How do you know God isn't dead?

[Statler Waldorf]

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....

No you did, and I did read it, but since they have no empirically verifiable control for their radiometric dating system I do not feel any obligation to accept its results.

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?

Yup, I have been to the Museum of Natural History, Oregon Museum of Science and Industry, and the Smithsonian, they are all very interesting.

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

I am not sure what you mean by magic, but God upholds His creation in a predictable and uniform matter unless revealed otherwise, so science and evidence is possible.

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

Not at all, the common creator inference is very applicable in many branches of science, there’s no rule that it cannot be applied in Biology.

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

No idea.

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.

We agree on something! *trumpets sound*

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).

No, I am sorry that just doesn’t work out.

1. Due to tidal friction slowing the Earth’s rotation, the Moon is receding away from the Earth at a rate of nearly 4 cm a year (according to NASA). Due to angular momentum this rate recession has been decelerating meaning the Moon’s recession would have been far greater in the past. Even if this rate were constant the Moon would have been touching the Earth 1.37 billion years ago, not 4 billion years ago. The laws of physics makes this problem very clear cut.
2. The Giant Impact hypothesis has some rather fatal flaws, including the fact that the Moon’s iron content is not consistent with being created by an impact, the mass of the impacting object required is far too great (the resulting debris must escape the Earth’s Roche Limit in order to to coalesce and form the Moon), the absence of rings formed by the debris that landed within the Roche Limit, and the absence of any magma lake created by the impact.

So you have a dating method suggesting the Moon is three times older than we know it could be.

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...

So many assumptions my friend; however, that’s not what I meant by empirically verifiable controls, what I meant was accurately dating rocks of empirically known age. Empirical Science requires direct observation and repeatability. You have none with radiometric dating, it’s all extrapolation based off of assumptions.

There you have a picture of the (old) universe.... and our sun at 5 billion years...

That assumes that the one way speed of light is the same as the round trip speed of light divided by 2, that’s not a testable assumption, although I am not sure I want to open up that can of worms in this thread.

3.5 billion for the first life forms to leave fossils.

How did the first life form? Magic?

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

Well, all of them conveniently sneak in untestable assumptions and are not based upon anything empirically verifiable.

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.

What limits are those? When it conflicts with radiometric dating?

would you?

Most likely, I am very proficient in the woods.

I didn't want to bring this up just yet, but you leave me no choice...

Uh oh….

Dinosaurs. There are fossils of them... some are damn good. All are dated to between 230 and 65 million years ago.

Except the ones that have soft tissue and DNA since those cannot survive for more than 4 million years, right?

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...

Not all species were created at the same time, but all of the major kinds of animals were. But yes Humans and Dinosaurs would have coexisted, I see no issue with that, there are numerous animals we coexist with today that are dangerous to Humans (Grizzlies).

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.

I think you overestimate how dangerous Dinosaurs would have been, many scientists today question whether T-Rex (who was most likely a scavenger) could have even run because of his body proportions, there’s a reason they went extinct.

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.

Well when Humans appear with an extra chromosome it seriously jacks the system all up, I am not aware of any observed cases where it doesn’t make the organism incredibly unfit for survival.

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!

No that’s not quite how the percentages work; Humans have been around for fewer than 250 generations which is fine given the rates of genetic entropy, it’s doubtful they’d last another 250 generations though.

The 3-5% rate is taken from the following study though…

Crow’s “The high spontaneous mutation rate: Is it a health risk?” published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences number 94

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

Postulate away…

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.

Sure, that’s possible, but why are we assuming the cognition needed to do those things is the same that is needed to derive or integrate an equation?

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?

I reject storytelling masquerading as empirical science, that’s why I am so hard on Darwinism. I have logical reasons as to why I believe scripture is infallible; I have no such reasons to believe in Darwinism.

I don't enjoy seeing a grown man refusing a story backed by science, but then following some other story backed by.... nothing?wishful thinking?indoctrination?

Stories about dinosaurs turning into birds, Helium into other elements, and life arising from non-life are not science to me, it’s all mythology. I have logical reasons for believing what I believe.

But it seems you missed what I wrote, maybe you thought I was only quoting you in that hide tag...

Yup, I totally missed your response in there, good catch. I was wondering why you appeared to ignore everything I wrote.