How old is the Earth?

[Statler Waldorf]

Well if the Earth is really 4.5 billion years old then you cannot "observe" that decay rates are constant because yoru observation is vastly too small and insignificant compared to the whole time period. Even if you could observe it for 100 years it would still only be 2.2X10^-11 percent of the total time. Even a curved line looks straight when you only observe an insignificant portion of it. So you're going to have to provide some other backing as to how you know those rates are constant.

Sit down and learn newbie.

Saying that a particle decays on average after 10^8 years also means that if you have a group 10^8 particles you will see one decay every year because even though the average particle decays ever 10^8 years, there is a probability that 1 in a set of 10^8 particles will decay in within 1 year, if you had 10^80 particles you would get 10 decays a year, and 10^800 100 decays, and this idea applies to all decay rates. That's not a hell of a lot of particles comparatively, you could quite easily measure decay rates to a really high degree of accuracy by seeing rate of decay in large sets of particles.

It seems unlikely that he would see your point when he could divide 1E2 by 4.5E9 and be 5 orders of magnitude off. Maybe he uses the new peer reviewed concept of non-isotropic division, able to solve many problem in the Big Bang theory, that is suitable for use on a earth 6000 years, give or take 5 orders of magnitude, old.

Nah, I just messed the syntax up. Simple mistake. Pointing this out does not change the argument any. It's like pointing out someone's bad grammar- if you have to do it to feel smart go ahead, but if proves nothing.

[orogenicman]

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.

Do you want me to post the same link? Ok, no problem. Read it this time:

http://www.sciencebuddies.org/science-fa...p018.shtml

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.

Surely you understand that measurements in science can only be approximate, whereas there is no precision whatsoever to the statement "god did it".

Nobody thinks the Flintstones is a documentary,

Haven't been keeping up with goings on in your own "creation" science, have you?

[Statler Waldorf]

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.

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?

You just tried to make an absolute statement that there is not such thing as absolutes. I love it when you guys use self-refuting logic.

I have not presented any evidence becaause this thread is designed to get at the heart of Old-Earth assumptions. Once we can all be intellecutally honest about the assumptions and the faith that goes itno the Old-Eearth position then we can finally begin to dance. I know what I am doing.

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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.

A superior one no doubt.

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That would just be the planet that Satan's angels fell to...

Satan does not have angels, and they didn't fall to any other planet. Maybe your guys' problem with Christianity is that you don't know what Christianity is?

[Zen Badger]

No more on anisotropic light speed?

Shame that, you have yet to show how it supports a young universe.

[theVOID]

Satan does not have angels, and they didn't fall to any other planet. Maybe your guys' problem with Christianity is that you don't know what Christianity is?

That was a joke in reference to a Plantinga argument.

I know full well what Christianity is, don't be so naive to think otherwise. I reject your conclusions not because I don't understand, but because I do understand it and see plainly that arguments for the existence of God do not come close to meeting my epistemological view of justified belief.

[orogenicman]

I know what I am doing.

We know what you are doing as well, and it is dishonest, to say the least. You claim to be a scientist, and yet fail to recognize one of the most fundamental aspects of the scientific method - the burden of proof. Who has to prove what to whom? The person making the extraordinary claim has the burden of proving to the experts and to the community at large that his or her belief has more validity than the one almost everyone else accepts. You have to lobby for your opinion to be heard. Then you have to marshal experts on your side so you can convince the majority to support your claim over the one they have always supported. Finally, when you are in the majority, the burden of proof switches to the outsider who wants to challenge you with his or her unusual claim. Evolutionary biologists had the burden of proof for half a century after Darwin, but now the burden of proof is on creationists. It is up to creationists to show why the theory of evolution is wrong and why creationism is right, and it is not up to the evolutionists to defend evolution. The burden of proof is on the Holocaust deniers to prove the Holocaust did not happen, not on Holocaust historians to prove that it did. The rationale for this is that mountains of evidence prove that both evolution and the Holocaust are facts, whereas all creationists have to offer in rebuttal is one poorly provenienced bronze age book. Sorry, but the Bible is not a science book, and so anyone trying to use it as such should consider therapy to cure them of their delusions. Finally, it is not enough to have the evidence. You must convince others of the validity of your evidence. And when you are an outsider this is the price you pay, regardless of whether you are right or wrong.

[theVOID]

Nah, I just messed the syntax up. Simple mistake. Pointing this out does not change the argument any. It's like pointing out someone's bad grammar- if you have to do it to feel smart go ahead, but if proves nothing.

False analogy, You used the false conclusion you reached to argue that we cannot measure decay rates because we are only around for a small portion of the average time of decay, bad grammar cannot be used to satisfy this end.

You can't have it both ways, either you accept your mistake and concede that we can know with a high degree of accuracy the average decay rates of various isotopes or you ignore all of the actual data and stick to your initial line of reasoning.

Too bad for you the former (and accurate) understanding shoots down your unsubstantiated belief in a young earth.

[Statler Waldorf]

Well at least you are honest enough to admit that you make up your mind on the validity of an argument BEFORE you read the argument lol.

I indeed dismiss creationist science as not science. I freely admit to creationist science as being an oxymoron.

As to your relativity argument, I already refuted that approach in another thread you posted on, so I see no need to do it again on here.

You indeed said it was untrue that relativity refuted my rebuttal, but you did not back up that claim with ... well... anything.

I love how you act like all secular scientists agree on every issue and it's only the creation guys who are marching out of step. Astronomers disagree on all sorts of issues, such as the existance of white holes and what happens when matter enters a black hole. Dr. Newton is part of the American Astronomical Society so I consider him a reputable source (unlike youtube).

Red Herring. I never made that presumption. We're talking about a specific set of issues - stop divering from the topic.

So without using any other measurement, only your little yard stick, can you tell us how you would know "where you were on the Earth"? So you could then do your calculations with your yard stick lol. Again, too insignificant of a measurement to conclude anything. Good try though, I do admire your effort on here, you give it more than most.

As you no doubt missed, I provided a link in that post pointing to how that actually works. I'll give you a hint: it involves geometry.
Although I suppose I made that link hard to find because I hid it inside of an underlined word that was a different color than the usual black.
Here it is: http://www.sciencebuddies.org/science-fa...p018.shtml

Now that I made my link plainly obvioius I should also note that that website is a website for students and that particular idea (measuring the earth's circumferance) is a science fair project idea. Thus, proving once again that you can refute creationist crap with a basic high school education, "Government Scientist."

Such hubris for such a pointless post. That just proves what the decay rate is at the time of the observation. If I am observing the growth of a 17 year old, and I conclude that if he is really growing an inch a year I should be able to observe 1/365 of an inch a day. If I do observe this, that only means that RIGHT NOW he is growing at a rate that will yield one inch of growth in one year. Does that mean this rate will stay constant? Absolutely not. Does that mean this rate has always been constant? Absolutely not. Does this mean that I can tell how old the teenager is by how fast he is growing now? Absolutely not. I hoped you learned something.

Actually, there are clear signs in the human body that a 17 year old's growth won't stay constant. Also, there are plenty of examples of humans at different stages of growth in which it would be easy to conclude what a person's average rate of growth would be from birth to death.
So yes, you can, in fact, learn the growth rate of a human at all stages of life without necessarily needing to observe an individual human grow from birth to death.

Hahahaha. I am seriously starting to worry about you. My whole point of the "Earth's Circumfrence" argument was to point out how small of an observable area you would have compared to the whole Earth's Circumfrence when compared to 100 years to 4.5 billion years. This shows how it would be impossible to conclude how far around the Earth is if you were only able to observe a tiny section of the Earth, (remember observing the sun is violating my initial premise since it is outside of your observable area). Then you go off on some crazy tangent about how you can actually measure the Earth's circumfrence using a yardstick. However, this was completely dishonest because the experiment actually uses the sun, not just a yardstick. It also uses loads of previous tested knowledge about the Earth's shape and it's relationship to the sun. This knowledge could not have been gathered by observing your tiny allowed area, so it can then in turn not be used in the experiment. So this experiment has nothing to do with my original point. You are given a linear image of 3.5 inches of the Earth's surface. Can you use this image, and only this image to tell me how big the Earth is? No of course you can't. To think, you get on me for deviating from the discussion at hand, pullease.

[Zen Badger]

So you've decided to drop anisotropic light, good move, It was a dumb idea to start with.

[Statler Waldorf]

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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.

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I noticed you just made an assertion and didn't address my argument. Typical. If decay rates are constant then why do different isocrons yield different ages on the same rock? Is that rock really three different ages at the same time? Geologists are well aware of this problem, they just throw out the younger ages and keep the oldest one becuase it fits their pre-conceived ideas. Why do you think you have to identify which layer of strata a sample was collected from when you send it to the lab? So they can throw out the dates that don't match! Simple stuff.

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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?

Different isochrons yielding different ages for the same rock is a common occurance. The final age is determined by which layer of Strata the sample was found in. This is basic basic stuff here. Decay rates have changed, everyone knows that.