Updating The Theory of the Earth

[ddubois]

This thread title comes from Georges Cuvier's essay (book) translated into English in 1813 on the internet. It is very readable discussion by the guy who first discovered dinosaurs, although they were so named by one of his followers, Richard Owen. Both he and Owen disagreed with intraspecies evolution. Cuvier believed in multiple extinction events.

I am trying to cobble together an understanding of what extinction events would be compatible with young earth beliefs. My current (very tentative) hypothesis is that there may be four:
1. An early flood (book of Jasher),
2. Noah's flood between 3000-3300 BC, relying on the Septuagint, ("Permian-Triassic" extinction, supposedly 250M yrs ago?),
3. Flood from melting glaciers and resulting lakes (possibly reflected in Chinese myths about emperor Yu who tamed great floods about 2500BC),
4. Series of volcanic and meteoric events, including the tsunami that nearly wiped out the Minoans around 1550 BC ("Cretaceous", supposedly 66M yrs ago -- I'm thinking we still had dinosaurs around until then, as reflected in the book of Job and many temple inscriptions).

(I'm buying into the theory that the C12/C14 ratio has significantly changed over time, particularly at Noah's flood, but also with some of the other extinction events.)

If anyone who reads this knows of a similar theory of placing extinction events in a young earth format, or of knowledgable people who would be willing to talk with me about how best to develop such a theory, I would be grateful to hear about it.

(This is my first attempt at using this forum. I am a retired pension actuary who has been looking into this and related topics off and on for 24 years now.)

- ddubois at davidhdubois@sbcglobal.net

 

[The Cadet]

(I'm buying into the theory that the C12/C14 ratio has significantly changed over time, particularly at Noah's flood, but also with some of the other extinction events.)

How 'bout the other ratios? U238-U234, for example? Or Potassium-Argon? Did tree ring production change rapidly during the flood as well?

The problem here is that you're trying to force the data to fit with your proposed age of the earth, when it doesn't. The C14-C12 ratio is not assumed, as many creationists claim. It is measured via proxies such as dendrochronology. Proxies that, by the way, didn't seem to notice the flood of Noah happening. Which is weird. All the available evidence we have indicates an old earth, and there's no reason to throw out all that evidence.

 

[lesliedellow]

It says something that creationists have to reach back two centuries in order to find a time when their ideas would be given house room by the scientific community. There is a reason no scientist today believes that the Earth is 6,000 years old, and that reason is the accumulated knowledge, which has been acquired over the last 200 years.

 

[DogmaHunter]

If anyone who reads this knows of a similar theory of placing extinction events in a young earth format

You didn't actually do that.

What you actually did was simply assert without evidence that radiometric dating is wrong (I'll let it slide that the method you mentioned isn't even used to date things from millions of years ago), pretended you could just ignore all the eivdence that points to millions of years and then started to randomly attribute extinction events from ancient times to some passages in a bronze aged book.

You have no hypothesis.

What you have is unjustified denial of science and force-fitting things (that, ironically, are known through science, the very same science you need to deny to force-fit these things into your religion) into your a priori faith-based beliefs.

This does not qualify as a hypothesis.
This only qualifies as a rather juvenile and ignorant set of beliefs.



Welcome to CF.

 

[ddubois]

You didn't actually do that.

What you actually did was simply assert without evidence that radiometric dating is wrong (I'll let it slide that the method you mentioned isn't even used to date things from millions of years ago), pretended you could just ignore all the eivdence that points to millions of years and then started to randomly attribute extinction events from ancient times to some passages in a bronze aged book.

You have no hypothesis.

What you have is unjustified denial of science and force-fitting things (that, ironically, are known through science, the very same science you need to deny to force-fit these things into your religion) into your a priori faith-based beliefs.

This does not qualify as a hypothesis.
This only qualifies as a rather juvenile and ignorant set of beliefs.



Welcome to CF.

I am 71 now, but after reading your reply I feel stimulated like I was back in college. Thank you for the challenge.

Let me respond point by point:

1. I have read what Libby said when he first developed carbon dating and he acknowledged the assumptions he was making and even expressed doubt in the constancy of the c12/c14 ratio. I respect his work and am not stating that radiometric dating is wrong, only that it depends on the assumptions made, and there is good reason to question the assumptions. Darwin's friend and mentor, Lyell, was a uniformitarian, believing that catastrophic events, such as the great flood, were implausible. Darwin thought so too. Mainstream geology from 1830 on has been built on uniformitarianism, which assumes processes happening today can be assumed to be extrapolated indefinitely into the distant past. But Now with the Yucatan crater, evidence of super volcanoes, and even flood evidence in eastern Washington, we know there have been catastrophic events in the past that we don't have written historical record of

2. I am aware that the mainstream geologic method for dating events in millions of years does not use carbon dating. Are you aware of the faith required to use the dating methods developed in the last 50 years, and the physical observations of maybe the last 200 years, to extrapolate those observations back in time to billions of years? My faith pales in comparison.

3. I am not in favor of ignoring evidence. There are seaborne fossils on the top of the Andes. There are stories of global flood disasters from cultures all around the world. There is evidence in eastern Washington of erosion from a truly massive flood. There are clusters of shelter-skelter fossils thrown together as if by some catastrophe. And much more. I want to consider rather than ignore evidence.

4. I am not in favor of random assignment of extinction events. I have read the National Geographic articles on five major extinction events, and tried to assign them as reasonably as I could, considering the myths and legends of the Jews, the Greeks, the Chinese, the Indians, the Canaanites, the Sumerians, the various theories of many different creationists, one Jewish astrophysicist, Velikovsky, and many others. I have been doing this off and on for 24 years.

5. I would advise you to be careful of dismissing completely what may seem a myth to you. They thought the Trojan war was a myth until the amateur Schliemann dug up Troy in the 1800s. Many think Sodom being destroyed around 2000 BC (from Genesis in the Bible) was a myth. Last year I went to Tell Al Hamman in Jordan to help dig up its ancient site, where there is an early Bronze Age ash layer of destruction and some trinitite as evidence of a possible air burst.

So what would you like to say now?

 

[juvenissun]

This thread title comes from Georges Cuvier's essay (book) translated into English in 1813 on the internet. It is very readable discussion by the guy who first discovered dinosaurs, although they were so named by one of his followers, Richard Owen. Both he and Owen disagreed with intraspecies evolution. Cuvier believed in multiple extinction events.

I am trying to cobble together an understanding of what extinction events would be compatible with young earth beliefs. My current (very tentative) hypothesis is that there may be four:
1. An early flood (book of Jasher),
2. Noah's flood between 3000-3300 BC, relying on the Septuagint, ("Permian-Triassic" extinction, supposedly 250M yrs ago?),
3. Flood from melting glaciers and resulting lakes (possibly reflected in Chinese myths about emperor Yu who tamed great floods about 2500BC),
4. Series of volcanic and meteoric events, including the tsunami that nearly wiped out the Minoans around 1550 BC ("Cretaceous", supposedly 66M yrs ago -- I'm thinking we still had dinosaurs around until then, as reflected in the book of Job and many temple inscriptions).

(I'm buying into the theory that the C12/C14 ratio has significantly changed over time, particularly at Noah's flood, but also with some of the other extinction events.)

If anyone who reads this knows of a similar theory of placing extinction events in a young earth format, or of knowledgable people who would be willing to talk with me about how best to develop such a theory, I would be grateful to hear about it.

(This is my first attempt at using this forum. I am a retired pension actuary who has been looking into this and related topics off and on for 24 years now.)

- ddubois at davidhdubois@sbcglobal.net

My first advice to you is to put the idea of 6000 years old earth aside, if you are interested in exploring the earth based on fossil record and "secular" geological knowledge. Otherwise, you would get nowhere. To me, a 5 million years old earth is STILL a very young earth.

If secular geological knowledge is not what you are after, then you can read abundant information published by people in ICR or in Back-to-Genesis. They have a systematic way to explain everything.

However, if you are trying to put one foot on each of the above boats, the result could be disastrous.

 

[juvenissun]

It says something that creationists have to reach back two centuries in order to find a time when their ideas would be given house room by the scientific community. There is a reason no scientist today believes that the Earth is 6,000 years old, and that reason is the accumulated knowledge, which has been acquired over the last 200 years.

You should put a footnote on that. What you said is based on the time as we understand it and use it on the earth. Otherwise, what you said may not be true. The Bible does indicate the existence of a different time scale. Some physicists also suggested a similar idea.

 

[The Cadet]

1. I have read what Libby said when he first developed carbon dating and he acknowledged the assumptions he was making and even expressed doubt in the constancy of the c12/c14 ratio. I respect his work and am not stating that radiometric dating is wrong, only that it depends on the assumptions made, and there is good reason to question the assumptions.

Are you claiming that we assume the c12/c14 ratio? Because it's not an assumption. It's a measurement.

Darwin's friend and mentor, Lyell, was a uniformitarian, believing that catastrophic events, such as the great flood, were implausible. Darwin thought so too. Mainstream geology from 1830 on has been built on uniformitarianism, which assumes processes happening today can be assumed to be extrapolated indefinitely into the distant past. But Now with the Yucatan crater, evidence of super volcanoes, and even flood evidence in eastern Washington, we know there have been catastrophic events in the past that we don't have written historical record of

Let's not make the mistake of confusing catastrophism with a counterpoint to uniformitarianism, eh? Uniformitarianism is based on, well, every measurement we have to date. We don't have a method for significantly altering radioactive decay rates. We're not aware of any way to change the speed of light in a vacuum. We're not aware of any way to alter G, or C, or any other other universal constants, and through all our experimenting, they have remained constant. So what reason should we have to suspect that they can change, let alone that they have in the past?

I posit that were you not a bible-believing Christian, you would not even begin to make these assumptions. They are made not out of scientific inquiry but out of necessity to defend a dogmatic belief.

2. I am aware that the mainstream geologic method for dating events in millions of years does not use carbon dating. Are you aware of the faith required to use the dating methods developed in the last 50 years, and the physical observations of maybe the last 200 years, to extrapolate those observations back in time to billions of years? My faith pales in comparison.

I am not; would you care to present what is being assumed?

3. I am not in favor of ignoring evidence. There are seaborne fossils on the top of the Andes.

And yet, for some reason, most people seem to think that this is best explained by plate tectonics. Mostly because the fossils go through the mountains, rather than just on the uppermost layers.

There are clusters of shelter-skelter fossils thrown together as if by some catastrophe.

Why do we never find a Homo Sapiens fossil anywhere below the K/T boundary? Why do we never observe dinosaur fossils above the K/T boundary? A massive global flood simply does not account for the fossils we find in any meaningful way.

4. I am not in favor of random assignment of extinction events. I have read the National Geographic articles on five major extinction events, and tried to assign them as reasonably as I could, considering the myths and legends of the Jews, the Greeks, the Chinese, the Indians, the Canaanites, the Sumerians, the various theories of many different creationists, one Jewish astrophysicist, Velikovsky, and many others. I have been doing this off and on for 24 years.

Have you tried, rather than appealing to myths and legends which most think are entirely reasonable to reject wholesale as completely baseless, it might be better to appeal to the actual scientific evidence surrounding these events? You seem to accept that there were 5 extinction events, but not accept any of the evidence that leads to them in the first place.

5. I would advise you to be careful of dismissing completely what may seem a myth to you. They thought the Trojan war was a myth until the amateur Schliemann dug up Troy in the 1800s. Many think Sodom being destroyed around 2000 BC (from Genesis in the Bible) was a myth. Last year I went to Tell Al Hamman in Jordan to help dig up its ancient site, where there is an early Bronze Age ash layer of destruction and some trinitite as evidence of a possible air burst.

And yet... Zeus is not responsible for thunder. Neither is Thor. The gods don't live on a tall mountain. There never was a global flood. Animals can't talk. There is no "world tree" that supports the world. Seriously, mythology is essentially a shot in the dark when talking about history and a shot in the dark in an entirely different postal code when talking about science.

 

[Loudmouth]

I am 71 now, but after reading your reply I feel stimulated like I was back in college. Thank you for the challenge.

Let me respond point by point:

1. I have read what Libby said when he first developed carbon dating and he acknowledged the assumptions he was making and even expressed doubt in the constancy of the c12/c14 ratio.

Things have happened since Libby discovered 14C dating. One of those is the measurement of historic fluctuations in the 12C/14C ratio. As Libby expected, it wasn't constant, but it didn't fluctuate that much.

The 1:1 line represents where the data points would land if 12C/14C was constant. The data points are from objects of known age from such things as tree rings, lake varves, and speleothems.

Darwin's friend and mentor, Lyell, was a uniformitarian, believing that catastrophic events, such as the great flood, were implausible.

Uniformitarianism is the idea that we can determine what happened in the past by looking at how geologic formations are produced in the present. This includes catastrophic events. We know that a global flood is implausible because there is no evidence in the geologic record of a recent global event. The lack of evidence for a global flood was well understood before Darwin even came up with the idea of evolution.

Mainstream geology from 1830 on has been built on uniformitarianism, which assumes processes happening today can be assumed to be extrapolated indefinitely into the distant past. But Now with the Yucatan crater, evidence of super volcanoes, and even flood evidence in eastern Washington, we know there have been catastrophic events in the past that we don't have written historical record of

We do have geologic evidence for those events, and that evidence is a part of uniformitarianism.

2. I am aware that the mainstream geologic method for dating events in millions of years does not use carbon dating. Are you aware of the faith required to use the dating methods developed in the last 50 years, and the physical observations of maybe the last 200 years, to extrapolate those observations back in time to billions of years? My faith pales in comparison.

My guess is that what you call assumptions are actually verified facts.

Take U/Pb dating of zircons as our example. We don't just assume that a zircon starts with no Pb. Rather, we OBSERVE that zircons exclude Pb when they form because of known physical and chemical laws that prevent Pb from becoming part of the zircon crystal. However, U is included in the formation of zircon crystals. None of this is assumed. These are all verified facts.

Perhaps what you mean to say is that all of the physical and chemical laws would have to be different in the past in order for creationism to be true. However, this is little more than evoking magic to make the inconvenient evidence go away.

3. I am not in favor of ignoring evidence. There are seaborne fossils on the top of the Andes.

There are several hundreds of feet of fossil bearing limestone at the top of mountains which is consistent with long time periods of limestone formation in oceans followed by uplift. A flood lasting a few months does not produce hundreds of feet of fossil bearing limestone.

There are stories of global flood disasters from cultures all around the world.

Really? All of them are global floods? None of them are local floods that last a few days?

There is evidence in eastern Washington of erosion from a truly massive flood.

So why don't we find that same evidence across the entire globe from the same time period?

4. I am not in favor of random assignment of extinction events. I have read the National Geographic articles on five major extinction events, and tried to assign them as reasonably as I could, considering the myths and legends of the Jews, the Greeks, the Chinese, the Indians, the Canaanites, the Sumerians, the various theories of many different creationists, one Jewish astrophysicist, Velikovsky, and many others. I have been doing this off and on for 24 years.

You don't use myths to do science.

5. I would advise you to be careful of dismissing completely what may seem a myth to you. They thought the Trojan war was a myth until the amateur Schliemann dug up Troy in the 1800s. Many think Sodom being destroyed around 2000 BC (from Genesis in the Bible) was a myth. Last year I went to Tell Al Hamman in Jordan to help dig up its ancient site, where there is an early Bronze Age ash layer of destruction and some trinitite as evidence of a possible air burst.

Does finding Troy mean that Achilles really was the son of a god?

 

[Loudmouth]

Something else for the author of the opening post to consider. Consilience.

"There are several important things to note about these results. First, the Cretaceous and Tertiary periods were defined by geologists in the early 1800s. The boundary between these periods (the K-T boundary) is marked by an abrupt change in fossils found in sedimentary rocks worldwide. Its exact location in the stratigraphic column at any locality has nothing to do with radiometric dating — it is located by careful study of the fossils and the rocks that contain them, and nothing more. Second, the radiometric age measurements, 187 of them, were made on 3 different minerals and on glass by 3 distinctly different dating methods (K-Ar and 40Ar/39Ar are technical variations that use the same parent-daughter decay scheme), each involving different elements with different half-lives. Furthermore, the dating was done in 6 different laboratories and the materials were collected from 5 different locations in the Western Hemisphere. And yet the results are the same within analytical error. If radiometric dating didn’t work then such beautifully consistent results would not be possible."
http://ncse.com/rncse/20/3/radiometric-dating-does-work

When you have multiple independent methods all producing the same date, it shows that the methods are reliable.

 

[juvenissun]

More gobbledygook? That seems to be what you specialise in.

Be careful, I may report you.

 

[lesliedellow]

Be careful, I may report you.

What for? For identifying gobbledygook as being what it is? If so, you had better hope that there is nobody with a physics degree amongst the moderators.

 

[DogmaHunter]

I am 71 now, but after reading your reply I feel stimulated like I was back in college. Thank you for the challenge.

Glad to hear that

1. I have read what Libby said when he first developed carbon dating and he acknowledged the assumptions he was making and even expressed doubt in the constancy of the c12/c14 ratio. I respect his work and am not stating that radiometric dating is wrong, only that it depends on the assumptions made, and there is good reason to question the assumptions. Darwin's friend and mentor, Lyell, was a uniformitarian, believing that catastrophic events, such as the great flood, were implausible. Darwin thought so too. Mainstream geology from 1830 on has been built on uniformitarianism, which assumes processes happening today can be assumed to be extrapolated indefinitely into the distant past. But Now with the Yucatan crater, evidence of super volcanoes, and even flood evidence in eastern Washington, we know there have been catastrophic events in the past that we don't have written historical record of

First of all, geological sciences aren't driven by "written historical records". They are driven by observation of geological phenomena and investigation/study of geological formations. It's an empirical science that doesn't accept the occurance of geological events based on "written records".

Secondly, carbon dating only goes back some thousands of years. None of the major extinction events you mentioned happened in that timeframe and none of them are dated using carbon.

You could completely disprove carbon dating today and it wouldn't change a thing concerning the accepted time frames of these major extinction events.

And, lastly, there is no reason to assume that physics, chemistry etc somehow worked different in the past. In fact, it makes no sense at all to assume such a thing.

So it certainly isn't a valid premise to try and cramp what we know about the world into 6000 year timeframe.

If it is, then any crackpot theory about anything is a valid theory. Including last-thursday-ism. And the Matrix. Etc.
We end up in an infinite pool of ideas, none of which can be verified, none of which can be falsified. Rendering all of them useless and meaningless.

2. I am aware that the mainstream geologic method for dating events in millions of years does not use carbon dating. Are you aware of the faith required to use the dating methods developed in the last 50 years, and the physical observations of maybe the last 200 years, to extrapolate those observations back in time to billions of years? My faith pales in comparison.

These methods are empirical and have been tested to hell and back.
These methods also converge on the same answers.

What makes you think they require faith?

3. I am not in favor of ignoring evidence. There are seaborne fossils on the top of the Andes.

That's because the Andes wasn't always a mountain.

There are stories of global flood disasters from cultures all around the world.

Which is not surprising, since human settlements are usually found at coasts, rivers, lakes, valley's.... you know... things that can flood.

Imagine living 5000 years ago in a settlement and having a Fukushima type tsunami flood your village, going 20-30 km's inland.

This is not exactly uncommon. It happened 3 times in the last 10 years alone (that we know of).

Also, these stories are oftenly mutually exclusive. If the Noah flood happened, why didn't Chinese culture disappear?
It's also quite a stretch that "every culture" has such stories. They most certainly don't.

There is evidence in eastern Washington of erosion from a truly massive flood.

Not that long ago, North America was almost entirely covered by a huge pile of ice.
When the ice age started retreating, this created what we call "ice dams". When these break, huge bodies of water or send down with huge force. While these things can be enormous, they are still regional - obviously.

It's not surprising to find North America to bears the hallmarks of more then one such event.

The bigger question here, however, is this: if that was caused by a global flood, then why don't we see such erosion everywhere in the world?

There are clusters of shelter-skelter fossils thrown together as if by some catastrophe. And much more. I want to consider rather than ignore evidence.

Floods happen all the time. You are insisting that any evidence of any flood anywhere is automatically in support of ONE global flood. Off course, ignoring (or questioning without good reason) the scientific methods for dating things, helps in thinking to be justified in that.

But again, floods happen all the time. All over the world. So it's not surprising that we find evidence of (local, regional) floods all over the world...

4. I am not in favor of random assignment of extinction events. I have read the National Geographic articles on five major extinction events, and tried to assign them as reasonably as I could, considering the myths and legends of the Jews, the Greeks, the Chinese, the Indians, the Canaanites, the Sumerians, the various theories of many different creationists, one Jewish astrophysicist, Velikovsky, and many others. I have been doing this off and on for 24 years.

Here's the problem....

You start from the assumption that these written (oftenly religious) records HAVE to be correct. This is why you try to force-fit the science knowledge into those stories.

But the fact is that you can only do that by ignoring the actual science concerning those events. The science makes it impossible to force-fit them into stories, because, for one, the dating simply doesn't line up.

So, because you don't want to consider the idea that maybe the religious texts are wrong about it, the only option left for you is to simply question the science of the dating.

See what happens there?

1. The evidence does not support the texts
2. You want to go with the texts
3. So you assume the evidence is wrong.

5. I would advise you to be careful of dismissing completely what may seem a myth to you. They thought the Trojan war was a myth until the amateur Schliemann dug up Troy in the 1800s.

First, there's a difference between a normal city and a normal war on the one hand and supernatural things on the other.

Troy was considered a myth, yes. However, to entertain the idea that it was not....
Nobody had to assume that the laws of physics somehow changed or were violated.

And when was it accepted as not a myth? Could it be, perhaps, when actual evidence thereof was presented?

The existance of a city and a war doesn't require the violation of natural laws.
Physically impossible floods do.

Many think Sodom being destroyed around 2000 BC (from Genesis in the Bible) was a myth. Last year I went to Tell Al Hamman in Jordan to help dig up its ancient site, where there is an early Bronze Age ash layer of destruction and some trinitite as evidence of a possible air burst.
So what would you like to say now?

I don't know about that Sodom bit. Nore do I consider it particularly relevant.

New York exists, but that doesn't mean Spiderman lives there.

 

[ddubois]

Are you claiming that we assume the c12/c14 ratio? Because it's not an assumption. It's a measurement.

The overall C12/C14 ratio on earth is a measurement. The assumption is that it was the same at the time an organism died as it is now.


Let's not make the mistake of confusing catastrophism with a counterpoint to uniformitarianism, eh? Uniformitarianism is based on, well, every measurement we have to date. We don't have a method for significantly altering radioactive decay rates. We're not aware of any way to change the speed of light in a vacuum. We're not aware of any way to alter G, or C, or any other other universal constants, and through all our experimenting, they have remained constant. So what reason should we have to suspect that they can change, let alone that they have in the past?

I posit that were you not a bible-believing Christian, you would not even begin to make these assumptions. They are made not out of scientific inquiry but out of necessity to defend a dogmatic belief.

I am not positing a change in radioactive decay rates, but a change in earthwide c12/c14 ratio. Nuclear bomb testing, among other things, has in fact changed that ratio.

I am a Bible-believing Christian. So what is inconsistent with my believing that earthed as/c14 ratio could change?

I am not; would you care to present what is being assumed?



And yet, for some reason, most people seem to think that this is best explained by plate tectonics. Mostly because the fossils go through the mountains, rather than just on the uppermost layers.

I don't dispute that plate tectonics could raise mountains. I just happen to think it happened quicker than mainstream scientists do. We have no historic record on what a super volcano or large meteor impact or whatever might be associated with a worldwide flood could do.

Why do we never find a Homo Sapiens fossil anywhere below the K/T boundary? Why do we never observe dinosaur fossils above the K/T boundary? A massive global flood simply does not account for the fossils we find in any meaningful way.

I do not know why there is such a dearth of human fossils. I have no problems with dinosaurs being below the K/T boundary, because I believe they went extinct then -- my guess is this is the next big extinction event after Noah's flood. There has been a lot written on how the flood accounts for the fossils, though with your frame of mind, I doubt you would find it acceptable.


Have you tried, rather than appealing to myths and legends which most think are entirely reasonable to reject wholesale as completely baseless, it might be better to appeal to the actual scientific evidence surrounding these events? You seem to accept that there were 5 extinction events, but not accept any of the evidence that leads to them in the first place.

If you were in an ancient culture with no writing, would you choose to preserve stories with no meaning, or important stuff? I just through reading a book that argued eloquently, with a number of good corroborating examples, how ancient peoples actually did record important stuff, though sometimes in a metaphorical way that moderns found hard to accept. Just as kids tend to discount the wisdom of their parents, I think modern civilization tends to discount the value of the ancients wrote. On the other hand I try not to discount what is being learned now. I have up on relativity, quantum mechanics, geology, archaeology, paleontology, etc. I really do have a rational reason for believing as I do, even though you may not be able to appreciate it.

And yet... Zeus is not responsible for thunder. Neither is Thor. The gods don't live on a tall mountain. There never was a global flood. Animals can't talk. There is no "world tree" that supports the world. Seriously, mythology is essentially a shot in the dark when talking about history and a shot in the dark in an entirely different postal code when talking about science.

 

[ddubois]

Glad to hear that




First of all, geological sciences aren't driven by "written historical records". They are driven by observation of geological phenomena and investigation/study of geological formations. It's an empirical science that doesn't accept the occurance of geological events based on "written records".

Secondly, carbon dating only goes back some thousands of years. None of the major extinction events you mentioned happened in that timeframe and none of them are dated using carbon.

You could completely disprove carbon dating today and it wouldn't change a thing concerning the accepted time frames of these major extinction events.

And, lastly, there is no reason to assume that physics, chemistry etc somehow worked different in the past. In fact, it makes no sense at all to assume such a thing.

So it certainly isn't a valid premise to try and cramp what we know about the world into 6000 year timeframe.

If it is, then any crackpot theory about anything is a valid theory. Including last-thursday-ism. And the Matrix. Etc.
We end up in an infinite pool of ideas, none of which can be verified, none of which can be falsified. Rendering all of them useless and meaningless.



These methods are empirical and have been tested to hell and back.
These methods also converge on the same answers.

What makes you think they require faith?



That's because the Andes wasn't always a mountain.




Which is not surprising, since human settlements are usually found at coasts, rivers, lakes, valley's.... you know... things that can flood.

Imagine living 5000 years ago in a settlement and having a Fukushima type tsunami flood your village, going 20-30 km's inland.

This is not exactly uncommon. It happened 3 times in the last 10 years alone (that we know of).

Also, these stories are oftenly mutually exclusive. If the Noah flood happened, why didn't Chinese culture disappear?
It's also quite a stretch that "every culture" has such stories. They most certainly don't.



Not that long ago, North America was almost entirely covered by a huge pile of ice.
When the ice age started retreating, this created what we call "ice dams". When these break, huge bodies of water or send down with huge force. While these things can be enormous, they are still regional - obviously.

It's not surprising to find North America to bears the hallmarks of more then one such event.

The bigger question here, however, is this: if that was caused by a global flood, then why don't we see such erosion everywhere in the world?



Floods happen all the time. You are insisting that any evidence of any flood anywhere is automatically in support of ONE global flood. Off course, ignoring (or questioning without good reason) the scientific methods for dating things, helps in thinking to be justified in that.

But again, floods happen all the time. All over the world. So it's not surprising that we find evidence of (local, regional) floods all over the world...



Here's the problem....

You start from the assumption that these written (oftenly religious) records HAVE to be correct. This is why you try to force-fit the science knowledge into those stories.

But the fact is that you can only do that by ignoring the actual science concerning those events. The science makes it impossible to force-fit them into stories, because, for one, the dating simply doesn't line up.

So, because you don't want to consider the idea that maybe the religious texts are wrong about it, the only option left for you is to simply question the science of the dating.

See what happens there?

1. The evidence does not support the texts
2. You want to go with the texts
3. So you assume the evidence is wrong.




First, there's a difference between a normal city and a normal war on the one hand and supernatural things on the other.

Troy was considered a myth, yes. However, to entertain the idea that it was not....
Nobody had to assume that the laws of physics somehow changed or were violated.

And when was it accepted as not a myth? Could it be, perhaps, when actual evidence thereof was presented?

The existance of a city and a war doesn't require the violation of natural laws.
Physically impossible floods do.




I don't know about that Sodom bit. Nore do I consider it particularly relevant.

New York exists, but that doesn't mean Spiderman lives there.

Reply: Thank you for your reply. I notice you have 200 likes and I have 0. I am not at all skilled at debate, but your reply is encouraging me to try to do better. Would you be willing to look at my rebuttal and identify further weaknesses?

"You could completely disprove carbon dating today and it wouldn't change a thing concerning the accepted time frames of these major extinction events.

And, lastly, there is no reason to assume that physics, chemistry etc somehow worked different in the past. In fact, it makes no sense at all to assume such a thing."

I don't disagree with most of your opening statement, but I have a quibble with the above -- In my statements, I did not mean to say that physics was working differently in the past. I meant to say I believed that the earthwide ratio of C12 to C14 was different in the past (in fact it has been slightly different in recent times due to atomic testing, as I am sure you know.) I did not mean you challenge any of the other 4 of Libby's assumptions, including the decay rate.

"These methods are empirical and have been tested to hell and back.
These methods also converge on the same answers.

What makes you think they require faith?"

No scientist has been around to measure the C12/C14 ratio back when supervolcanoes blew or comets impacted the earth. Scientists who don't believe the Bible have been mainstream for under 200 years. If they are right that the earth is billions of years old, and we don't yet have a way of measuring c12/c14 ratios in the deep past, how can they be confident that it hasn't changed significantly? I'm a professional mathematician, and I would the sample was not credible. Therefore, faith.

"Also, these stories are oftenly mutually exclusive. If the Noah flood happened, why didn't Chinese culture disappear?
It's also quite a stretch that "every culture" has such stories. They most certainly don't."

It is true the flood stories have significant disagreements. But about 88 of them have been recorded, and they generally appear to be major floods. As to the Chinese, my hypothesis is that they came to China maybe around 3000BC after Noah's flood (using Septuagint dating) and the major flood that happened around 2500BC was a different one. Ancient Chinese historical records actually written before about 1000BC and kept are lacking, I understand.

"The bigger question here, however, is this: if that was caused by a global flood, then why don't we see such erosion everywhere in the world?"

The erosion is eastern Washington was probably caused by melting glaciers, perhaps from the failure of a natural earthen dam holding the meltwaters. My point was that it was a big catastrophe, the like of which we probably haven't seen in modern times. I was trying to argue that when you limit yourself to extrapolating only from what you have actually seen, you might make a mistake. Most of the flood evidence, fish fossils on mountains, jumbled fossils shelter skelter in groups, etc. has been reinterpreted. Mainstream scientists tend to see everything through the lens of their accepted theories.

"You start from the assumption that these written (oftenly religious) records HAVE to be correct. This is why you try to force-fit the science knowledge into those stories.

But the fact is that you can only do that by ignoring the actual science concerning those events. The science makes it impossible to force-fit them into stories, because, for one, the dating simply doesn't line up.

So, because you don't want to consider the idea that maybe the religious texts are wrong about it, the only option left for you is to simply question the science of the dating."

I start with the assumption that the Bible and many other ancient writings have something important to say. I also assume that modern science frequently has something important to say. But science is always changing. The Bible not very much. There are different versions of the Bible, different translations, some stories are to be taken literally and others metaphorically, and there is disagreement which is which. Same for modern science, only more so. I have more faith in the Bible, you in modern science. I could argue that you ignore a lot of valuable ancient knowledge by trying to force-fit reality into modern mainstream scientific concepts, just as you argue that I am ignoring modern scientific knowledge because I value ancient knowledge. But I really don't think Biblical knowledge impairs scientific accuracy. For example, James Clerk Maxwell, a great scientist who developed equations that lead to relativity and who was for one of Einstein's heroes, was also a strong Christian and is reported to have said the following prayer:

“Almighty God, who hast created man in Thine own
image, and made him a living soul that he might seek after Thee and have dominion over Thy creatures, teach us to study the
works of Thy hands that we may subdue the earth to our use, and strengthen our reason for Thy service; and so to receive Thy
blessed Word, that we may believe on Him whom Thou hast sent to give us the knowledge of salvation and the remission of our
sins. All which we ask in the name of the same Jesus Christ our Lord.”

 

[Loudmouth]

The overall C12/C14 ratio on earth is a measurement. The assumption is that it was the same at the time an organism died as it is now.

No such thing is assumed. We have used tree rings, lake varves, ice layers, and other records to find the historic levels of 14C. This is used to calibrate 14C dating. You can find all of the information on calibrations for historic changes in 14C here:

http://calib.qub.ac.uk/

I don't dispute that plate tectonics could raise mountains. I just happen to think it happened quicker than mainstream scientists do. We have no historic record on what a super volcano or large meteor impact or whatever might be associated with a worldwide flood could do.

What evidence do you have for mountains being raised quicker?

What worldwide flood?

I do not know why there is such a dearth of human fossils. I have no problems with dinosaurs being below the K/T boundary, because I believe they went extinct then -- my guess is this is the next big extinction event after Noah's flood.

Then why don't we find human fossils below the K/T boundary?

 

[ddubois]

No such thing is assumed. We have used tree rings, lake varves, ice layers, and other records to find the historic levels of 14C. This is used to calibrate 14C dating. You can find all of the information on calibrations for historic changes in 14C here:

http://calib.qub.ac.uk/

I had said "The overall C12/C14 ratio on earth is a measurement. The assumption is that it was the same at the time an organism died as it is now." I stand by my statement. Tree rings have been used to calibrate carbon dating -- because the ratio is not constant over time. I did look at your website and another it referred me to, which did talk about calibration using tree rings. Because of the variations, one 3500 year old example they showed meant that the 95% probable age should be given a 200 year potential variance. I believe the variation will increase with time.


What evidence do you have for mountains being raised quicker?

We know mountains can be blown away quickly. (small example - Mt St Helens) We know regular volcanoes can raise small mountains out of the ocean. It doesn't sound incredible to me that if there were supervolcanoes and massive tsunamis in the prehistoric past, there could also be rapid raising of large mountains.

What worldwide flood?

I am sure you have heard of Noah's flood. Is this is a trick question?


Then why don't we find human fossils below the K/T boundary?

This has been pointed out as a weak point for creationists, and I am looking into it. While I am doing that, perhaps you could look into explaining the recent discovery of soft tissue in some dinosaur fossils, which should indicate a much younger age than 65 million plus years.

 

[Loudmouth]

While I am doing that, perhaps you could look into explaining the recent discovery of soft tissue in some dinosaur fossils, which should indicate a much younger age than 65 million plus years.

Why should it indicate a much younger age than 65 million years plus? That seems to be the claim without any evidence to back it. You are assuming that soft tissue shouldn't be preserved in the condition we are finding it.

 

[lesliedellow]

This has been pointed out as a weak point for creationists, and I am looking into it. While I am doing that, perhaps you could look into explaining the recent discovery of soft tissue in some dinosaur fossils, which should indicate a much younger age than 65 million plus years.

It was assumed that soft tissue couldn't survive in fossils for millions of years. That was mainly because none had ever been found, but now it has.

 

[Astrophile]

I am not in favor of random assignment of extinction events. I have read the National Geographic articles on five major extinction events, and tried to assign them as reasonably as I could, considering the myths and legends of the Jews, the Greeks, the Chinese, the Indians, the Canaanites, the Sumerians, the various theories of many different creationists, one Jewish astrophysicist, Velikovsky, and many others. I have been doing this off and on for 24 years.

To be pedantic, Immanuel Velikovsky was not an astrophysicist. He was trained as a psychiatrist and a psychoanalyst.