YEC Proof.

[Parmenio]

I'm curious. Can anyone give me a subject by subject refutation?

http://www.creationism.org/books/TaylorInMindsMen/TaylorIMMl12.htm

Or is this the proof that YEC needs to be accepted into mainstream science?

 

[fossilman]

I counted about 15 different subjects on the page you linked to. Perhaps you could pick one that particularly interests you in order to keep this thread managable.

 

[Wiccan_Child]

There is a huge amount of information to waft through, but I'll sum it up:

Revelation proves the existance of the supernatural and/or the Divine (eg making prophecies that subsequently become fulfilled).

Since Christianity has revelations, Christianity must therefore be true.

Since YEC is a subset of Christianity, YEC must be true.

Since YEC is the antithesis of OEC (and Evolutionary models in general), OEC (et al.) must be false.

Therefore, YEC is true, and the atheistic lie of Evilutionism is false. QED.

Revealed knowledge

EDIT: it also waffles on for ~15 chapters. The sole aim of the book, it seems, is to debase Darwinian theories and concepts and place them as equivilent to a religion (going so far as to claim that Atheism has a creed! [ch.1]). I might read this if I had the book in front of me, but I'd get fustrated listing all the fallacies and not being able to protest them.
Interestingly, it also quotes people such as 1970's Huxley in it's attempt to force Evolution to incorporate, "the inorganic or lifeless, the organic or biological, and the social or human". Since this is a catagorically false definition, the argument from and to there falls flat on it's face.
Note also that nigh-on all the quotes are from the 1970's (with the obvious exception of the irrelevant rant about Graceo philosophical proto-science), and nigh-on all have become PRATTs in their own right, right here in these our hallowed CF Crevo.
Finally, the book makes an erroneous web of connections between (Secular) Humanism, Darwinian and neo-Darwinian Evolutionary models, and the laughable New World Order.

 

[thaumaturgy]

In response to the OP, I'd say this is a start of what YEC needs to do. BUT, and this is the big but of which Sir Mixalot does not speak, it isn't enough to poke holes in standing hypotheses and assume the converse is true.

And, further, it isn't enough for scientists to discuss data outliers.

Still, there are some problems with things like the Po haloes, and part of that relates to "sampling issues". Apparently some early researchers in this area have not bothered to describe their sampling techniques or sampled poorly, or simply didn't understand that just because you have a granite doesn't mean it is therefore billions of years old.

It is valid to ask the questions, but the answers that come back are not little islands separated by vast gulfs of information. Each data point has to be fit into the model.

As loathe as I am to resort to age-old ploy of just tossing you off to Talk Origins (because it makes my job too simple), it is a good source of information. I doubt you'll believe it anymore than I'd believe a website called "Creationism.org", but here's a detailed discussion of issues with Po haloes:

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/po-halos/gentry.html

As for the 14-C stuff I haven't read through the Creationism.org stuff, but be careful of this. This is a pretty simple concept.

As for the "calibration" slam, I will have to read that one closer.

Radiometric dating works. And further, it correlates with alternate Radiometric techniques. It lines up with relative dating, it fits in with the model to a really good degree.

If you want to start throwing out ridiculous claims of dramatically altered physical laws (electron rest masses, speed of light, etc.) then either be prepared to show us where the "change occured" or accept then that you, like us heathen geologists, can know NOTHING. You are just as bereft of knowledge of anything as we are. We are lost in a sea of unknowable epistemologies. A vast cavern of empiricism run amok.

-t

 

[jwu]

That page is a collection of pratts and it even contradicts itself.


Refutations of the points of that site:
Polonium Halos:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/po-halos/


Shrinking Sun:
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CE/CE310.html

Rotation Speeds: I have difficulties understanding what their actual argument is.


"Icy Visitors From Space":
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CE/CE261.html

Meteorites, Tektites, and Moon Dust
Even creationist organizations like AiG say that this is bunk:
http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/faq/dont_use.asp

Earth's Decaying Magnetic Field
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CD/CD701.html

And besides, Humphreys (who is heavily featured in that article) was shown to have made up data to suit his purposes.
What he said the magnetic field was like in the past:

What the actual data says:

Note how this is practically a mirrorized version of what Humphreys claims. When called upon it he attributed his version to mysterious data which no-one but he ever has seen, and even upon repeated request he couldn't come up with it. In other words, he was caught making up data.

The Missing Radiogenic Helium:
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CE/CE001.html

Very High Pressure Oil Wells:
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CD/CD231.html

Population Explosion: This is actually my all time favourite...that argument is just incredibly stupid. The same line of reasoningm,when applied to bacteria would show that the earth cannot be older than a week, or not older than a year when applied to fruit flies, not older than a few decades when applied to rabbits.

It is obvious to anyone who spends a second thinking about it that exponential growth is not possible ad infinitum. Lack of resources like food stops it.

They say in the article that "the Black Death, A.D. 1348-80, swept away 150 million from Europe alone", yet at the same time their own graph gives a total population of Europe at that time of 95 million and indicates 25 million dead:

Oh...and just take a close look at the numbers at the Y-axis.

 

[rmwilliamsll]

I'm curious. Can anyone give me a subject by subject refutation?

http://www.creationism.org/books/TaylorInMindsMen/TaylorIMMl12.htm

Or is this the proof that YEC needs to be accepted into mainstream science?

thanks for the link to the online book.
if anyone is interested the full download link to it is at:
http://www.creationism.org/books/TaylorInMindsMen/TaylorInMindsMen.zip

the link given has a redirection built in that messes with the security setup in my browser.

poking around this website yields their books list at:
http://www.creationism.org/books/index.htm

which has at least one very unusual book on it:
THE PREDICAMENT OF EVOLUTION
by George McCready Price

this is the originator of modern YECism and it is the first time i've run across the book. linked to text at:
http://www.creationism.org/books/price/PredicmtEvol/index.htm

personally i'm surprised at the number of modern, still in copyright books they have here. given the propensity of these things disappearing overnight from the net, if you are interested think about grabbing the zip files for future reading now.

in any case, thank you very much for the link to an interesting group of complete online references.

 

[LittleNipper]

I counted about 15 different subjects on the page you linked to. Perhaps you could pick one that particularly interests you in order to keep this thread managable.

Perhaps, you would be wise to read it all------just for a stater course....

 

[Frumious Bandersnatch]

Perhaps, you would be wise to read it all------just for a stater course....

Would you like to make a bet on whether or not we can find something easily demonstrable to be false on every page and several things on most pages?

We could start with this

There are several facts, well known to the medical profession, that explain the myth of the human tail. In the first place, the adult human has thirty-three vertebrae, and the human embryo has the same number, never any more. This constitutes the "back bone" and "tailbone", but in the early embryo stage the assembly does look like a long tail since the limbs begin only as "buds". The anal opening is always at the end of the "tail" so that it takes its normal place in the anatomy upon full development. Very exceptionally, there is an anatomical defect in the coccyx of the newly born, and this has to be surgically corrected, just as the harelip has to be corrected, but the coccyx is never removed because it is a vestigial tail. Biology textbooks as recently as 1965 made the erroneous claim that individuals were sometimes born with a tail that had to be surgically removed, but all that has ever been removed is a caudal appendage. The caudal appendage occurs quite rarely, contains no bones, and has a fibrous fatty core that is covered with skin. It is not located at the end of the backbone but sticks out on one side. It has never been regarded as a "tail" by the medical profession, yet the author of the 1982 article, in describing what was a caudal appendage, clearly identified it with an evolutionary tail and thus perpetuated the myth.

Here is the picture showing that this claim is false
It is found on Talk Origins and has been posted here many times before.

Figure 2.2.2. X-ray image of an atavistic tail found in a six-year old girl. A radiogram of the sacral region of a six-year old girl with an atavistic tail. The tail was perfectly midline and protruded form the lower back as a soft appendage. The five normal sacral vertebrae are indicated in light blue and numbered; the three coccygeal tail vertebrae are indicated in light yellow. The entire coccyx (usually three or four tiny fused vertebrae) is normally the same size as the fifth sacral vertebrae. In this same study, the surgeons reported two other cases of an atavistic human tail, one with three tail vertebrae, one with five. All were benign, and only one was surgically "corrected" for cosmetic reasons (image reproduced from Bar-Maor et al. 1980, Figure 3.)

Less than one third of the well-documented cases are what are medically known as "pseudo-tails" (Dao and Netsky 1984; Dubrow et al. 1988). Pseudo-tails are not true tails; they are simply lesions of various types coincidentally found in the caudal region of newborns, often associated with the spinal column, coccyx, and various malformations. (Note: the web page in the OP claims that all tails are pseudo tails).
In contrast, the true atavistic tail of humans results from incomplete regression of the most distal end of the normal embryonic tail found in the developing human fetus (see Figure 2.4.1 and the discussion below on the development of the normal human embryonic tail; Belzberg et al. 1991; Dao and Netsky 1984; Grange et al. 2001; Keith 1921). Though formally a malformation, the true human tail is usually benign in nature (Dubrow et al. 1988; Spiegelmann et al. 1985). The true human tail is characterized by a complex arrangement of adipose and connective tissue, central bundles of longitudinally arranged striated muscle in the core, blood vessels, nerve fibres, nerve ganglion cells, and specialized pressure sensing nerve organs (Vater-Pacini corpuscles). It is covered by normal skin, replete with hair follicles, sweat glands, and sebaceous glands (Dao and Netsky 1984; Dubrow et al. 1988; Spiegelmann et al. 1985). True human tails range in length from about one inch to over 5 inches long (on a newborn baby), and they can move via voluntary striped muscle contractions in response to various emotional states (Baruchin et al. 1983; Dao and Netsky 1984; Harrison 1901; Keith 1921; Lundberg et al. 1962).
Although human tails usually lack skeletal structures (some medical articles have claimed that true tails never have vertebrae), several human tails have also been found with cartilage and up to five, well-developed, articulating vertebrae (see Figure 2.2.2; Bar-Maor et al. 1980; Dao and Netsky 1984; Fara 1977; Sugumata et al. 1988). However, caudal vertebrae are not a necessary component of mammalian tails. Contrary to what is frequently reported in the medical literature, there is at least one known example of a primate tail that lacks vertebrae, as found in the rudimentary two-inch-long tail of Macaca sylvanus (the "Barbary ape") (Hill 1974, p. 616; Hooten 1947, p. 23).


I have a friend who is neonatologist who has seen and has pictures of "true human tails" that are not just pseudo tails of the type that the web claims constitute all human tails.
The page on geology is as full of total nonsense as I expected it would be but I will have to adress that later if someone doesn't beat me to it. I have not had time to read the other pages yet.

F.B.

 

[Dragar]

That page is utter rubbish.

It tries to say neutrinos haven't been detected, as evidence that the sun is not powered by fusion! Then it quotes a paper from 30 years ago as evidence. Someone really needs to move with the times!

 

[thaumaturgy]

I don't have a lot of time for this, but this is fun, on a cursory scan I found this gem!

The third type is called metamorphic rock and may have been either igneous or sedimentary in origin, but in some way, as yet unknown, it has crystallized and become very hard. Marble is thought to be metamorphosed limestone, while anthracite is believed to have come from bituminous coal, which is technically a sedimentary rock.

When was this stuff written???? "some way, as yet unknown"??? Oh puhlease! I went to undergrad in the 1980's and people knew a LOT about the chemistry and physics and mineralogy of metamorphism. They have been able to put pressure and temp numbers with specific assemblages for DECADES!

"Marble is thought to be metamorphosed limestone." ???? Ohmygosh, people have known this for longer than _I've_ been on the planet. This is NOT a mystery.

Anthracite as metamorphosed coal. Well, DUH. I've got a coal geology book on my desk right now that features people's work on this going back well into history.

And why does the author hammer on Lyell like Lyell was the last geologist who practiced??? Doesn't he think any geology has been done since Lyell went into the ground?

Sorry but my wife and I have stood on Lyell's grave and we've done geology too!

More as I get time...

 

[thaumaturgy]

From the Geology section of the page:

So whether we would believe that the entire continent sank or the present sea level rose to provide the flood as witnessed by the marine fossils, scientists acknowledge the difficulty of finding the mechanism responsible for the vertical movement of either the land in the one case or the sea in the other.

The author seems to have difficulty with proofs for sea level rise/fall or land rise/fall (sometimes call eustatic sea level change). Indeed we don't know sometimes if the water rose or the land fell, but indeed we have many many thousands of examples of land uplift and sealevel change. They are recorded throught geologic time as:

TRANSGRESSIVE SEQUENCES
UNCOFORMITIES
MOUNTAINS

Transgressive sequences are scattered throughout the geologic record, over and over the sea level/land level changed. Up and down and up and down. So it isn't just a single Noachian flood, but many thousands of transgressions and regressions.

The author does this a great disservice if all he can find for evidence of continental/sea level changes is some weird beach near Lake Ontario.

He really needs to hit a stratigraphy book.

There's massive evidence of slowly proceeding and receding waters depositing marine rocks interfingering with terrestrial sediments and that interfingering marching steadily along in one direction or another, often followed by the reverse process recorded in the very rock.

As for mechanism we can measure TODAY how fast the Himalayas are rising. We can even measure various rebound processes. The continents are hard nuggets sitting on "play-doh" consistency mantle rock. I wonder how they could rise and fall...hmmmm.

 

[grimbly]

Perhaps, you would be wise to read it all------just for a stater course....

Yep LittleNipper, it would be wise to read it all. I spent about an hour perusing through that book and I must say;

It stands as a testimonial just how morally, ethically and intellectually bankrupt YEC apologetics has become. It perverts Christianity into a confidence game with the express purpose of dumbing down their followers.

If I were teaching a group of high school students science, I would love to use that book as a teaching aid on critical thinking. We could start with the various fallacies used by con artists to dupe their intended victims and then dive into this book and see how many we could find in each chapter. Hint hint.. from what I've read the number is high!

So yea, Little Nip, I actually agree with you that this book should be read. I just don't think that you would be happy with the outcome when it's read with a critical eye for honesty and integrity.

 

[thaumaturgy]

What is the author getting at with the Ice Age stuff? Is he questioning the presence of ice ages or the mechanism? Cuz the data supporting the existence of various Ice Ages in geologic history is pretty strong...I mean, I grew up on about half-mile deep unconsolidated sediments from Canada. The sediments were from Canada...I was in central Illinois. Hmmm. Not too much granite around Springfield, IL, but you could find some granite-clasts in that area. Wonder how they got down there.

Further, I hope the author doesn't think that Continental Glaciation is the ONLY way to account for continental rise and fall...because that would be just plain goofy.

-t.

 

[thaumaturgy]

The author makes this howler:

For example, the age name Cambrian, with the subdivisions of upper, middle, and lower, refer to that very early period in Earth's history. These names appended to rock strata, thus depend upon the fossils found in them and have nothing to do with color, texture, chemical composition, or any other characteristic of the rock.

False. While fossils often DO help in matching the age of various rock layers in different areas this is not the ONLY way rocks are correlated. I sat in an office for 8 straight months reading ROCK DESCRIPTIONS (color, texture, chemical composition) and correlating layers across regions of southern Illinois. No fossils were ever mentioned.

Rocks are compared across regions by a NUMBER of features. Sometimes, gasp, the rock changes it's texture, color, chemical composition, but it grades by particle size and we know it might be part of a "trangressive sequence" and are thus part of the overall time frame.

There are things called facies in the rock record that record CONDITIONS (environment) of deposition. Not all rocks are dated by their fossils!

-t.

 

[thaumaturgy]

THe author further states:

Strictly speaking, the age of rock strata is of no practical importance to the working geologist. This should be self-evident knowing that the assigned ages have increased twenty to thirty times in the past century without making any difference to say, oil or mineral exploration.

Again, wrong. While geology can be done using only RELATIVE dating methods, if I want to find a coal in Kentucky and I spend my time looking only in Devonian rocks I'm gonna have a hellacious time of it. I might find some Type I organics preserved, but I'd be better placed if I'm looking in a little younger rocks...like the Carboniferous sequences to the east.

 

[fossilman]

Perhaps, you would be wise to read it all------just for a stater course....

Thanks, but I've already had a starter course, and all the other courses needed to fullfill BS, MS, and PhD degrees in geology.

And from the type of rubbish on the one page that I did read, I felt no real inclination to continue.

I think it would be wise to seek out what real scientists actually have to say. Ah, yes, I suppose metalurgy is a science, but one that has very little to do with the topics he fancies he knows about.

 

[Frumious Bandersnatch]

Thanks, but I've already had a starter course, and all the other courses needed to fullfill BS, MS, and PhD degrees in geology.

.

Pretty impressive for 1 year old.

 

[thaumaturgy]

Pretty impressive for 1 year old.

Sheesh! ANYONE can get a PhD in geology! Now they're giving them to 1 year olds!

 

[Parmenio]

Thank you one and all for your responses. I didn't think I'd be taken for a YECist based on the post, but I suppose it is something to be accepted.

I must admit, though, I was just kinda being lazy in posting it to the forums to get the rebuttals that I wanted, instead of searching for them myself =D

 

[thaumaturgy]

Thank you one and all for your responses. I didn't think I'd be taken for a YECist based on the post, but I suppose it is something to be accepted.

Not at all. But be careful in just accepting stuff you read that claims to overturn centuries of earnest scientific investigation.

For a Geologist "claims" of evidence for YEC are like "claims" for perpetual motion machines to a physicist. They always crop up but just a quick look through shows them usually to be made up one of the following:

1. Simply pointing out "potential problems" with a measurement
2. Bad "sampling technique"
3. Casting "doubt for doubt's sake"
4. Sometimes, just sometimes, gross misrepresentation of the actual science.
5. A LOT of focus on outliers in the data. The "strange results"...usually without casting any light on the subject.

Scientists have been working on understanding the earth's age for centuries. We have a lot of impressive tools at our disposal and can tell a lot about the earth. Geologists know an enormous amount, almost all of it from "field studies". Geology is one of the few sciences for which there is only a small "theoretical" component. It really is "forensics" in a sense.

If you have the time go to a local college and take some intro geology courses if you haven't already! They are fun, relatively easy in the early parts, and you owe it to yourself to learn more about the only planet you'll likely ever live on!

-t.