How do you know God isn't dead?

[pocaracas]

Ah, Stat... I almost missed this post of yours, today...

---

I mean, if you only accept measurements of age that reveal short ages for the Earth's rocks and fossils, how are they measured?

There really isn’t a way to date sedimentary rock real accurately; you could date the fossils using known rates of soft tissue and DNA decay I suppose. You could still get ranges for their ages though based on how old we know the Earth is and when the flood took place.

Yes, sedimentary rock is not easily datable. But high bounds for the date can be found... Of course, these will always produce larger numbers than the real date of the sediment, but it's a start.
Didn't I link you something about layers of non-sedimentary rock in between which enable a more accurate dating by imposing both upper and lower bounds? Maybe it's a bit further down....

And that is why creationists expect to find fossils which aren't there...

I do not think they expect to find any fossils that are not there, fossilization is a very rare process.

Yes, it's a rare process, but we still manage to have Natural History museums filled with specimens.
Have you ever tried visiting one of them?

common creator... yeah, we can't also exclude the possibility that we were created overnight, with all our memories already inbuilt, so as to make it indiscernible from having been born and raised the way we have.

Descartes' malicious demon? Sure that’s a possibility but I think the nature of evidence and a lot of evidence itself points to Yahweh.

What evidence? If magic is allowed, evidence is falsifiable... like dino bones left all around the planet just to mess with us.

Why do you discard the answer that is right in front of you, and replace it with the super assumption of a creator thing?

I didn’t discard anything. We both agree animals share similar genetic coding and morphologic structures, I believe that’s because they have a common creator, you believe it’s because they have a common ancestor; both explanations could explain the evidence in question.

For someone who seems so against storytelling, you sure believe in a tall tale.

aye... have you heard of a storytelling book which some proponents claim to have science in it... what was it called?... arrgggg...

The Bible is a book that makes some scientific claims, it’s not a science book though, not unlike the Origin of Species

No, that's not it... another one... I think it starts with q, or k... argghhhh

The ability to solve practical problems, develop tools, develop a social structure is probably the same ability which allows us to solve mathematical problems, develop theories, develop new tools...
Wouldn't you agree?

If you are suggesting Humans have always been as intelligent as they are today, then I agree. However, I do not believe that is something Darwinists believe to be the case.

Yes, humans are as intelligent as they were in the stone age. As long as it's homo sapiens. Problem solving abilities are essentially the same. Imagine yourself in a desert island, no access to any technology... you'd probably develop the same solution they developed all those eons ago.
I think Hollywood has been there and done that, as well...

I don't... it's not my field of study.
I leave that to those who do study it.
Here's two simple explanations of how they do it:
How do scientists determine the age of dinosaur bones?
Radiometric Dating

I knew they couldn’t date sedimentary rock with radiometric dating. It appears the entire system is built upon a dating method that has no empirically verifiable control; that just seems incredibly sloppy. How do you explain the fact that they dated moon rocks to be 4.5 billion years old but the moon would have been touching the Earth 1.37 billion years ago? That right there seems to disprove the method’s validity.

Ah, the way to date rocks... I knew I had put up these links.

First off, the moon... where did you hear such ludicrous number?
Here's a more credible source:http://scienceline.ucsb.edu/getkey.php?key=373

The moon was indeed touching the Earth about 4 billion years ago. In fact, Earth and Moon were formed from a collision of a Mars-size planet (proto-Moon) and a Venus-size planet (proto-Earth).

Now, you want a verifiable method. Well, we could date the sun.
How? Knowing the rate at which the fusion reaction occurs, calculating that, at the start you have the whole sun composed of hydrogen nuclei, use some mass spectroscopy to figure out how much of hydrogen and helium you have in the sun now and bam.... an age of about 5 billion years comes out... Now if only we could repeat this for other stars?... well we can? please do it! Ah, but it's only valid for stars close enough, because other galaxies are moving away, and we get some red shift and we'd also need to account for the time that their light took to reach us... well, astrophysicists haven't been idle, so they gave us those numbers and place the oldest visible stars at some 13~14 billion years old. Rendering our sun a second generation star, which it would have to be, if it was to have rocky planets around it. This means that the star that blew up and provided our sun with it's fuel lasted for less than 8 billion years...
makes sense, if it was larger leading to a faster burn rate. That star would also have fused together all the other heavier elements, like Carbon, Silicon, Oxygen, Phosphorous, Iron... building blocks of life, you see?
There you have a picture of the (old) universe.... and our sun at 5 billion years...
It would make sense for the planets to form some time later... well what-do-you-know?! 4 billion years ago is the time for the moon to split...
3.5 billion for the first life forms to leave fossils.

So yeah... the (old Earth) picture is confirmed by other dating methods. Not just radiometric dating. Now tell me how they're all wrong... -.-'

Why do you reject the methods that yield old ages?

For the same reasons you reject the ones that yield young ages I suppose.

what, I what?!
I think carbon dating is a very competent dating mechanism.
It has it's limits, just like any other mechanism. SO we need to be aware of such limits when analyzing any sample.

You know, there are humans who are born with an extra chromosome.

Yes, and they’d never survive on their own.

would you?

Seeing as humans are among the species with the most DNA information, it seems quite easy to add new information.

That’s begging the question though, you’re using your assumption that Humans appeared later than most other animals to justify the belief that natural selection can create new genetic information. I am saying we never observe natural selection producing new genetic information (I can think of one possible exception), so it’s unreasonable to think that it did it trillions of times in the Earth’s past. However, if it didn’t do it trillions of times in the Earths’ past all life could not have originated from a single common ancestor.

I didn't want to bring this up just yet, but you leave me no choice...
Dinosaurs. There are fossils of them... some are damn good. All are dated to between 230 and 65 million years ago.
If all species were created at the same time by a single creator, then it stands to reason that dinos and humans walked the earth side by side.... Can you imagine it, T-Rex Vs human settlement?.. oh the horror... I don't think dinos would be extinct, but rather humans...
So yes, I think humans came well after dinos. Heck, most mammals wouldn't be able to survive dinos' thick coating, large size, extreme power... just wouldn't be possible.

Now imagine you take an organism that has only 2 or 3 chromosomes.... What would change if it was born with an extra one?

But how was it born with an extra one? You’ll have to be more specific.

How do humans appear with an extra chromosome? I guess a similar mechanism could already be in place on simple organisms, no?... as I've said before, I'm no biologist, so I have no idea how many chromosomes are required for a sexual species.

What is this thing you call "genetic entropy"?
And why would it yield "catastrophic effects"?

Well without going into too much detail; the Human genome has been observed to degenerate 3-5% per generation due to harmful mutations within the code. That rate seems to be fairly consistent amongst the higher ordered animals. If the genome degenerates too much, it will eventually experience gene catastrophe, where the species will simply die off. So how can a species such as the crocodile survive for 200 million years (over 50 million generations) all the while experiencing 3-5% genetic degeneration per generation and remain unchanged and unharmed? It seems impossible.

3-5% per generation?
Are you seriously considering this?
10 generations and you could get 50% degeneration..... 20 generations and total chaos... Tell me, do you accept that humans existed 20 generation ago?... That's about (1 generation every 30 years [high estimate, I know]) ~600 years ago!

You seem to be unable to postulate a selective pressure or group of selective pressures that would develop modern day human cognitive abilities in primitive man.

I know this was for Rythm, but heck... I'll have a go at postulating some crap.

From homo habilis, to homo sapiens, the selective pressures must have been many, but it seems that the ability to make better tools to solve the hunting problem a bit faster, the ability to work in teams to solve the same problem, the ability to feed the family, the ability to simplify the family's life would be desirable traits which required an ever expanding dexterity, and problem solving ability, for as you become an expert hunter, so do prey develop tricks to evade you. Farming and cattle raising ended all that.. some 10~20 thousands of years ago.

we pin all of this on, depends on who you ask. One camp says standing upright, another figures that language and communication would have done the trick.

Yup, more storytelling. They do not know how evolution did it but they have faith that it did it.

For someone who dismisses storytelling with such ease.... I find it strange that you accept so strongly a story told to you by other people.... the god myth, the yahweh one, in particular, the christian version.... which denomination was it that you followed?

---

damn... these replies are getting too large. Why is it always like this with you?!
TLDR: other methods for dating the Earth are presented besides radiometric... will you dismiss those too?