Polystrate Fossils

Cromulent said:

How many methods say the world is 6,000 years old?

Give me one that's not riddled with flaws and you win the argument.

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I'm looking for a number, chief.

If you "experts" don't know what you have rejected, how am I supposed to know?

RickG said:

All because they have zero supporting evidence and ignore all the evidence that doesn't support their position.

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I didn't realize my question was that hard.

You don't know what's on your own reject pile?

RickG said:

You can provide evidence to the contrary?

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No, I certainly cannot; I'm asking for rejects, not valids.

How many theories have you rejected in the past? 0? 15? 8? 146? 3?

(My pastor says about 76.)

AV1611VET said:

I'm looking for a number, chief.

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What an absurd request. You're actually demanding that I tell you the exact sum total of crackpot theories rejected by every person who has ever lived. Do you actually have a strategy for these threads, or do you just type whatever happens to come into your head and hope that by the law of averages, some of your 1,000,000+ posts will actually constitute a rational argument?

If you "experts" don't know what you have rejected, how am I supposed to know?

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You're evading the question. The numbers don't matter, the fact that none of the "methods" that "prove" the earth is 6,000 years old have stood up to any sort of scrutiny at all. It doesn't matter if there are 10, or 10,000 if not one of them is actually right.

Cromulent said:

What an absurd request. You're actually demanding that I tell you the exact sum total of crackpot theories rejected by every person who has ever lived.

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No -- I want to know how many legitimate theories, backed by legitimate evidence, have been dismissed because the evidence isn't really legitimate.

In other words, it was eventually ruled out by the scientific method.

Remember Phlogiston? was that a 'crackpot theory'?

I can think of one right off the top of my head: moondust.

AV1611VET said:

No -- I want to know how many legitimate theories, backed by legitimate evidence, have been dismissed because the evidence isn't really legitimate.

In other words, it was eventually ruled out by the scientific method.

Remember Phlogiston? was that a 'crackpot theory'?

I can think of one right off the top of my head: moondust.

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Oh, you're playing stupid games again, because you don't understand how science works.

These were hypotheses. They were tested. They were proven wrong. Nobody using the scientific method would ever have said these things were certain.

Now, as for the earth being 6,000 years old, that actually has less validity even than Phlogiston and Aether, because it has never had any valid evidence backing it up.

Cromulent said:

Oh, you're playing stupid games again, because you don't understand how science works.

These were hypotheses.

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Good job, Cromulent --

AV1611VET said:

And how many methods that say otherwise are rejected?

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An hypothesis can be a method, can't it?

But because I said 'methods', instead of 'hypotheses', I'm 'playing stupid games again', aren't I?

I think I'll just go ahead and take you "experts" bologna with a grain of salt.

I'm tired of trying to get a straight answer, and having to plod through insults.

I think it's pretty clear you don't know.

You "experts" have a good day.

RickG said:

And how many of those were pre 20th century and dismissed because the tools for supporting or dismissing them did not exist. When science discovers something wrong, it admits it and moves on. God bless science and our ever increasing understanding of it.

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Have a good day, scientist.

AV1611VET said:

Have a good day, scientist.

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AV, how much bread did Jesus eat in his lifetime?

AV1611VET said:

And how many methods that say otherwise are rejected?

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I know of no "method" for dating the age of the earth that comes up with a "young earth" (ie 10,000 years) that does not have a serious, serious problem with it.

It is like saying that I can do an experiment completely wrong and wind up thinking I've created mass from nothing but because I've done it doesn't mean it is right.

I've made an error.

But I guess it's time to get out the big "statistical tool box" again and once more explain to the non-scientist that in any data set there's going to be erroneous results.

It simply happens.


This is called a "distribution". Specifically a "normal" distribution. If you are running a bunch of experiments and you wind up with a bunch of results you may wind up with results that fit in this distribution. What is the "real" answer? Well probably the one there in the middle. Yeah there are data points way out on either end. Some waaaay high, some waaaaay low.

The error you have available comes from numerous sources: experimental, random error, failures to do the test right, etc.

So when we find that numerous, numerous repeated experiments show the age of the earth somewhere around 4.5GA it is probably safer to go with the big hump in the middle than to go with the tails.

The fact that the tails are out there may indicate something but the more times you run that experiment the more likely you are to get closer to the mean.

Now here's another bit of statistical knowledge for you:

Scientists almost never get to measure everything. They get to measure a sample and the sample has to stand in for the "population" (everything). How well do we think that sample mean value is to the true population mean value? We have ways to assess that.

The Standard Error of the mean. It basically tells us that with more and more measurements we get tighter and tighter constraints around the mean until we have a "95% Confidence Interval on the mean"

So your pastor can find a couple of systems that "find" a young age here's something to consider:

1. How good are those "methods"? (I can almost guarantee you that these methods fail dramatically and you've seen on this board countless times when serious critiques of young earth methods have shown massive holes in their application)

2. How many methods show an old earth (again, almost all of them. The only way to really look at the earth and see a young earth is to throw away all the other physics and chemistry we rely on for everything else.)

AV1611VET said:

In other words, it was eventually ruled out by the scientific method.

Remember Phlogiston? was that a 'crackpot theory'?

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Plogiston was an idea someone proposed without having the ability to understand oxidation.

Interestingly enough "Phlogiston" was not unlike your "embedded age" hypothesis. The proponents of Phlogiston first were completely unaware of oxidation or how that worked so they came up with something that was, essentially undetectable. Phlogiston had no color, mass, flavor, or odor. The idea was that they had to explain what was going on when something burned.

So they made up an idea that was essentially unfalsifiable (if you can't detect it by any means you can't really test against it) and made that work. Just like your "embedded age" stuff.

As more things were burned and their masses were measured after the fact they found that some things when "burned" actually gained weight. Early experiments in which metals were heated in the absence of air resulted in no change in weight indicating that the phlogiston was NOT leaving (not "dephlogisticating"...leading some folks to suggest phlogiston had negative weight!

This is what it looks like when people come up with an hypothesis and then stick to it so tightly that even common sense requires abandoning rational knowledge in order to keep this one thing alive.

So phlogiston is not unlike your Embedded Age hypothesis. It carries no weight, it cannot be falsified (everytime someone tries to point out an error in it you simply come up with a new caveat, ultimately resulting in "only God can do it" which is the ultimate "anti-scientific" aspect of it).

At what point does it become so important to throw away everything else to maintain one hypothesis? Well, if you are wedded to Phlogiston and you've built a castle in the air then you want to see it stay so you throw away all sense of rational thought. If you are wedded to "Embedded Age" then you basically throw all of language away.

It's a story as old as time.

Science can take in new information and change to become more successful at predicting outcomes. Whereas religion is stuck with countless new "hypotheses" about God that never really explain why things happen any better than the old ones.

How long did it take to come up with "Dispensationalism"?

thaumaturgy said:

Now here's another bit of statistical knowledge for you:

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Is this supposed to be some kind of answer to my question?

Did I ask why they are rejected?

No, I asked how many are rejected -- that you know of, anyway.

-- mamma mia!

thaumaturgy said:

How long did it take to come up with "Dispensationalism"?

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Have a good day, scientist.

RickG said:

Again, how many of those failed theories cited by your pastor were pre 20th century.

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I think I may have misstated my pastor's position on this.

He basically said, that of the 80 or so methods of determining the age of the earth, scientists pick only those that give them the ages they are look for, and reject all the others that return a young earth age.

He said there are four methods that scientists use:

1. Argon [something]*
2. Potassium [something]*
3. Uranium [something]*
4. Krypton [something]*

He went on to say that the other 76-some are rejected for one reason or another:

1. moondust
2. strength of the earth's magnetic field
3. ocean salinity
4. a bunch of others

* He gave the exact names, but I can't remember them.


I think the book A Case for a Creator, by Lee Strobel mentions them all as well, weatherman.

AV1611VET said:

I think I may have misstated my pastor's position on this.

He basically said, that of the 80 or so methods of determining the age of the earth, scientists pick only those that give them the ages they are look for, and reject all the others that return a young earth age.

He said there are four methods that scientists use:

1. Argon [something]*
2. Potassium [something]*
3. Uranium [something]*
4. Krypton [something]*

He went on to say that the other 76-some are rejected for one reason or another:

1. moondust
2. strength of the earth's magnetic field
3. ocean salinity
4. a bunch of others

* He gave the exact names, but I can't remember them.


I think the book A Case for a Creator, by Lee Strobel mentions them all as well, weatherman.

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Your pastor is partially right. All methods that return a young age for the earth are rejected, but not because they give a young earth, it is because flaws have emerged with them. Take Lord Kelvin's cooling equations, for example. They were not eventually rejected because they gave a younger age for the earth. They were rejected because they didn't take into account radioactive decay.

You won't be able to provide one example of a dating method that was rejected out of hand because it didn't predict an old earth.

AV1611VET said:

Is this supposed to be some kind of answer to my question?

Did I ask why they are rejected?

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AV the reality of life as a scientist is that nothing is ever "certain". The best we can do is assymptotically approach truth. We never "know" truth for certain.

No, I asked how many are rejected -- that you know of, anyway.

-- mamma mia!

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What is your malfunction? How many are rejected? MOST OF THE ONES THAT COME UP WITH RIDICULOUSLY LOW AGES.

Why?


BECAUSE IN ALMOST EVERY CASE CITED SO FAR THESE HYPOTHESES FAIL DUE TO:

1. Erroneous application of the science
2. Erroneous reliance on outlier data

How does my question not answer yours? Do you want an exact number? Sorry, don't have one.

List the ones you know of and within about 5 secondsI can point you to the legitimate science's response to it.

Go ahead! List 'em.

Now, let's say you accidentally stumble on something that isn't either a complete screw-up of how science works or isn't clearly just an outlier in the data. OK, now you have maybe one or two "methods" that show a ridiculously young age.

Arrayed against that is this huge body of data showing anything but a young age.

You don't get to toss out all the rest of science because you don't like what it says as much as you like what your pastor thinks is right.

It simply doesn't work that way.

AV1611VET said:

He basically said, that of the 80 or so methods of determining the age of the earth, scientists pick only those that give them the ages they are look for, and reject all the others that return a young earth age.

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Any proof of that? Or does he also include rejecting bad science? If someone does an experiment and screws it up badly and hamfistedly misinterprets data and abuses results and how the instrumentation works, and the rest of science rejects it, it doesn't mean the scientists are biased.

He said there are four methods that scientists use:

1. Argon [something]*

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Good start: "argon something". Please don't insult our intelligence. If your pastor is so brilliant at this and you are his mouth on this board, do a better job than "argon something".

1. Potassium [something]*
2. Uranium [something]*
3. Krypton [something]*

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Actually most of us who have training in this actually do know the names for these. There are a number of each of these. Would you like a list? (I don't even know your pastor so here you go):

40Ar/39Ar dating
K/Ar dating
U/Pb dating
U/Th dating

There's some methods that use 85-Kr to date groundwater. I'm not that familiar with the other uses of 85-Kr. They used to use 85-Kr also as a tracer in some aspects of oceanography (at least there were some 85Kr tanks sitting around the labs I occasionally worked in when I was in oceanography, but that wasn't my area).

Are there "critiques" of these methods? Yes! But if you look in the "young earth literature" most of what I've read amount to abuses of the techniques and misuses of the techniques. Poor technique, bad methods and general sloppiness.

If you'd like to discuss some at length I can probably point you to one of many, many such discussions which are on this very forum itself.

He went on to say that the other 76-some are rejected for one reason or another:

1. moondust

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Then your pastor would be interested to see what the braintrust at ANSWERS IN GENESIS says about the moondust hypothesis:


(Remember these are CREATIONISTS saying this!)

It thus appears that the amount of meteoritic dust and meteorite debris in the lunar regolith and surface dust layer, even taking into account the postulated early intense meteorite and meteoritic dust bombardment, does not contradict the evolutionists’ multi-billion year timescale (while not proving it). Unfortunately, attempted counter-responses by creationists have so far failed because of spurious arguments or faulty calculations. Thus, until new evidence is forthcoming, creationists should not continue to use the dust on the moon as evidence against an old age for the moon and the solar system.(SOURCE)

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(emphasis added)

1. strength of the earth's magnetic field

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Again some training in actual science might serve your pastor well. The earth's magnetic field has altered and fluctated and even reversed numerous times in geologic history. It was relatively constant from 1590 to about 1840 and the recent alteration may be another one of these fluctuations. (SOURCE) <--note how easy it is to give a reference on this stuff. I mean it's really easy!

1. ocean salinity
2. a bunch of others

* He gave the exact names, but I can't remember them.

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If Dr. Morris had been keeping track of Aluminum apparently it would show an age of the earth of about 100 years. The numbers that Morris sites for various elements dissolved in sea water are residence times. Elements can come and go into the system through a variety of means.

As for the "bunch of others", well, considering that the ones you listed are essentially PRATTS and one is outright disavowed by young earthers, I'd say "trust but verify".

I think the book A Case for a Creator, by Lee Strobel mentions them all as well, weatherman.

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Oh wow. You know I have much respect for someone who got a Journalism degree at a school where I worked at the J School's paper briefly, but sorry, I'm not going to toss all the geology I learned in favor of Lee's "list".