Evidence against creation

[Neber]

Hi all to be honest i'm here to collect some evidence surrounding evidence against creation from the Atheist and scientific point of view. Hopefully this doesn't put you off but i've recently listened to the creationist talk at church about evidence of Dinosaurs within last 6000 years, evidence of flood through tectonic plates leading to Mt Ararat(showing that land masses literally moved upwards from the surface) and also inaccuracy and uses of Carbon dating only to within the the last 25000-50000 years or so.

Anyways I'd like to list the main points i heard spoken about and would love to hear the current scientific evidence against such points, mainly strong evidence but i'm also interested in any theories which could present a possible but not a proven reason why it disproves those points. Anyways i'm interested in the scientific evidence and findings and not about an argument so to speak. I just want to see the other side's view.

So here are the main points that you can feel free to provide scientific evidence against:

• Carbon dating has inaccuracies, where pyroclastic flows and volcanic activities have showed a volcano explosion dated at 23.7 million years whereas it only occured in the last 200 years.
  
• Carbon dating relies on C-14 with calculations dependent on trees accurate to what i've found 14,000 years and possible use of coral reefs beyond that to determine carbon dates. My question is how can you carbon date to the millions or billions of years? What techniques does science use alongside carbon-dating, how can the substantiate the 50000+ years dates of historical evidence if it only can accurately go to 50,000. I've read that fossils rely on the rock and sediments around it, but does this use carbon-dating? What am i missing here?
  
• For Evidence with dinosaurs, Alexander the great wrote in his diary of an experience with a huge animal with eyes as big as a shield. An asian temple has a picture of a fleshed out brachisarausBrachiasaurus, how did they come up with this besides imagination, something so accurate as a carving on their temple, and again the points from creationists have been that carbon-dating and the effects of floods affecting the carbon in the atmosphere leads to a re-calibration of fossil dating being drastically cut back to recent times from what i've heard. Also they've found the existence of soft-tissue within dinosaurs this seems to prove in theory they're far more recent than we expected, what's the refutation for this?
  
• Lastly the evidence for the flood whilst seemingly more of a stretch was that in the bible it says:

  The mountains rose; the valleys sank down
  To the place which You established for them.

  So according to this the earth needed to rise and from what i heard that evidence for this is that alot of the tectonic plates actually line up with Mt Ararat where Noah landed so if the earth were to rise it lines up with Noah landing at Mt Ararat. Also evidence at Mt Everest that water and a layer of dirt was found shows evidence of the flood which you may heard of. And the last of that evidence was talking about how the Grand Canyons and similar type structures exist because of water-formations, and a flood seems to explain that very well.
  

Anyways feel free to refute and provide evidence especially scientific evidence and theories or common refutations against this evidence above. You may think i'm naive having this viewpoint but proving it with your evidence would be of great value.

[SteelCurtain]

All of the answers to your questions are here:
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/

If you are interested in the facts and not discussion, that's all I can do for you.



Also, "evolutionist" is a term only used by people who wish to start a conversation with a passive aggressive jab. Don't be that person.

[Esquilax]

Hi all to be honest i'm here to collect some evidence surrounding evidence against creation from the Evolutionist and the Atheist point of view.

Well, that's good: investigation is never bad. However, one quick tip: "Evolutionist," is not a word. It's not even a thing; it's a dishonest rhetorical tactic employed by creationists to try and equate acceptance of evolution with a religious position. I'd suggest rejecting the term outright; acceptance of gravity doesn't make you a Gravitationalist, after all.

Hopefully this doesn't put you off but i've recently listened to the creationist talk at church about evidence of Dinosaurs within last 6000 years, evidence of flood through tectonic plates leading to Mt Ararat(showing that land masses literally moved upwards from the surface) and also inaccuracy and uses of Carbon dating only to within the the last 25000-50000 years or so.

Well, that is off-putting, but only insofar as creationists always tend to, you know, lie, when they talk about this subject. Dishonesty is off-putting.

[*]Carbon dating has inaccuracies, where pyroclastic flows and volcanic activities have showed a volcano explosion dated at 23.7 million years whereas it only occured in the last 200 years.

Let me ask you this: where did the matter that makes up the pyroclastic flow come from? Did it pop into existence 200 years ago? Or did it exist before then, just in a different form that ended up within the volcano?

Now consider this: carbon dating measures the age of the materials, not the current state of the materials.

[*]Carbon dating relies on C-14 with calculations dependent on trees accurate to what i've found 14,000 years and possible use of coral reefs beyond that to determine carbon dates. My question is how can you carbon date to the millions or billions of years? What techniques does science use alongside carbon-dating, how can the substantiate the 50000+ years dates of historical evidence if it only can accurately go to 50,000. I've read that fossils rely on the rock and sediments around it, but does this use carbon-dating? What am i missing here?

What you're missing is that carbon dating is just one of a number of radiometric dating methods that are available to us. Other dating methods can reach back further, and through the use of all of them together, we can get a hold on a really rather impressive range of dates.

[*]For Evidence with dinosaurs, Alexander the great wrote in his diary of an experience with a huge animal with eyes as big as a shield.

There are no other large animals but dinosaurs?

An asian temple has a picture of a fleshed out brachisarausBrachiasaurus, how did they come up with this besides imagination, something so accurate as a carving on their temple,

That's not a dinosaur, more likely it's a pig or some other farm animal; note the exterior ears, which no dinosaur has. Also note that the pattern on its back- you're thinking of a Stegosaurus, not a Brachiosaur, by the way. The things along its back are reminiscent of the spines- is a recurring pattern throughout the carving, not a specific part of the figure itself. It's quite simply not a dinosaur carving, and even if it was, that's not evidence against evolution: why would it be?

Also they've found the existence of soft-tissue within dinosaurs this seems to prove in theory they're far more recent than we expected, what's the refutation for this?

The refutation is that this is a lie: the tissue was found fossilized, and rehydrated after discovery to become "soft." Additionally, it isn't even known if this is original tissue of something added later.

[*]Lastly the evidence for the flood whilst seemingly more of a stretch was that in the bible it says:

The mountains rose; the valleys sank down
To the place which You established for them.

So according to this the earth needed to rise and from what i heard that evidence for this is that alot of the tectonic plates actually line up with Mt Ararat where Noah landed so if the earth were to rise it lines up with Noah landing at Mt Ararat. Also evidence at Mt Everest that water and a layer of dirt was found shows evidence of the flood which you may heard of. And the last of that evidence was talking about how the Grand Canyons and similar type structures exist because of water-formations, and a flood seems to explain that very well.

Considering that there are layers of the geologic column, consistent and continuous, that are seasonal or windblown in ways that would be impossible during a worldwide flood, it doesn't even matter if this is true: it is literally impossible that the flood happened, so presenting stuff that maybe lines up with the old story if you squint is simply irrelevant.

[The Reality Salesman01]

Okay, thanks buddy. Way to smash the entire thing on your own!..selfish bitch.


...next thread!

[Neber]

Thanks for your response Esquilax.

My apologies for mislabelling you guys, maybe i should have avoided using any labels to begin with. Anyways i've just changed it to scientific point of view at this time.

Thinking about what you said.

Let me ask you this: where did the matter that makes up the pyroclastic flow come from? Did it pop into existence 200 years ago? Or did it exist before then, just in a different form that ended up within the volcano?

Now consider this: carbon dating measures the age of the materials, not the current state of the materials.

Yeah this is a very interesting thing i was thinking about. How would the formation or in a sense reformation of rock determine the real age of the rock. St Helens seems the closest to this event, but the numbers don't seem to match up with what i heard. Anyways it has similar results, where a team measured in through some methods, however dubious it was, and though it occurred within this century, the dating set it from 0.35 - 2 million years old.

Anyways getting to the point, since i couldn't find too much argument against wrongly dating the rocks due to already being formed i assume there when it undergoes volcanic activity it heats up so much that the actual structure of the rocks changes completely to essentially being formed again at its core but i could be wrong. Regardless though, the dating measurements should show in millions or billions of years according to the current estimates on the age of earth according to current measurements, though i definitely think there's something more complex going on here? My lack of knowledge on the formation of rocks leaves much to be desired here though.

Another interesting thing to think about would be how do they determine the formation of rocks, i'd assume all rocks should be in essence the age of the earth at ~4.8 billion years, yet they use rock and sediment around dinosaur fossils to determine the dinosaur ages, measured in the millions of years generally, would be interesting to find the science behind this.

There are no other large animals but dinosaurs?

Animals with the eyes the size of a greek shield would lend itself to being a dinosaur, that was the recount of Alexander the great. Elephants are what the biggest, otherwise it'd need to be a large sea creature, but the instance of Alexander the great's was that his army was walking through a foreign nation and those people referred an animal with huge eyes and told them not to annoy it, but as Alexander's Army marched across the valley they heard a huge roar and were terrified, and some had sighted the great beast.

A quick link to a brief on that account Alexander encounters a great beast

That's not a dinosaur, more likely it's a pig or some other farm animal; note the exterior ears, which no dinosaur has. Also note that the pattern on its back- you're thinking of a Stegosaurus, not a Brachiosaur, by the way. The things along its back are reminiscent of the spines- is a recurring pattern throughout the carving, not a specific part of the figure itself. It's quite simply not a dinosaur carving, and even if it was, that's not evidence against evolution: why would it be?

That picture if it depicts a dinosaur and is not somehow from an artists imagination would just be evidence that dinosaurs roamed within the last 6000 years, throwing out general thinking that they exist only million years ago. The topic is mores evidence against creation not against evolution, since imo creationist evidence is far less abundant seemingly at this stage.

The refutation is that this is a lie: the tissue was found fossilized, and rehydrated after discovery to become "soft." Additionally, it isn't even known if this is original tissue of something added later.

Interesting. I could only find this occurrence with the T-rex they found of possible soft tissue, so it doesn't seem to point anyway.

[vorlon13]

The Hindus, IIRC, aren't on board with Christian creationism either. They have their own version of things (I think turtles are prominent, and some elephants too, really, really big ones) and I'm assuming the thread starter is 100% convinced the Hindus have it all wrong, despite their equal level of sincerity of belief as compared to his in regards to creationism.

If someone would post that interesting picture of Jesus looking over all 30 billion lightyears worth of Big Bang universe and beseeching all of us to not masturbate, I think it would add that special touch this thread is lacking so far.

Thank you.

[robvalue]

Hi welcome

The rest of the guys have this covered already, I see. We got some kickass peeps here.

The bottom line is: creationists talk shit. They twist stuff, outright lie, use any logical fallacy you like, and deny reality. If you study the actual science and avoid apologist websites, this will become very quickly apparent. They're a dying breed, because the newer generation isn't as easily fooled by nonsense easily refuted on Google.

We have some creationists and evolution deniers on here, I'm sure they'll be along shortly to tell me how stupid I am and that there's no evidence for evolution.

---

http://youtu.be/IBHEsEshhLs

[AFTT47]

Neber, I would suggest that debating creationists is about as productive as debating flat-earthers. Evolution is an established fact. There is nothing to debate. Anyone denying evolution is irrational - at least on that subject - and is not going to be open to facts. Your research will be useful for educating people who are willing to learn though. Some people will genuinely not understand or be suffering from indoctrination and they might be reached. I suggest approaching it from that angle. Educate the willing but don't dignify a creationist with debate.

[Brian37]

All religions need to drop this tactic. If you think Christianity is the only to attempt to attack science you'd be wrong. If you think you are the only to attempt to co opt science when you cant debunk it, you would be wrong. I have run into Muslims and Jews and Hindus that try to pull the same crap.

How about this. How about humans make up gods?

No current religion of any kind was arround 200,000 years ago, much less 4 billion years ago, much less 14 billion years ago. Billions of years from now our species will be extinct, if not sooner. The planet's core will eventually run out of energy and all life on this planet will die. The sun also will end at some point, and the universe will go on with out a record or care that humans ever existed, and all our religions and human concocted gods will go extinct with us.

Evolution is fact. It is not my fault some scientifically ignorant people in antiquity wrote such an ignorant book and falsely sold it as fact. Men do not magically pop out of dirt. Women do not magically come from a man's rib. Donkeys snakes and bushes do not talk. There is no such thing as a magic baby and human flesh does not survive rigor mortis.

We do not need your god, or any for that matter anymore than you need Thor to explain lightening or Poseidon to explain hurricanes.

[The Reality Salesman01]

After reading what Esquillax wrote, the only thing to say that won't make him a complete wanker is something like:

"huh...I guess you're right. That shit I said was pretty dumb after all. Thanks!"

But alas...i fear he may opt for the wanker route.