Make that a moose turd and put Sarah Palin’s picture on it!

Poor Arizonians, so far from God, so close to insanity!

But than again, she come from the same state John McCain came from, doesn’t it? And the same state that Sarah Palin was coached on her speech when she would become president, err, I mean vice-president?

To borrow some of Terry Dick’s comments: The Arizona State Senator, Sylvia Allen, is undoubtedly living proof that a pig’s bladder on a stick can be elected as a member of the Arizona State government.

Why would the atmosphere be filled with Helium? It’s inert so it can’t be captured by compounding or captured in any containter except crystal structures, and it is very light. The He not locked in crystal structures (e.g. the zircons) all floated away! How can this guy not see that?

Both the objections involving Helium are totally irrelevant.

So far as the C14 measurement in coal small amounts seem to be generated constantly from radioactive decay of Uranium in the surrounding rocks of some coal deposits. In any case as the linked article below discusses, the levels registered are at the limit of instrumental precision, and so are actually consistent with a “true” reading of zero. So the coal may actually have C14 in it — or it may not — but if it does, it was generated recently in geological terms.

So far as the diamonds that show C14 there is a tentative explanation discussion which can be found at this link: http://www.asa3.org/ASA/education/origins/carbon-kb.htm (WARNING! Pretty technical stuff)

“Nowhere in the bible does it say the earth is 6000 years old”

No, it wouldn’t would it, since it was written between 1,800 and 2,800 years ago? At that time it was written it would have said “4,200″ to “3,200 years old” had the writers cared, depending on which book the quotation would have been found.

You do know how this whole 6,000 year old thing started, right? Bishop Ussher in the oh so modern 17th century and “4004 BC on October 27 at 9 AM“!!!!, computed backward through the begats.

Reminds me of that old favorite, “When They Begin… When They Begin … The Begats”…..

Definately a shorter way of getting the same point across. :)

Jung has some brilliant theories about the human collective conscious. The quick and dirty of it is that once the information is out there, it tends to stick around, and becomes more widely known without necessarily needing to be pushed onto the rest of the population.

I really think that people who take the Bible literally word-for-word are really naieve about how ancient people used literature. The Bible is about as true as Aesop’s fables – most of the stories didn’t really happen, and we know that. But there is a moral to the story. The idea is to carry on the oral traditions and mythologies of the ancestors while also imparting some sense of morality on the people. What I find interesting is that the Jews don’t take Genesis literally, and it’s their story. Perhaps the evangelicals would do themselves some good to actually do some research and talk to some experts, instead of assuming that Pastor Bob has all the answers.

The more that you read of the justification and the quasi-scientific arguments that are made in defense of young-earth hypotheses (I will not say theory, because theories as they apply to science are factual, verifiable, and more frequently than not are descriptions of mechanisms, whereas a hypothesis is a postulation that needs evidentiary support), most are based on the premise that the science is wrong despite the mountains of evidence that it is not, and only a small amount of evidence, very often collected or analyzed in a faulty manner, is offered to support the alternate concept. When asked why scientists don’t take it seriously, they almost always claim it is because scientists don’t like things that mess with their theories. I cannot stress enough how incorrect that assumption is.

Their basic premise – that science rejects ideas that don’t mesh with their working theories, is incorrect from the start. Not only does science no reject new information that debunks old theories, science LIVES for such things. Example – if there was actual, verifiable evidence based on sound scientific principles (in this context I am referring to the proper use and analysis of data collection via various scientific instruments, such as dating of objects using any number of valid methods – valid meaning repeatable tests with properly functioning equipment that holds to truths that we know, such as the half-life of Carbon-14) that something such as the age of the Earth was grossly overstated, that isn’t the kind of thing that gets “science” up in arms, it’s the kind of thing that gets “science” excited, and the kind of thing that Nobel Prizes are awarded for.

This kind of work is usually quite convincing when a lay person reads it, but an expert will give it a brutal mark-up within 5 minutes of reading it on faulty assumptions alone.

That is not to say that science is in total agreement about the age of the Earth, or the age of the universe. There are outliers who think that mainstream science has it wrong. Unfortunately, the onus is on those who disagree with the evidence to prove their point-of-view, and for the vast majority, they can’t prove it at all, let alone to an extent as the current theories have managed to do.

If you are truely interested in this topic, there is a wealth of information out there. Start at an aggregator to get the highlights, then move on to the source documents which provide the details, the methodologies, and underlying assumptions. You can then compare young-Earth hypotheses with mainstream scientific theories from an objective standpoint. Warning – scientific documents are notoriously dry and complicated. I suggest that you find information that intends to teach scientific concepts as opposed to the actual studies that are cited in the teaching materials. These types of sources are more geared to making the concepts understandable regardless of scientific background, whereas the source documents are generally written for PhDs, and assume that the reader has a firm grasp on the underlying principles prior to reading.

July 9th, 2009 at 10:43 am
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No they don’t:

Therefore, a date is often chosen from a wide-range of options based on the assumed reality of “geologic ages.”

In other words, they pre-conclude that the science is wrong, then cherry-pick anomalous results of radiometric dating as proof that all radiometric dating is inaccurate, thus confirming their pre-conclusion.

That’s not being serious about science.

Yeah bit was reading Uranium, this is what the astronomer said, but bit was thinking C14.

bit did read
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium-lead_dating
which has the same numbers as you posted.

But bit also read ICR – Institute of Creation Research.

There are other radiometric dating techniques and one would expect them to agree. In fact one would expect that radiometric information taken from the same sample to agree.

http://www.icr.org/articles/view/4143/261/

Earth’s Oldest Rock Has the Wrong Date
by Brian Thomas, M.S.*

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However, these adjustments are constrained to the old earth paradigm and systematically exclude contradicting data. In fact, contradicting data are banned from publication prior to evaluation, hence the necessity for alternative publishing outlets.6

Third, totally different dates are typically obtained for the same rock by measuring different elements, different parts of the rock, and using different techniques—or even the same techniques at different times.7 Therefore, a date is often chosen from a wide-range of options based on the assumed reality of “geologic ages.”8

Fourth, there are many earth processes that scientifically contradict the standard assigned ages.9 If the earth formed over four billion years ago, all helium should have escaped from zircons, yet the crystals are loaded with this element.10 The atmosphere should be full of helium atoms, the byproducts of millions of years of radioisotope decay, but it isn’t. Similarly, there shouldn’t be any carbon-14 in diamonds after 60,000, let alone a million, years, but every diamond, coal, and oil sample tested in one study had plenty.11

Is this faux-amphibolite really as old as the Mcgill researchers claim? In light of the dramatically plastic and ephemeral status of published ages, the investigators were wise to express a measure of insecurity regarding these “oldest, most brutally battered terrains”:2 “Obviously, other corroborative data would help resolve whether the 4.28-Gy age dates the rocks themselves or an older component involved in their genesis.”1
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Believe what you want about ICR but they seem to bit to be serious about their science.

Thanks for the respectful reply.

The working theories on the creation of the “Old Testament” jibe with this. Basically, you have a committe of 6th Century BC Judean scholars who collate records and oral traditions from old Israel and Babylon into a more or less coherent narrative that explains their world as it was and as they think it should be.

You gotta like the bit where the people of Babylon, after being conquered by the Akkadians, the Aramaens, the Assyrians, the Chaldeans, the Persians, the Greeks, etc., still remembering that they were the cultural heirs of ancient Sumer, the oldest civilization in the world.

The reality is that ages were used to describe the way in which the community viewed the person in question. A person could be 40 years old, and if they were highly respected, the “number of their years” may be described as 250 instead of their actual years, which would be 40.

So, the people who calculated the (biblical) age of the Earth in the first place were operating under a completely incorrect assumption, therefore their number isn’t even close, even if you DO assume that Genesis is the beginning of time, which, as we have already discussed, it is not.

Interestingly enough, the Genesis chapter of the Bible has been described by several theologians as being a description, not of the creation of the world, but as the creation of civilization, ie – the change that mankind underwent when he stopped simply taking what God provided (Garden of Eden) and began working the land (knowledge of the tree of good and evil is the knowledge of God, interpreted in this case as the ability to manipulate the environment and to provide for the creatures in it, namely humans). Unlike those that take the Bible literally (and the fact that they rarely, if ever, account for the erroneous translations and multiple edits and cuts that the Bible has undergone over the centuries), this interpretation makes historical sense, is much closer to reality as far as the timeline goes, could have been passed on in oral tradition, and demonstrates a more reasonable understanding of how the ancients described events.

bitblt – the half life of uranium varies, depending on which isotope you are talking about. U-234 has a half-life of about 700 million years, whereas U-238 has a half-life of about 4.5 billion years, and it is the exceptionally long half-life that makes uranium ideal for dating Earth. The statement, therefore, was correct.

Also, you are incorrect about the radiation eventually being “gone.” A half-life, in this context, actually refers to the rate of radioactive decay, not the quantity of substance or radiation that continues to exist. What happens is that a substance with an unstable nucleus loses energy over time, emitting ions and radiation spontaneously and randomly. As such, the half-life of an individual atom can’t be predicted, but the half-life of a quanity of atoms with similar half-lives can be predicted. If you have ever had calculus, you know that when unpredictable amounts are calculated, they are calculated not to whole numbers, but to as close to that whole number as possible, so instead of a result being 0, it would actually be .0000000000000000000000000000000001 therefore meaning that there is quite literally no such thing as “nothing.” This same concept holds true for the decaying atoms, as it is impossible to determine if the entire original product is gone or not, it must be accounted for as if there is a tiny amount left, thus we have half-lives, in which zero can never be reached, but it can come incredibly close to zero. Whether or not this means that the “radiation” as you put it still exists depends entirely on the strength of the radation in the context of human exposure, which depends entirely on the isotope to which you are referring.

I hope that wasn’t too technical. If it was, allow me to summarize by simply saying – the statement “it’s through the radioactive decay of uranium that we know the Earth is billions of years old” is 100% accurate.

(in case you’re wondering how half-lives are determined there are formulas that have been derived based on mathematical concepts, and those formulas are listed nicely here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Half-life#Formulas_for_half-life_in_exponential_decay )

Bit doesn’t think this statement is accurate if it has ever been. Isn’t there a limit to the date range that can be assessed with radio-active dating? That is, after a certain number of half-lives isn’t it – the radioactivity – essentially gone

Radiometric dating has been an established scientific technique for more than a century. Radiocarbon dating, the most famous radiometric dating process, has been used since 1949 and is very dependable, having been calibrating by thorough cross-checking against historical records, tree-ring counting (Dendrochronology), yearly ice layers in Greenland, and other methods for determining age. Because Carbon 14 has a half-life of only about 6000 years, it isn’t useful for materials older than 60,000 years. However, there are a number of other decay processes that use isotopes with much longer half-lifes. Potassium 40 has a half-life of 1.2 billion years, so Potassium-Argon dating of ancient lava flows is our most useful technique for dating rock layers tens of millions to billions of years old.

What is known, and is worth saying, is that it appears that civilization sprang fully formed in the middle East about 35,000 years ago. This is not contrary to the Bible account by bit’s understanding.

I believe that this is the historical time line used by Robert E. Howard for his Conan the Barbarian novels, but I’ve never heard of any actual historians who use it. Can you name a few?

Per mainstream anthropology and archeology, “civilization” didn’t really “spring up” anywhere at any particular time in the past. The use of tools and fire and the building of houses pre-dates Homo Sapiens. Paleolithic hunter-gatherers were drawing art on rock walls 35,000 years ago, right about the time humans and dogs domesticated each other. Farming villages and eventually towns have been dug up dating back to the end of the last Ice Age, about 10,000 years ago. We have a continuous record of farming civilizaton in Egypt and Iraq since 7,000 BC. Jericho and Damascus, both sited on good, well-watered soil in otherwise dry country, have been inhabited pretty much constantly for at least this long.

The 6000 year period the lady from Arizona is tossing about doesn’t even cover the age of the world’s oldest town, let alone the age of the Earth.

He even estimated the day and month of creation.

However, thought the 6,000 years is inline with what information is presented in the Bible – right up until one gets to the time of creation, the Bible never says the earth is 6,000 years old.

The time lapse between verses one and verse two of Genesis is often debate – called the gap theory. Some claim this was a long period time, and some claim that it was a brief period of time.

All one can say from the Bible is that the time frame it appears to record is on the order of 6,000 years.

Ussher used the extensive genealogies in Genesis to make his estimates. These are the so-and-so_01 begate(fathered) so-and-so_11 when he was x years, and so-and=so_01 died when he was y years. This method is highly accurate but there is a rub. The word for “fathered” could mean refer either to a father or a to grandfather. Just as one’s father is your father, so is one’s grandfather your father. So, it’s not known whether or not every generation is included.

It goes without saying that the importance modern people place on dates and times, is completely absent in ancient people.

What is known, and is worth saying, is that it appears that civilization sprang fully formed in the middle East about 35,000 years ago. This is not contrary to the Bible account by bit’s understanding.

bit respectfully suggests that any science beyond this period of history is of value to only seventh grade science students and the ones who write their textbooks.

Phil Plait of BadAstronomy notes that the irony of Allen’s claim “is that she’s talking about uranium mining, and it’s through the radioactive decay of uranium that we know the Earth is billions of years old.”

“… it’s through the radioactive decay of uranium that we know the Earth is billions of years old.”

bit doesn’t think this statement is accurate if it has ever been. Isn’t there a limit to the date range that can be assessed with radio-active dating? That is, after a certain number of half-lives isn’t it – the radioactivity – essentially gone?