Updating The Theory of the Earth

[ddubois]

You have carbon isotope ratios from a fossil which you can't show to be organic. Applying carbon dating to inorganic carbonates is entirely a misuse of carbon dating.

I'm puzzled here. The dinosaur soft tissue has red blood cells and DNA. Why wouldn't the sofa tissue carbon be organic?

"No. Meteors aren't going to change the basic laws of chemistry that cause zircons to exclude Pb when they form. In order to make zircons include Pb when they form you would have to change the fundamental laws of nature in such a way that life as we know it would not be possible. The same goes for the decay rate of U."

I was talking about meteors changing the c14/c12 ratio. I'm not sure why you are bringing in zircons and Pb and U at this point. I haven't talked about how to modify the long term radiometric dating yet. I did mention a short term dating using zircon crystals elsewhere, but wasn't referring to it here.

"Also, we can directly observe that the laws that govern chemistry and nuclear physics was the same in the past. All we need to do is look up in the night sky and see how distant stars and galaxies behave."

I don't follow you at all here. The laws of nuclear physics changed completely between 1900 and 1925 with relativity, radioactivity, and quantum mechanics. How can the night sky show us that such dramatic changes won't happen again?



"They can't even show that they are measuring organic carbon. That's the problem".

Here is an extract from the paper I quoted earlier about carbon dating of dinosaurs:
"Many dinosaur bones are not petrified. Dr. Mary Schweitzer, associate professor of marine, earth, and atmospheric sciences at North Carolina State University, surprised scientists in 2005 when she reported finding soft tissue in dinosaur bones. She started a firestorm of controversy in 2007 and 2008 when she reported that she had sequenced proteins in the dinosaur bone.Critics charged that the findings were mistaken or that what she called soft tissue was really biofilm produced by bacteria that had entered from outside the bone. Schweitzer answered the challenge by testing with antibodies. Her report in 2009 confirmed the presence of collagen and other proteins that bacteria do not make. In 2011, a Swedish team found soft tissue and biomolecules in the bones of another creature from the time of the dinosaurs, a Mosasaur, which was a giant lizard that swam in shallow ocean waters. Schweitzer herself wonders why these materials are preserved when all the models say they should be degraded. That is, if they really are over 65 million years old, as the conventional wisdom says."

 

[Gene2memE]

Funny thing about Dr Schweitzer. She's, by her own words, a "Christian evolutionary biologist" from a conservative Christian background who continues to attend conservative Christian churches.

Yet, she has no problems with an old earth and is openly critical of young-earthers misappropriating her research. From a Biologos interview about her discovery:

One thing that does bother me, though, is that young earth creationists take my research and use it for their own message, and I think they are misleading people about it. Pastors and evangelists, who are in a position of leadership, are doubly responsible for checking facts and getting things right, but they have misquoted me and misrepresented the data.

Further on in the same interview:

Bones that become fossils have been in stasis with the environment for millions of years, and then when we dig them up they are exposed to light and oxygen—which makes the degradation that had been arrested start again.

And, one more quote:

If you believe 24/7 creation is really the only interpretation possible and ignore tons of evidence that the earth is billions of years old and that life was a simple construct that got way more complex over time, that’s fine—we may be wrong about the science (I don’t think we are, but as a scientist I have to leave that minute possibility open). I think that parents need to tell their kids that there are a lot of REASONS scientists say what they do, and virtually NONE of those reasons are to disprove God’s existence. That doesn’t enter in. I’ve had lots of students come into my office in tears over the years, saying, “I don’t understand…” The thing is, if you go with the scientific evidence and it turns out to be wrong, I don’t think God is going to punish you for that; God made us curious people. I believe we should step back a little bit and consider other views equally—anything less is doing God and your child a disservice.

 

[Justatruthseeker]

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

Because the dinosaurs did not die during Noah's flood. They were already extinct except for a couple that survived the last cataclysm. See attachment.

C12/C14 is in constant flux.

http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2009/29sep_cosmicrays/

 

[Loudmouth]

Here is an extract from the paper I quoted earlier about carbon dating of dinosaurs:
"Many dinosaur bones are not petrified. Dr. Mary Schweitzer, associate professor of marine, earth, and atmospheric sciences at North Carolina State University, surprised scientists in 2005 when she reported finding soft tissue in dinosaur bones. She started a firestorm of controversy in 2007 and 2008 when she reported that she had sequenced proteins in the dinosaur bone.Critics charged that the findings were mistaken or that what she called soft tissue was really biofilm produced by bacteria that had entered from outside the bone. Schweitzer answered the challenge by testing with antibodies. Her report in 2009 confirmed the presence of collagen and other proteins that bacteria do not make. In 2011, a Swedish team found soft tissue and biomolecules in the bones of another creature from the time of the dinosaurs, a Mosasaur, which was a giant lizard that swam in shallow ocean waters. Schweitzer herself wonders why these materials are preserved when all the models say they should be degraded. That is, if they really are over 65 million years old, as the conventional wisdom says."

Those aren't the samples that the creationists carbon dated. Also, Schweitzer never confirmed that the soft tissue was entirely organic and original to the dinosaur.

 

[ddubois]

Funny thing about Dr Schweitzer. She's, by her own words, a "Christian evolutionary biologist" from a conservative Christian background who continues to attend conservative Christian churches.

Yet, she has no problems with an old earth and is openly critical of young-earthers misappropriating her research. From a Biologos interview about her discovery:



Further on in the same interview:t
t doubt


And, one more quote:

Thank you for sharing. I thought it likely she was not a creationist herself but wasn't sure she was a Christian, and am now glad to hear she is. Most Christians do believe in an old earth, including many like her that I really respect. And I don't doubt that she, as prominent as her discoveries have been, has been misquoted by creationists striving to make their points, and I don't doubt that the misquotations have been repeated by others without checking them. That unfortunately is fallible human nature, which Christians share with everyone else. From what you quoted, she does seem to be more open-minded about her own fallibility that most Christians I've seen, old earth or young earth, and I admire her for that.

 

[Justatruthseeker]

The difference is she isn't arguing any age claims. As long as they can continue to fool people with claims of being able to accurately date anything past 12,000 years, they don't care if soft tissue was found, nor what it really means. The dinosaurs certainly did not die in Noah's flood. The simple fact that no modern skeletons of man or the animals created with him are ever found with dinosaur bones should tell anyone that.

But like claims of how long it takes oil to form - based upon belief and nothing but belief - they also confuse the two together in science. Believing the oil deposits are from the days of the dinosaurs - based upon the fallacy of how long oil takes to form. When they are deposits from Noah's flood of all of earth's vegetation and animal life. The two are distinct separate cataclysms.

 

[Loudmouth]

The difference is she isn't arguing any age claims. As long as they can continue to fool people with claims of being able to accurately date anything past 12,000 years, they don't care if soft tissue was found, nor what it really means.

Please explain why K/Ar, U/Pb, and Rb/Sr dating of the Hell Creek formation is not accurate.

But like claims of how long it takes oil to form - based upon belief and nothing but belief - they also confuse the two together in science. Believing the oil deposits are from the days of the dinosaurs - based upon the fallacy of how long oil takes to form. When they are deposits from Noah's flood of all of earth's vegetation and animal life. The two are distinct separate cataclysms.

If I can show that a house can be built in 3 months, does that mean there can't be a house that is 100 years old?

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

in science. Believing the oil deposits are from the days of the dinosaurs - based upon the fallacy of how long oil takes to form.

What fallacy? as I understand it natural oil doesn't take long (in geological scales) to form under the right conditions - maybe thousands or hundreds of thousands of years depending on the conditions, but it may take a few million years for the material to reach suitable conditions (i.e. buried deep enough to reach the temperatures & pressures required). But once it's formed, it can hang around until BP drill it up. I don't see the problem.

 

[ddubois]

The difference is she isn't arguing any age claims. As long as they can continue to fool people with claims of being able to accurately date anything past 12,000 years, they don't care if soft tissue was found, nor what it really means. The dinosaurs certainly did not die in Noah's flood. The simple fact that no modern skeletons of man or the animals created with him are ever found with dinosaur bones should tell anyone that.

But like claims of how long it takes oil to form - based upon belief and nothing but belief - they also confuse the two together in science. Believing the oil deposits are from the days of the dinosaurs - based upon the fallacy of how long oil takes to form. When they are deposits from Noah's flood of all of earth's vegetation and animal life. The two are distinct separate cataclysms.

What you say seems consistent with my beliefs -- nice for a change. Just one question -- What do you mean by The two are distinct separate cataclysms"? One I assume is Noah's flood, but the other? Dinosaur total or near extinction?

 

[Justatruthseeker]

What fallacy? as I understand it natural oil doesn't take long (in geological scales) to form under the right conditions - maybe thousands or hundreds of thousands of years depending on the conditions, but it may take a few million years for the material to reach suitable conditions (i.e. buried deep enough to reach the temperatures & pressures required). But once it's formed, it can hang around until BP drill it up. I don't see the problem.

http://f03.classes.colgate.edu/fsem037-oil/formation_of_oil.htm

"Millions of years ago, plants and animals living in the ocean absorbed energy from the sun and stored this energy in their bodies in the form of carbon. As these animals died, their bodies sank to the bottom of the ocean where they were covered with layers of sediment deposits."

The fallacy that it takes ages to form, that's what fallacy. It doesn't even have to take a day - it just depends on conditions.

http://www.pnnl.gov/news/release.aspx?id=1029

Your fallacy is believing the hype that it actually takes long periods of time and heat and pressure. In direct opposition of experiments. But that is what technological advancements do - falsify mainstream scientific belief one belief at a time.

The problem is it doesn't have to be any time at all, but just a mere 3000 years ago. Objections to scripture are based upon it requiring hundreds of thousands of years - if not millions. This is a fallacy - as technological advancements are showing.

 

[Justatruthseeker]

What you say seems consistent with my beliefs -- nice for a change. Just one question -- What do you mean by The two are distinct separate cataclysms"? One I assume is Noah's flood, but the other? Dinosaur total or near extinction?

Noah's flood is completely separate from the flood that extincted the dinosaurs. That happened in verse 2 in which "And the earth "became" (hayah) desolate and waste; and darkness "became" (hayah) upon....

Most just prefer to ignore the meaning of "hayah" - the 2nd word of verse 2, so they can continue with their pre-concieved beliefs about the age of the earth.

http://biblehub.com/interlinear/genesis/1.htm
http://biblehub.com/hebrew/1961.htm

The reason why they can not get their belief to match reality - they presume a young earth - when it is man and the animals with him that are of a young creation - not the earth.

 

[Loudmouth]

http://f03.classes.colgate.edu/fsem037-oil/formation_of_oil.htm

"Millions of years ago, plants and animals living in the ocean absorbed energy from the sun and stored this energy in their bodies in the form of carbon. As these animals died, their bodies sank to the bottom of the ocean where they were covered with layers of sediment deposits."

The fallacy that it takes ages to form, that's what fallacy. It doesn't even have to take a day - it just depends on conditions.

The fallacy is yours. You are claiming that oil can't be old because it can form quickly. A house can be built in 3 months. Does that mean there can't be any 100 year old houses?

The real problem for oil and creationism is the amount. The biomass needed for these amounts of oil is several orders of magnitude larger than what we see on Earth.

 

[Astrophile]

Noah's flood is completely separate from the flood that extincted the dinosaurs. That happened in verse 2 in which "And the earth "became" (hayah) desolate and waste; and darkness "became" (hayah) upon....

Most just prefer to ignore the meaning of "hayah" - the 2nd word of verse 2, so they can continue with their pre-concieved beliefs about the age of the earth.

http://biblehub.com/interlinear/genesis/1.htm
http://biblehub.com/hebrew/1961.htm

The reason why they can not get their belief to match reality - they presume a young earth - when it is man and the animals with him that are of a young creation - not the earth.

http://f03.classes.colgate.edu/fsem037-oil/formation_of_oil.htm

"Millions of years ago, plants and animals living in the ocean absorbed energy from the sun and stored this energy in their bodies in the form of carbon. As these animals died, their bodies sank to the bottom of the ocean where they were covered with layers of sediment deposits."

The fallacy that it takes ages to form, that's what fallacy. It doesn't even have to take a day - it just depends on conditions.

http://www.pnnl.gov/news/release.aspx?id=1029

Your fallacy is believing the hype that it actually takes long periods of time and heat and pressure. In direct opposition of experiments. But that is what technological advancements do - falsify mainstream scientific belief one belief at a time.

The problem is it doesn't have to be any time at all, but just a mere 3000 years ago. Objections to scripture are based upon it requiring hundreds of thousands of years - if not millions. This is a fallacy - as technological advancements are showing.

Your first link contains this interesting Petroleum Maturation diagram, which shows that oil forms at depths of 2.5-5 km (implying pressures of 0.6-1.2 kbar) and temperatures of 60° to 140°C. These pressures and temperatures correspond to diagenesis or to the zeolite facies of metamorphism. At even fast rates of sedimentation it needs 10-20 million years to accumulate 2.5-5 km of rock. However quickly oil can be formed in sedimentary rocks at these temperatures and pressures, it still needs >10 million years for the source rocks to be buried to depths where the conditions exist for the formation of oil.


The PNNL system described in your second link operates at a temperature of 350°C and a pressure of 200 bars (0.2 kbar), corresponding to a depth of about 800 metres. These conditions correspond to the hornfels facies of metamorphism, and are found in the earth's crust only near to shallow igneous intrusions. Since such shallow intrusions are rare, particularly in deep sedimentary basins, most petroleum deposits cannot have been formed under these conditions or in the short periods of time that you postulate.

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

Your fallacy is believing the hype that it actually takes long periods of time and heat and pressure. In direct opposition of experiments. But that is what technological advancements do - falsify mainstream scientific belief one belief at a time.

The problem is it doesn't have to be any time at all, but just a mere 3000 years ago. Objections to scripture are based upon it requiring hundreds of thousands of years - if not millions. This is a fallacy - as technological advancements are showing.

You have entirely missed the point - it doesn't matter how long it takes for organic matter to form oil under suitable conditions, what matters is the conditions under which it will do so, and the depth and age of the strata in which it is found are informative - they tell us how long ago it must have formed.

 

[Justatruthseeker]

You have entirely missed the point - it doesn't matter how long it takes for organic matter to form oil under suitable conditions, what matters is the conditions under which it will do so, and the depth and age of the strata in which it is found are informative - they tell us how long ago it must have formed.

What date and age? You can't date oil - nor can you date the strata - sedimentary rock - they or fossils are formed in.

Then I must ask if you accept modern cosmology before we can proceed further?

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

What date and age? You can't date oil - nor can you date the strata - sedimentary rock - they or fossils are formed in.

Stratigraphy covers the dating of rock strata.

Then I must ask if you accept modern cosmology before we can proceed further?

I think the standard model of cosmology is the most effective interpretation of the data so far available, although it's certainly incomplete.

 

[Dr GS Hurd]

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

Regarding radiocarbon dating, you need to refute the following. I will say in advance that you cannot.

These are the conventional (not calibrated) C14 data plotted against the directly counted annual events recorded in tree-rings, coral growth rings, speleothem grown rings, as well as lake and marine varves. First note that the uncalibrated C14 data are nearly all too young. This curve (and others) is used to calibrate the C14 data.

 

[Dr GS Hurd]

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 ...

Wrong.

Fit these;

 

[Dr GS Hurd]

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

Let us see if you ignore evidence;

Carina Hoorn, et al "Amazonia Through Time: Andean Uplift, Climate Change, Landscape Evolution, and Biodiversity" Science 12 November 2010: Vol. 330 no. 6006 pp. 927-931 http://www.sciencemag.org/content/330/6006/927.short

 

[Dr GS Hurd]

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?

Fulgurites. I have recovered fractured pieces of fulgurite from archaeological soil samples. Also fused glasses are found in ceramic kilns. Finding fused sand in an ash lens, particularly a large one, is not remarkable.