How do you know God isn't dead?

[pocaracas]

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.

So you think that a radiometric dating system is faulty at its core?
Or do you just think that the radioactive decay of a given long lived nucleus doesn't follow the same sort of rule as a short lived nucleus? This would lead you to accept carbon dating, but not uranium dating.


An alternative method for dating rock is using plate tectonics and the measurable rate at which continents are drifting apart... of course, assuming they've been drifting at a constant pace (will you claim that they drifted much much faster at the start so to make it seem as if they took millions of years to drift at a constant velocity?).
Plate tectonics also helps to account for the finding of similar fossils in continents now separated by oceans... and they have all been radiometrically dated in such a way that is consistent with constant tectonic drift.

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.

"inference"... yes, you keep changing the name of it to convince yourself that others do assumptions and you don't... -.-'

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.

ok, I admit I kind of doubted my sanity a bit with that one...
But your model does not account for ice ages, where all the water is locked and that mechanism doesn't exist, thus bringing the moon a bit closer.
Now, how many ice ages has the planet seen? How often?

But radiometric methods yield the same age for the moon and Earth. Consistency is good.

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.

The link I gave you provided a collision of a mars sized rock with a venus sized one... That's looks pretty large. And don't forget, at this time, these rocks are still quite hot and malleable... think Earth's core, lava.
The debris must not have gone that far out and was attracted to both resulting bodies.

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

Methinks your method has some shortcomings that need addressing.

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.

Assumptions?
QM tells us the rate of fusion reactions.
Mass spectrometry tells us how much of each element the Sun has.
Plug one into the other and voilá. I don't see assumptions.

For rock datings... yeah.. I already mentioned plate tectonics.
And radioactive decay is quite accurate.... also coming from QM.

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.

What 2 way!?
Only one way required for spectrometry.... -.-'

3.5 billion for the first life forms to leave fossils.

How did the first life form? Magic?

I don't know.
Are you going to tell me I should accept some storytelling book written in the neolithic?

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.

At least they are consistent among themselves.
And (at least) two consistent independent measurements of the same thing, sure hint at an accurate measurement by both.

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?

Carbon dating IS radiometric dating...
Get your facts straight!

would you?

Most likely, I am very proficient in the woods.

Who said anything about woods? BUHAHAHAHAHAH!

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

Uh oh….

I can smell the piss...

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?

oh, soft tissue in dinos? dino DNA?... what is this, jurassic park?
Here, read about those "soft tissues": http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-na...osaur.html

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).

Oh, a new insight into creation... not all at the same time... Where did you get this info?

Look at the evolutionary idea: apes evolve in the safety of trees, as it becomes safer to walk the land, they descend and get nimble at walking up straight, because, at that particular geographic location, there are very few, if any, predators.
Story-telling at it's finest.... dinos and 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.

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.

It wasn't just the large ones that went extinct, so the reason must have been deeper than that.

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.

I'm not aware of any cases where it happens in other species, so there... I don't know.

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

Interesting paper...
Didn't read the whole thing, but I did read some particular bits:
- mutations arise primarily from the father zygote, given that the father produces millions of sperm per day, the odds of some error are greater than on the mother's side, who produced all the zygotes before birth... this checks out with something I read recently that stated that there are more autistic kids from older fathers than from younger ones. IF you're over 35, you have a higher tendency to produce an autistic child than if you're 20.
- Deleterious mutations are removed from the population in about 80 generations.
- On the other hand, there's this gem "In [...] people, recessive mutations may persist for thousands of generations. "

Thousands of generations.... and yet you claimed that "Humans have been around for fewer than 250 generations "... Another piece of your story that doesn't add up. Care to produce some evidence for this 250 number?
Or should I just take your word for it?

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

Postulate away…

I like postulating... it's like assuming, but it's a fancier word.
But I'm very bad at making stuff up....

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?

Why would it not be? This was my postulation, I get to make up the rules!

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 have logical reasons to assume any scripture is man-made and, as such, fallible.
I have logical reasons to give credence to the theory of evolution, in spite of it being fallible.

Both can be viewed as storytelling, but one is based on actual empirical (since you like that word) findings... the other, on myth.
And myth... well, there are many mythologies... yours is just one more.

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.

The mechanism which generated life still eludes science, so any such mechanism you do hear about is storytelling, hypothesizing.
Which hypothesis is correct... we'll see when we see. Until then, the best course of action is not assume anything.

Concerning the evolution of dinosaurs int o birds... it took quite a lot of time for that to happen and it is based on feather-like imprints found in some fossils, so there's some reason to that.

Turning helium into other (heavier) elements is something known as Nuclear Fusion, which opposes nuclear fission, whereby the nucleus would be torn apart resulting in lighter elements.
I believe you've heard of nuclear power plants, no?... they operate on the fission principle.
You've heard of Little Boy? That one used fusion, of hydrogen into helium... that's why it was called a hydrogen bomb.
Nuclear fusion and fission are real processes that affect our daily lives, one way or another. They are not myths.
I pity your logic that dismisses reality in favor of a story written some 2 thousand years ago by people who knew no better.

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.

hehe, when I decide to ignore what you write, I'll say something like: "That was utter BS which warrants no reply whatsoever. Lay off the kool aid."

Well, you could start laying off it...