source, responsible for portions of the text in which God is more "anthropomorphic" or personal,

P: The Priestly source in which God (El Shaddhai) is more focused on ritual

E: The Elohist source with a more "impersonal" God

there are others. The idea being that through analysis of the styles it appears that there may have been different "narrative" traditions in the early writings in Judaism which were later pulled together in a coherent narrative, albeit with various "couplets" and different styles of reference and narrative.

W/o a doubt, there is, NO WAY the original audience heard this as "science." Does that clear some things up?

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It is hard to say what the "original" audience heard it as, but certainly they would not necessarily have had the same types of discussions we have today as to whether this is literal truth and should be taught in science classes since the thoughts were different in regards to this.

I have compassion on you, because for you to come to the Bible, the whole thing falls into that category.

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I come from a place where I used to believe that the Bible was truth. I no longer believe in the supernatural but I can see some truths in the bible, and I can still find "meaning" in some of it. Just not the supernatural stuff anymore.

This is integrity! I respect that. You should also be able to respect that MANY people (not just me) have devoted much of our lives to unraveling the mysteries it contains

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Oh I most assuredly respect that! I find biblical scholarship absolutely fascinating! I am fascinated by the history of the faith and the history of the church and the development of the faith.

It is, however, somewhat less "emotionally charged" for one who has no vested interest in it being anything more than it appears to be. But again that doesn't mean I would ever want to remove from a believer their belief.

Agreed. Completely. And yet, when God Himself personally intervenes and supersedes His own natural laws to show you something - don't expect us to wipe that out of our memory banks just to comply! (Which is what AV means when he says "science can take a hike)

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My personal experience is more that when I perceive somethign as "beyond belief" I am more likely to be in error than that I am perceiving something beyond nature.

My distrust of my ability to understand everything I see would make me more skeptical of such experiences because I know I'm capable of making mistakes.

Well, I do care because everything about the development, the evolution, of Christian faith makes so much more sense when one looks at it dispassionately and without a vested need for some intrinsic supernatural holiness to it.

Not that that is anything a believer should even care about remotely. I find it interesting because once untethered from the "supernatural" it all appears to intricately human. And that kind of has its own beauty.

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Well said.

Freodin said:

my initial assertion stands: you have not demonstrated that you have an understanding of "nothing". Even less that you have an understanding better than mine.

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You guys will argue over anything at all, won't you? Even nothing - and who knows more about that

46AND2 said:

Well said.

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Yup; and the humanity of it is what the Church is all about. (Or supposed to be) While Jesus is Divine, He is also fully human

razeontherock said:

You guys will argue over anything at all, won't you? Even nothing - and who knows more about that

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Nothing is an interesting philosophical concept, and the debate about it is not new. But in this case you might want to notice that is was "you guys" (namely, AV) who brought it up and claims superiour knowlegde about it.

But this also is something "you guys" do: trying everything to shift the blame away from you.