Old Earth & Young Earth Creationism

Originally posted by RJHinds
[b]Dr. John Baumgardner Discusses Evidence for a Young Earth

John Baumgardner PhD, is geophysicist. Dr. Baumgardner was employed at one of the most prestigious research institutes -- Los Alamos National Laboratory, in New Mexico. He has developed a 3D computer program called TERRA which models Earth's plate tectonics. This was such an important and u ...[text shortened]... those committed to material causes will dismiss the evidence.

[youtube]bNcLmHtCjqw[/youtube][/b]

I watched the video to the end. Dr. B is articulate, I will give him that, and the moderator kept the conversation on course. Better quality than most of the tubeyou videos we have been served here, I must say.

For those who may not bother to watch the whole thing, I will summarize here: Dr. B notes that there are two ‚internal clocks’ for measuring the age of rocks: a) the degradation of uranium to lead, and b) the leaching out of helium. The discrepancy between the two is great: that for uranium-to-lead seems to yield ranges in billions of years, whereas that of helium only thousands. Dr. B contends that in the core samples he and his team examined, the uranium date suggested an age of 1.5 billion years, whereas there was so much helium left in them that, if the rocks were a billion years old all the helium should long since have leaked out and none would be left. But there was still helium left. The two internal clocks don’t agree. So which one is correct?

Dr. B claims that the rate of decay of uranium to lead is not constant, that in times past the decay rate was much faster (he cited no evidence of this or research confirming the claim). This leads to inflated estimates, he claims. Whereas the helium-leak rate, so he claims, is constant, and, moreover, agrees with the YEC thesis.

For the other side of the argument, see this:

http://www.oldearth.org/rate_index.htm

Criticisms include challenging the research methods, challenging the purity of core samples (contamination etc.), lack of diversity of core samples (they were taken from a single site), and noting that the RATE project is beholden to fund-givers to produce a pre-ordained result.

One article criticizing the RATE project result states that the helium-leak rate is temperature-dependent; we’re talking about core samples taken from two and a half miles deep in the Earth’s crust, where temperatures are high, thus materially affecting the leak-rate. For details, see:

http://www.oldearth.org/RATE_critique_he-zr.htm

The RATE project also provided no evidence against other means of dating deep-time phenomena (such as genetic drift in living matter or redshift in starlight).

Mind you, these criticisms come from Old Earth Creationists, not atheists.

Originally posted by moonbus
I watched the video to the end. Dr. B is articulate, I will give him that, and the moderator kept the conversation on course. Better quality than most of the tubeyou videos we have been served here, I must say.

For those who may not bother to watch the whole thing, I will summarize here: Dr. B notes that there are two ‚internal clocks’ for measuring the a ...[text shortened]... ift in starlight).

Mind you, these criticisms come from Old Earth Creationists, not atheists.

I went round and round stuff like this a few years back with Hinny, my prediction:

Your critique will be put down with just a poo poo, you are wrong and we are right.

You haven't figured out that is his MO?

There was another splash with a video that supposedly invalidated the old age of Earth:

http://apps.usd.edu/esci/creation/age/content/creationist_clocks/polonium_halos.html

And this, the refutation showing that creationist was full of shyte:

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/po-halos/gentry.html

I reiterated this for your benefit. It did no good, they (creationists) are right, scientists who age Earth very old are wrong. Period, end of discussion. Or what happened, ever more bullshyte weaponized creationist video's with a political agenda.

Originally posted by sonhouse
The claim is this deity made the universe look old by creating every photon in place to be seen on Earth the instant stars were created, create a star 6000 light years away, fill space with the photons that star would be emitting and now we have a star created yesterday looking like it was 6000 years old. ... SURE, that's logical, isn't it?

As twhitehead pointed out earlier, if God created the light from distant stars already underway, or 'in transit' as it were, then there's no need for stars to be out there in space at all; we just see the light, but there aren't any stars behind it.

It's perilously close to George Berkeley's philosophy that physical objects don't exist, we just experience visual-images which we interpret to be external objects, and when we think we are kicking rocks we are merely having resistance-proprioception sensations in our minds (we don't have legs, not physical ones anyway). It's a mad mad mad mad world when you come to doubt your senses.

Originally posted by sonhouse
You haven't figured out that is his MO?

I know what to expect and I don't expect to chop his head off at the neck.

I'm waiting till he sticks his neck out so far that his head falls off of its own weight.

Originally posted by moonbus
I know what to expect and I don't expect to chop his head off at the neck.

I'm waiting till he sticks his neck out so far that his head falls off of its own weight.

Good luck on that one, his neck is like a brontosaurus. Did you read my above bit about your critique?

Originally posted by sonhouse
Good luck on that one, his neck is like a brontosaurus. Did you read my above bit about your critique?

I read it but have not looked at the linked pages. Bed time for me. I'll log on again tomorrow. Good night.

Originally posted by twhitehead
In the other thread you stated that no empirical data for earths age exists. Was that a lie or is this a lie?

You misunderstood again. I said the following:

There are no science papers proving the age of the earth because that is outside empirical scientific papers. One must determine the age of the earth through historical data, logic, and revelation from the Creator.

You ignored the word proving there. There has been empirical data gathered to support a calculated 6,000 year old earth as well as several billion years old. But they both fall short of proving the age of the earth.

Originally posted by moonbus
I watched the video to the end. Dr. B is articulate, I will give him that, and the moderator kept the conversation on course. Better quality than most of the tubeyou videos we have been served here, I must say.

For those who may not bother to watch the whole thing, I will summarize here: Dr. B notes that there are two ‚internal clocks’ for measuring the a ...[text shortened]... ift in starlight).

Mind you, these criticisms come from Old Earth Creationists, not atheists.

Experiments have strongly vindicated what creationists felt when Gentry reported the high helium retentions over twenty years ago. The helium indeed could not have remained inthe zircons for even a million years, much less the alleged 1.5 billion years. Even more exciting, the most rec3enjt experiments give a helium diffusion age of 6,000, which resonates strongly with a date of creation we get from straightforward Biblical chronology.

http://creationresearch.org/crsq/articles/41/41_1/Helium.htm

Scientific Evidence for a Young Earth

YouTube

Originally posted by RJHinds
... The helium indeed could not have remained in the zircons for even a million years, much less the alleged 1.5 billion years. ...

I'm willing to grant that the helium could not have remained in the rock samples for a billion years, but the YEC-ists are drawing the wrong conclusion from this. The obvious conclusion is that the helium got there more recently (e.g. through contamination or some other process which is peculiar to the site where that particular rock sample was quarried). Dr. B's contention is based on samples taken from only one site. The claim is far from compelling that the same would hold for all samples taken anywhere in the world.

The same deep-time measurements do hold for uranium-to-lead samples taken anywhere in the world.

Originally posted by moonbus
I'm willing to grant that the helium could not have remained in the rock samples for a billion years, but the YEC-ists are drawing the wrong conclusion from this. The obvious conclusion is that the helium got there more recently (e.g. through contamination or some other process which is peculiar to the site where that particular rock sample was quarried). Dr ...[text shortened]... e deep-time measurements do hold for uranium-to-lead samples taken anywhere in the world.

The statement said million. The following is a video concerning Dr. Robert Gentry who had found halos in rocks he got from several places which he thought meant an almost instant creation. He published a scientific paper on this and as far as I know has never been proven wrong although it was not accepted by the other geologists that believed in an old age of the earth.

YouTube

All I am trying to point out is that the age of the earth is not settled science. The Holy Bible could still be correct. We don't really know for sure. It all depends on our belief, because the science data can be used to support either view at this time.

Originally posted by RJHinds
... All I am trying to point out is that the age of the earth is not settled science. The Holy Bible could still be correct. We don't really know for sure. It all depends on our belief, because the science data can be used to support either view at this time.

Yes, the biblical account could be correct. But the preponderance of evidence to date does not support this contention. If you restrict the word "prove" in such a way as to make your YEC claim undisprovable, you will, of course, have an unassailable position. But also a meaningless one.

Some things do not depend on belief. Conclusions hastily drawn from either faulty reasoning, or false or insufficient data, are not a matter of belief. Whether or not we can know when the universe began (or even had a beginning), we can and do recognize flawed arguments for when the universe began.

Dr. Baumgardner's is a flawed one; he has wildly inflated his conclusion; his conclusion does not follow from what he has established so far. What he has established so far is that there is something anomalous either about the rock samples he investigated or about the methods used to measure their helium content. This anomaly, whatever it turns out to be, in no way discredits the established method of calculating dates by the degradation of uranium to lead.

Dr. Baumgardner’s hastily drawn conclusion casts the weakness of the YEC position into high relief: you have to go around with blinders on all the time, ignoring masses of evidence, and when confronted with something you can’t ignore because it’s too ‘in your face’ to be ignored anymore--such as the half-life of uranium or the redshift of starlight--you put a totally bizarre interpretation on it.

For example: the claim that God created light from distant stars ‘in transit’, meaning that the light was created somewhere in the middle of space causally unrelated to any star behind it as its source. Well, that just isn’t starlight anymore--it’s a pure fantasy which explains nothing whatever.

Analogously, Dr. Baumgardner tries to ‘explain’ how the ‘helium clock’ can be right and the ‘uranium clock’ can be wrong by hypothesizing--without a shred of evidence to back it up--that the rate of degradation of uranium was much faster 6,000 years ago than it is today. This is, in essence, to claim that the laws of nature have changed--radically--in the last 6,000 years. This is the exact equivalent of claiming that the speed of light was once radically different than it is today to try to account for the observed size of the universe. That a Ph.D. in physics should claim that the laws of physics must have changed in the last 6,000 years seriously impeaches his credibility as a scientist.

Originally posted by moonbus
Yes, the biblical account could be correct. But the preponderance of evidence to date does not support this contention. If you restrict the word "prove" in such a way as to make your YEC claim undisprovable, you will, of course, have an unassailable position. But also a meaningless one.

Some things do not depend on belief. Conclusions hastil ...[text shortened]... cs must have changed in the last 6,000 years seriously impeaches his credibility as a scientist.

Dr. Baumgardner's conclusion is supported by the findings of Dr. Gentry and Dr Brown and others, such as those that studied the Mount St. Helen's eruption in 1980 and the subsequent carving of the Little Grand Canyon there.

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The finding of soft tissue in dinoaurs also places doubt on the old age idea.

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Notice how the long age people spin the story to come up with new theories on how soft tissue can be preserved longer than some thought and that they actually knew all about this all the time. The evolutionists seem to be afraid to admit they don't know it all and could be wrong about the age of things.

Originally posted by RJHinds
The finding of soft tissue in dinoaurs also places doubt on the old age idea.

[youtube]SWDY7GSf6Rk[/youtube]

Notice how the long age people spin the story to come up with new theories on how soft tissue can be preserved longer than some thought and that they actually knew all about this all the time. The evolutionists seem to be afraid to admit they don't know it all and could be wrong about the age of things.

The ridiculous part is even having this so-called argument, especially now in century 21 when we actually are ALLOWED to study the universe. Century 10, where you would be much happier than this one, if you claim to study the universe and come to different conclusions than the bible thumpers of the day say and you get burned at the stake.

So we study the universe with impunity today and bible thumpers don't have the political clout to kill us for it any more and we are winning., Bible thumpers, 0, science 1

Originally posted by sonhouse
The ridiculous part is even having this so-called argument, especially now in century 21 when we actually are ALLOWED to study the universe. Century 10, where you would be much happier than this one, if you claim to study the universe and come to different conclusions than the bible thumpers of the day say and you get burned at the stake.

So we study the ...[text shortened]... the political clout to kill us for it any more and we are winning., Bible thumpers, 0, science 1

You are doing no more that hiding your head in the sand when you refuse to consider all the evidence and excude the possibility of a Creator.