Posts: 2254
Threads: 85
Joined: January 24, 2010
Reputation:
29
RE: How old is the Earth?
October 14, 2010 at 4:42 pm
(This post was last modified: October 14, 2010 at 4:43 pm by Welsh cake.)
(October 13, 2010 at 6:22 pm)Statler Waldorf Wrote: Well you have emperical evidence to support a conclusion. You do not have emperical proof that your conclusion is one hundred percent accurate. When did I ever say that? The dating process is still being refined as we speak, and as far as I'm concerned that's my justification for accepting practical meaningful knowledge whereas absolute knowledge is unattainable in any instance.
Quote:Quote:How old do you think the earth is?
Between 6000 and 7000 years.
1. What's your justification for this?
2. What evidence do you have to support this?
3. You criticise dating-techniques yet why can't you give an exact measurement yourself?
Posts: 1571
Threads: 179
Joined: October 14, 2010
Reputation:
35
RE: How old is the Earth?
October 14, 2010 at 4:49 pm
An intelligent alien life form reading claims made by creationists, and only the claims made by creationists, might come to the conclusion that the 20th century never happened.
Posts: 19789
Threads: 57
Joined: September 24, 2010
Reputation:
85
RE: How old is the Earth?
October 14, 2010 at 5:08 pm
(October 14, 2010 at 4:49 pm)orogenicman Wrote: An intelligent alien life form reading claims made by creationists, and only the claims made by creationists, might come to the conclusion that the 20th century never happened.
Maybe they would conclude the creationists belong to a separate species.
Posts: 4535
Threads: 175
Joined: August 10, 2009
Reputation:
43
RE: How old is the Earth?
October 14, 2010 at 5:09 pm
That would just be the planet that Satan's angels fell to...
.
Posts: 1985
Threads: 12
Joined: October 12, 2010
Reputation:
24
RE: How old is the Earth?
October 14, 2010 at 6:20 pm
(This post was last modified: October 14, 2010 at 6:32 pm by Statler Waldorf.)
Posts: 1571
Threads: 179
Joined: October 14, 2010
Reputation:
35
RE: How old is the Earth?
October 14, 2010 at 6:52 pm
(This post was last modified: October 14, 2010 at 6:54 pm by orogenicman.)
Statler, you really should consider ending your argument because it is looking very foolish right now. First of all, his claim was that he could measure the circumference of the Earth with a yardstick (something anyone who knows how can do), not determine his longitude and latitude (which can also be done using simple tools). Secondly, any objective person would see creationism for what it truly is - an attempt to get the scientifically illiterate to believe that the Flintstones is a documentary. Scientists don't always agree. I would be concerned if they did. But there is no controversy to teach with regard to the age of the Earth, the theory of Evolution, or most other scientific theories. The world scientific community is in broad agreement on these issues.
As for your government science job, you still haven't told us what discipline it is in, and in what capacity you are working for us taxpaying citizens, or why we should believe you.
Quote:Well you have emperical evidence to support a conclusion. You do not have emperical proof that your conclusion is one hundred percent accurate.
No scientific endeavor is 100% accurate. But I do find it ironic that you insist on 100% accuracy when it comes to scientific claims, and yet would insist that we believe that "god did it" based on no evidence at all.
'The difference between a Miracle and a Fact is exactly the difference between a mermaid and seal. It could not be expressed better.'
-- Samuel "Mark Twain" Clemens
"I think that in the discussion of natural problems we ought to begin not with the scriptures, but with experiments, demonstrations, and observations".
- Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)
"In short, Meyer has shown that his first disastrous book was not a fluke: he is capable of going into any field in which he has no training or research experience and botching it just as badly as he did molecular biology. As I've written before, if you are a complete amateur and don't understand a subject, don't demonstrate the Dunning-Kruger effect by writing a book about it and proving your ignorance to everyone else! "
- Dr. Donald Prothero
Posts: 1211
Threads: 38
Joined: July 15, 2010
Reputation:
21
RE: How old is the Earth?
October 14, 2010 at 6:56 pm
(This post was last modified: October 14, 2010 at 6:57 pm by TheDarkestOfAngels.)
If today you can take a thing like evolution and make it a crime to teach in the public schools, tomorrow you can make it a crime to teach it in the private schools and next year you can make it a crime to teach it to the hustings or in the church. At the next session you may ban books and the newspapers...
Ignorance and fanaticism are ever busy and need feeding. Always feeding and gloating for more. Today it is the public school teachers; tomorrow the private. The next day the preachers and the lecturers, the magazines, the books, the newspapers. After a while, Your Honor, it is the setting of man against man and creed against creed until with flying banners and beating drums we are marching backward to the glorious ages of the sixteenth centry when bigots lighted fagots to burn the men who dared to bring any intelligence and enlightenment and culture to the human mind. ~Clarence Darrow, at the Scopes Monkey Trial, 1925
Politics is supposed to be the second-oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first. ~Ronald Reagan
Posts: 1985
Threads: 12
Joined: October 12, 2010
Reputation:
24
RE: How old is the Earth?
October 14, 2010 at 6:58 pm
(This post was last modified: October 14, 2010 at 7:05 pm by Statler Waldorf.)
(October 14, 2010 at 4:10 pm)Darwinian Wrote: Premise: Decay rates indicate that the Earth is ancient.
It seems to me that what you are surmising is that decay rates were massively accelerated right up to the point where science started observing and detecting them thus giving the impression that a 10,000 year old Earth was really 4.5 billion years old.
If this where the case then wouldn't most of the Earth's (short) history be incredibly radioactive?
Not really what I am saying. Decay rates have changed, we know this because different isochronic methods of dating yield different dates for the same rock. If decay rates were always constant each isochron should yield the same age, they don't. The biggest factor that would skew radiometric dating would be the presence of daughter elements at the time of Creation. This is why radiometric dating cannot be used to "disprove" a young Earth, it assumes something that would not be true if the Earth was young. Try and date a person (using their height and weight) using the same assumptions radio-metric dating uses and I guarantee your conclusion will be way off. Thanks for being civil though, makes thing way more fun I think.
(October 14, 2010 at 6:52 pm)orogenicman Wrote: Statler, you really should consider ending your argument because it is looking very foolish right now. First of all, his claim was that he could measure the circumference of the Earth with a yardstick (something anyone who knows how can do), not determine his longitude and latitude (which can also be done using simple tools). Secondly, any objective person would see creationism for what it truly is - an attempt to get the scientifically illiterate to believe that the Flintstones is a documentary. Scientists don't always agree. I would be concerned if they did. But there is no controversy to teach with regard to the age of the Earth, the theory of Evolution, or most other scientific theories. The world scientific community is in broad agreement on these issues.
As for your government science job, you still haven't told us what discipline it is in, and in what capacity you are working for us taxpaying citizens, or why we should believe you.
Quote:Well you have emperical evidence to support a conclusion. You do not have emperical proof that your conclusion is one hundred percent accurate.
No scientific endeavor is 100% accurate. But I do find it ironic that you insist on 100% accuracy when it comes to scientific claims, and yet would insist that we believe that "god did it" based on no evidence at all.
Haha, if my argument is foolish then I am sure you will be glad to enlighten us as to how you can deterimine the circumfrence of the Earth by only using a yard stick. Remember, only a yard stick.
I don't require 100 percent, just when someone mis-uses the word "proof" to mean something that is not 100 percent I will call them on it every time.
Nobody thinks the Flintstones is a documentary, that's like saying people who believe in life existing on other planets (i.e. Dawkins) think E.T. is a documentary. Funny how you guys only seem to be able to make your case by using strawman arguments. That is almost always the sign of a shaky position.
Posts: 1571
Threads: 179
Joined: October 14, 2010
Reputation:
35
RE: How old is the Earth?
October 14, 2010 at 7:05 pm
Quote:Not really what I am saying. Decay rates have changed, we know this because different isochronic methods of dating yield different dates for the same rock. If decay rates were always constant each isochron should yield the same age, they don't. The biggest factor that would skew radiometric dating would be the presence of daughter elements at the time of Creation. This is why radiometric dating cannot be used to "disprove" a young Earth, it assumes something that would not be true if the Earth was young. Try and date a person (using their height and weight) using the same assumptions radio-metric dating uses and I guarantee your conclusion will be way off. Thanks for being civil though, makes thing way more fun I think.
No, decay rates have not changed. There is no evidence whatsoever that they have. Thousands of laboratories the world over use radioactive dating of material samples, and have done so for decades with huge success. If you have proof that they are wasting their time and money, you should publish your peer reviewed paper pronto, so these labs won't wate their money on bogus science. Good luck with that.
'The difference between a Miracle and a Fact is exactly the difference between a mermaid and seal. It could not be expressed better.'
-- Samuel "Mark Twain" Clemens
"I think that in the discussion of natural problems we ought to begin not with the scriptures, but with experiments, demonstrations, and observations".
- Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)
"In short, Meyer has shown that his first disastrous book was not a fluke: he is capable of going into any field in which he has no training or research experience and botching it just as badly as he did molecular biology. As I've written before, if you are a complete amateur and don't understand a subject, don't demonstrate the Dunning-Kruger effect by writing a book about it and proving your ignorance to everyone else! "
- Dr. Donald Prothero
Posts: 4535
Threads: 175
Joined: August 10, 2009
Reputation:
43
RE: How old is the Earth?
October 14, 2010 at 7:07 pm
(October 14, 2010 at 6:58 pm)Statler Waldorf Wrote: Not really what I am saying. Decay rates have changed, we know this because different isochronic methods of dating yield different dates for the same rock.
Archilies heel fallacy, you claim knowledge of examples that are contrary to the expected outcome but provide no examples. What have you got in your bag of tricks here, a silly example about a snail dating to 25,000 years or other examples of creationist mucking of the actual results?
Decay rates have not changed, and the vast majority of experiments have confirmed this. Can you explain why the vast majority of results should be ignored?
.
|
