Evidence for God from Science

Gman wrote:

erawdrah wrote:It doesn't. I was just pointing out where I got 45,000 years instead of 60,000 years that you stated. But Libby did prove the world was less than 10,000 years old. He threw the data out because it didn't fit his presupposed idea. See next for that proof.

Then why did you post a Wikipedia article that extended its usefulness to 45,000/60,000 years into the past?

erawdrah wrote:Libby proved the earth was less than 10,000 years old by C14 equilibrium. He called it an error because it didn't fit the idea that the earth was millions of years old. The saturation of C14 in the atmosphere is less than 10,000 years worth. In other words, the earth can't be older than 10,000 years. This would mean the earth has to be less than 10,000 years old. Definitely not old enough for dinosaurs to live 65 million years ago, but that the earth was less than 10,000. http://www.cartage.org.lb/en/themes/sci ... active.htm

But knowing both the half-life of a radioactive isotope and the ratio of radioactive to stable isotope in a fossil enables us to tell the age of the fossil. As I said, Carbon -14 is useful for dating relatively young fossils (up to about 60,000 years old according to your Wikipedia source), not older ones. Radioactive isotopes with longer half lives are used to date older fossils. There are indirect ways to estimate the age of much older fossils. For example, potassium-40, with a half-life of 1.3 billion years, can be used to date volcanic rocks hundreds of millions of years old. A fossil's age can be inferred from the ages of the rock layers above and below the strata in which the fossil is found. By dating rocks and fossils, scientists have established a geologic record of Earth's history. Estimate the age of a fossil found in a sedimentary rock layer between two layers of volcanic rock that are determined to be 530 and 520 million years old. This is essentially how you are going to get your older dates.

erawdrah wrote:I never said it was physical instead of spiritual. If you look you'll see that I quoted scripture for both. What is spiritual death and what is physical death? Is not spiritual death separation from God? God removed them from the garden after they sinned.

So you are admitting it is both physical and spiritual? Also I noticed you didn't included the animal kingdom being affected here as well..

erawdrah wrote:They were separated. Then God says in Gen 3:19 that now they will return to the dust (physical death) I agree that Adam was the care taker of the garden and I don't believe that meant extremely hard work. But after they sinned the ground was cursed by God. How was it cursed you may ask. Genesis 3:18 Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee Why was the ground cursed? For man's sake, is this to remind man of his fall or is it to keep man busy working?

So you don't think that stewardship (working the land) was busy work before the fall? How so? If God is going to start creating thorns and thistles, then his work of creating plants on day 3 was not finished.. This would be a contradiction of scripture. Also the Hebrew word "adamah" is not most commonly translated "ground," the most common translation is the word "land." More on that here..

http://www.godandscience.org/youngearth/genesis3.html

erawdrah wrote:I'm saying if I were going to load an ark with animals why would I take a 60' brachiosaurus adult? I would take the small ones, just make sure you have a male and female. How fast did dinosaurs grow? Do you think the brachiosaurus grew to 60' in months, years, centuries? Young creatures would have a better chance of survival and have more off spring.

The Bible tells us that it was the male and "his" female. Genesis 7:2 seems to be saying that the males had mates. This implies that that they were older. But let's say they are small adults. Did you know that a number of animals reach maturity (size) in the matter of a few months? How does this work out if they were left on the ark for 150 days? (about 5 months)

And how are we going to get these large numbers of animals to fit into the ark..? This is a copy and paste from another section..

Quote: "Robert D. Barnes lists the number of living species for each phylum, ranging from the sole member of Placozoa to the 923,000 in Arthropoda (pp. 12, 85-88). Using his figures, we arrive at a total of 1,177,920 species.

In addition, there are many animals that are as yet unknown.

All of those creatures were known at one time, for Adam gave them all names (Genesis 2:19-20), and, since they exist today, they must have been on the ark. But we shall be extremely generous to the YEC creationists and add only 500,000 undiscovered species to our figure of 1,177,920—thus giving a mere 1,677,920 species with which Noah had to contend.

Of course, we can't forget that Genesis 7:2-3 (particularly in the Revised Standard Version) makes it clear that only unclean animals come in single pairs, male and female; the clean animals and birds come in seven pairs, male and female. That means fourteen of each clean animal and each bird. But since figures for the number of clean animals are hard to find, we will have to let creationists off the hook and ignore them. Birds are another story. There are 8,590 species of birds. Since they have already been calculated into our figure of 1,877,920 species or 3,755,840 individual animals on the ark, we need only six more pairs of each species of bird to make it come out to seven pairs. That brings our count up to a grand total of 3,858,920 animals aboard the ark—two of each species, except birds which number fourteen each."

Source: http://ncseweb.org/cej/4/1/impossible-v ... %20Animals

In fact when you look at a ship such as the Titanic (882 feet long by 92 feet wide), it was nearly twice the size of Noah's ark (450 feet long by 75 feet wide) but only had the capacity of about 3,547 persons. Yet we are told that Noah could fit all the animals into his ark thought out the whole world (around some 3,858,920 animals) including about a years supply of food to feed them. I wonder how on earth this could ever be accomplished...

On top of this you are claiming that dinosaurs were also put on the ark as well which brings up the total even more...Often I hear that it is a problem to feed all these animals, but also what are all these animals going to drink? The global floodwaters would have been infested with salt and other harmful minerals from the ocean bottom.

erawdrah wrote:Why weren't horses, pigs, parrots, or dogs mentioned? That article doesn't mention the dinosaurs in Job.

erawdrah wrote:Next, it talks about the creation of plants, which are important to humans, since we eat them, and also important to the animals that we rely upon, which also eat them. Then, it talks about the sea creatures and birds, which we also eat. It next talks about the beasts of the field, which we eat and use for labor." When did man start eating animals and not just vegetation? Gen 1:29-30 These creatures were not for us to eat, they weren't even made to cloth us. The first time an animal was killed for clothing was when God killed it to cloth man because man was naked and knew it. Gen 3:21 We didn't eat flesh until after the flood.

Man and animals ultimately live on plants.. So what is the problem with Gen 1:29-30? Without plant life we would all be dead since it is our main food source. Sometimes however, we don't eat plants but kill other animals that do eat plants.. The cow eats the grass and the lion eats the cow... With no grass there is no cow or lion...

erawdrah wrote:I do agree with the articles conclusion as far as it's really unimportant to list all of the creatures made but I strongly disagree with the statement "The purpose of the creation account is to provide an explanation of how God provided for mankind and created him as the one spiritual animal on earth." Spiritual animal? We are made in God's image, he never said anything else was made in his image. Man is not an animal. Some men act like animals and some men want you to think we came from animals. If we evolved from animals then we are nothing more than just animals. Are we animals or more than animals?

Man is a type of animal, in the animal family, but we are far from animals (made in the image of God). We did not evolve from them if that is what you mean..

erawdrah wrote:Please don't take anything I say personally, it's not directed at you. I value your opinion and your thoughts. I hope I didn't get too mean in my replies. Thanks for your time.

I haven't.. Have you? To be honest nothing you supplied here hasn't been already addressed here on this forum. It's nothing new..

zoegirl wrote:My source is an exhaustive review, it atually addresses all of those supposedly pesky problems that your souces brings up.


Of course, carbon datingis siy on in a myriad of methods that have validated the results

http://www.godandscience.org/youngearth ... verse.html

NIV wrote:Genesis 49:26 (New International Version)

26 Your father's blessings are greater
than the blessings of the ancient mountains,
than [a] the bounty of the age-old hills.
Let all these rest on the head of Joseph,
on the brow of the prince among his brothers

erawdrah wrote:http://www.cs.unc.edu/~plaisted/ce/dating.html Next check out http://www.forbiddenarcheology.com/ While these guys do not believe creation nor in God they have brought some very interesting evidence. They says humans were here 2 billion years ago. How can this be? Human remains found in strata that was billions of years old? While I don't believe the earth has been here 2 billion years, they do bring up the suppression of evidence. When science can explain how a piece of marble with raised letters on it was found in strata that "dates" back to 500-600 million years ago or how a metallic sphere from South Africa with three parallel grooves around its equator. The sphere was found in a Precambrian mineral deposit, "said" to be 2.8 billion years old., I will consider the dates in the Geological Column. Until that time the column is invalid, radiometric doesn't have much to stand on either.

Modern geologists and geophysicists consider the age of the Earth to be around 4.54 billion years (4.54 נ109 years ± 1%).[1][2] This age has been determined by radiometric age dating of meteorite material and is consistent with the ages of the oldest-known terrestrial and lunar samples. Following the scientific revolution and the development of radiometric age dating, measurements of lead in uranium-rich minerals showed that some were in excess of a billion years old.[3] The oldest such minerals analysed to date — small crystals of zircon from the Jack Hills of Western Australia — are at least 4.404 billion years old.

Dr. Gentry (see Parentless polonium halos, above) also measured the amounts of helium and lead (both products of radioactive decay) in zircon crystals from a single granite formation. The present temperature at each depth sampled was recorded. The depths ranged from the surface to 4310 meters, while the temperatures ranged from 20 to 313 degrees centigrade. Using standard methods to determine the amount of lead produced by radioactive decay in the samples, Gentry found that practically all of the expected lead was present in the samples, even though the lead would be expected to have diffused away from the samples due to the high temperatures (R.V. Gentry et al, Science, v.216, pp.296-298 (16 April 1982)). In his book Creation's Tiny Mystery, Gentry proposes an age limit of 300,000 years based on his lead findings. Similarly, judging the amount of helium produced from the amount of lead present, he found a significant amount of helium (from 17% to 58% of his calculated limit) in samples down to 2900 meters of depth. Again he argued that the helium should have diffused away due to the high temperatures if the sample were really hundreds of millions of years old. On the other hand, and this may be of great importance, Gentry reported that practically all of the helium had diffused away in the samples from deeper than 2900 meters (R.V. Gentry et al, Geophysical Research Letters, v.9, no.10, pp.1129-1130 (1982)). The likely explanation for Gentry's findings seems to be that the formation from which he drew his samples has only recently been subjected to temperatures high enough to cause diffusion. If so, the lack of diffusion then would not date the rock formation itself, but rather the onset of high temperatures. This is especially indicated by the complete diffusion of helium in his deeper samples, since helium diffuses more easily than lead, and the deeper parts of the formation would be expected to experience higher temperatures earlier than the shallower parts. In fact, Gentry acknowledges in the above-cited Science article that temperatures in the formation are indeed thought to be rising. Need confirmed rebuttal from knowledgeable source. These claims are not present in the Defender's Bible, indicating that they have been abandoned by ICR as weak.1

erawdrah wrote: Of course sin brought in spiritual death and physical death. Death was brought into the world by sin, before that there was no death.

erawdrah wrote:Romans 5:12 Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned:

erawdrah wrote:Animals and all of creation have been affected by man's sin.

Romans 8:19 For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God.
Romans 8:20 For the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope,
Romans 8:21 Because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God.
Romans 8:22 For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now.

http://www.icr.org/index.php?module=art ... iew&ID=295

erawdrah wrote:This is from your article. Let's look at this closely. The first line says that Adam would have to work harder then he did in the garden of Eden. Humm.. That's what I said. Second, weeds? Weeds are plants not wanted in a certain place. Sometimes flowers are weeds, and some weeds are flowers. It depends on the person looking at them. The Bible says thorns and thistles. I believe that means he made the plants to grow thorns and thistles where they hadn't grown before. Then again Richard Deem says Adam didn't have to work very hard in the garden of Eden. In his conclusion, he states that the garden of Eden would no longer be under that protection of God, but the land woud revert to its wild, unsubdued state like the rest of the land around the garden.

erawdrah wrote:So do you think this means that there were thorns and thistles and lions eating sheep already outside of the garden of Eden? Or where they in the garden too? And you also think that when the Bible says in Gen 1:29-30 then man ate the sheep which ate the herbs, therefore the we did eat the herbs. Gen 9:3-4

erawdrah wrote:Why would God give Noah permission to eat animals if he was already eating them? Why would God say his creation was "good" if there was death in the world? Death is brought by sin, so was there sin in the garden?

erawdrah wrote:Does Specie = kind or does kind refer to a broader spectrum? Are dogs and coyotes the same kind? Are all of the breeds (specie) of dogs today from one kind of dog? I think God would have made it possible to keeps all of the different kinds of animals including dinosaurs.

erawdrah wrote:Do you think bugs were on the ark?

erawdrah wrote:How about fish or marine mammals? Do I think some of the marine mammals and fish died in the flood, yes I do.

erawdrah wrote:When has God ask someone to do something they can not do? Do you think Noah had to round up all of these animals or do you think God made them come and get in the ark? Gen 7:1 And the LORD said unto Noah, Come thou and all thy house into the ark; was God on the ark? Gen7:16 "male and female of all flesh", "and the Lord shut him in" Was God with Noah or not? Do you think God had a plan?

erawdrah wrote:Was there bodies of salt water before the flood?

erawdrah wrote:Gen 9:3-4 Why would God give Noah permission to eat animals if he was already eating them?

erawdrah wrote:Interesting. So what makes us a type of animal? Because we have the same structure as animals?

erawdrah wrote:No I'm just not wanting to cause strife. But I'm tired of Christians comprising their beliefs to fit a man made theory.

zoegirl wrote:My source is an exhaustive review, it atually addresses all of those supposedly pesky problems that your souces brings up.

Gman wrote:

erawdrah wrote:http://www.cs.unc.edu/~plaisted/ce/dating.html Next check out http://www.forbiddenarcheology.com/ While these guys do not believe creation nor in God they have brought some very interesting evidence. They says humans were here 2 billion years ago. How can this be? Human remains found in strata that was billions of years old? While I don't believe the earth has been here 2 billion years, they do bring up the suppression of evidence. When science can explain how a piece of marble with raised letters on it was found in strata that "dates" back to 500-600 million years ago or how a metallic sphere from South Africa with three parallel grooves around its equator. The sphere was found in a Precambrian mineral deposit, "said" to be 2.8 billion years old., I will consider the dates in the Geological Column. Until that time the column is invalid, radiometric doesn't have much to stand on either.

I'm not advocating that humans were here 2 billion years ago.. 50 thousand years tops. Again, a lot of it is the type of mineral you are dating such as zircon..

Modern geologists and geophysicists consider the age of the Earth to be around 4.54 billion years (4.54 נ109 years ± 1%).[1][2] This age has been determined by radiometric age dating of meteorite material and is consistent with the ages of the oldest-known terrestrial and lunar samples. Following the scientific revolution and the development of radiometric age dating, measurements of lead in uranium-rich minerals showed that some were in excess of a billion years old.[3] The oldest such minerals analysed to date — small crystals of zircon from the Jack Hills of Western Australia — are at least 4.404 billion years old.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_Age

Or this from godandscience…

Dr. Gentry (see Parentless polonium halos, above) also measured the amounts of helium and lead (both products of radioactive decay) in zircon crystals from a single granite formation. The present temperature at each depth sampled was recorded. The depths ranged from the surface to 4310 meters, while the temperatures ranged from 20 to 313 degrees centigrade. Using standard methods to determine the amount of lead produced by radioactive decay in the samples, Gentry found that practically all of the expected lead was present in the samples, even though the lead would be expected to have diffused away from the samples due to the high temperatures (R.V. Gentry et al, Science, v.216, pp.296-298 (16 April 1982)). In his book Creation's Tiny Mystery, Gentry proposes an age limit of 300,000 years based on his lead findings. Similarly, judging the amount of helium produced from the amount of lead present, he found a significant amount of helium (from 17% to 58% of his calculated limit) in samples down to 2900 meters of depth. Again he argued that the helium should have diffused away due to the high temperatures if the sample were really hundreds of millions of years old. On the other hand, and this may be of great importance, Gentry reported that practically all of the helium had diffused away in the samples from deeper than 2900 meters (R.V. Gentry et al, Geophysical Research Letters, v.9, no.10, pp.1129-1130 (1982)). The likely explanation for Gentry's findings seems to be that the formation from which he drew his samples has only recently been subjected to temperatures high enough to cause diffusion. If so, the lack of diffusion then would not date the rock formation itself, but rather the onset of high temperatures. This is especially indicated by the complete diffusion of helium in his deeper samples, since helium diffuses more easily than lead, and the deeper parts of the formation would be expected to experience higher temperatures earlier than the shallower parts. In fact, Gentry acknowledges in the above-cited Science article that temperatures in the formation are indeed thought to be rising. Need confirmed rebuttal from knowledgeable source. These claims are not present in the Defender's Bible, indicating that they have been abandoned by ICR as weak.1

Source: http://www.godandscience.org/youngearth/yeclaims.html

erawdrah wrote: Of course sin brought in spiritual death and physical death. Death was brought into the world by sin, before that there was no death.

I'll admit that Gen 3:19 is talking about physical death… It doesn't have to mean that it was physical death at that instant however. Even you admitted that, stating it happened later. Therefore it could have happened earlier then too. Gen 3:19, could simply be stating that Adam was going to die in his sins. If he didn't sin, then he wouldn't have to die in his sins. He would have died anyways, just not in his sins..

erawdrah wrote:Romans 5:12 Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned:

It doesn't say physical death.. It could be spiritual death too..

erawdrah wrote:Animals and all of creation have been affected by man's sin.

Romans 8:19 For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God.
Romans 8:20 For the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope,
Romans 8:21 Because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God.
Romans 8:22 For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now.

http://www.icr.org/index.php?module=art ... iew&ID=295

Best explained here.. http://www.godandscience.org/youngearth/romans8.html

erawdrah wrote:This is from your article. Let's look at this closely. The first line says that Adam would have to work harder then he did in the garden of Eden. Humm.. That's what I said. Second, weeds? Weeds are plants not wanted in a certain place. Sometimes flowers are weeds, and some weeds are flowers. It depends on the person looking at them. The Bible says thorns and thistles. I believe that means he made the plants to grow thorns and thistles where they hadn't grown before. Then again Richard Deem says Adam didn't have to work very hard in the garden of Eden. In his conclusion, he states that the garden of Eden would no longer be under that protection of God, but the land woud revert to its wild, unsubdued state like the rest of the land around the garden.

Not exactly.. Rich's article is referring to the garden of eden itself. You omitted the previous sentences before that statement..
“If there were no weeds in the garden, I am not sure what Adam would have to do in order to "cultivate and keep it."3 To accept the young earth interpretation that weeds were not created until after the fall, one would literally have nothing for Adam to "cultivate and keep." My guess is that occasional weed seeds would blow into the garden from outside, sprout, and have to be uprooted.”

erawdrah wrote:So do you think this means that there were thorns and thistles and lions eating sheep already outside of the garden of Eden? Or where they in the garden too? And you also think that when the Bible says in Gen 1:29-30 then man ate the sheep which ate the herbs, therefore the we did eat the herbs. Gen 9:3-4

I'm sure Adam could have been eating animals in or outside the garden.. Again, the curse for Adam was being kicked out of the garden into the real world.

More here..

http://www.ankerberg.com/Articles/science/SC0707W2B.htm

erawdrah wrote:Why would God give Noah permission to eat animals if he was already eating them? Why would God say his creation was "good" if there was death in the world? Death is brought by sin, so was there sin in the garden?

Why would God give Noah permission to eat animals if he was already eating them? Because the ground would have been wiped out by the local flood for miles.. That is all Adam probably could have eaten.. Let's turn this around, so if God gave Adam permission to eat the only animals left on earth then there wouldn't be any more animals to reproduce.

erawdrah wrote:Does Specie = kind or does kind refer to a broader spectrum? Are dogs and coyotes the same kind? Are all of the breeds (specie) of dogs today from one kind of dog? I think God would have made it possible to keeps all of the different kinds of animals including dinosaurs.

If you are stating that a dog could morph into a wolf in less than 6 thousand years then you are giving credence to evolution.. I don't except that evolution can morph species that quickly..

erawdrah wrote:Do you think bugs were on the ark?

Sure but that is another problem in itself. Especially with slow moving snails..

erawdrah wrote:How about fish or marine mammals? Do I think some of the marine mammals and fish died in the flood, yes I do.

What about the fish? If it were freshwater, then the saltwater fish would have died, but if it were saltwater, then the freshwater fish would have died. But it was probably boiling saltwater from the broken plates underground that would have killed everything… If you believe in a global flood that is..

erawdrah wrote:When has God ask someone to do something they can not do? Do you think Noah had to round up all of these animals or do you think God made them come and get in the ark? Gen 7:1 And the LORD said unto Noah, Come thou and all thy house into the ark; was God on the ark? Gen7:16 "male and female of all flesh", "and the Lord shut him in" Was God with Noah or not? Do you think God had a plan?

Sure God has plans.. But not ones that breaks His laws of physics..

erawdrah wrote:Was there bodies of salt water before the flood?

Sure… Whenever the earth cracks, minerals from down below infest the waters. Noah's huge cargo would have nothing to drink.. Are you saying that the oceans did not contain saltwater in the past? Where is your evidence for this claim?

erawdrah wrote:Gen 9:3-4 Why would God give Noah permission to eat animals if he was already eating them?

erawdrah wrote:Interesting. So what makes us a type of animal? Because we have the same structure as animals?

erawdrah wrote:No I'm just not wanting to cause strife. But I'm tired of Christians comprising their beliefs to fit a man made theory.

You mean the man made theory of the global flood? Listen, I would be careful of such claims as this..

1. God does not require the entire destruction of the world if man lived in one place.
2. Be careful of saying that death is a bad thing. Death could have been instituted by God to curb overpopulation in the beginning. Death is also good because it regenerates the earth's life cycle. If it was instituted by God, then we could be calling God's ways (death) evil. That is something I wouldn't want to do..

This is a good article too..

Does the Presence of Natural Evil Argue Against the Existence of God? Why Natural Evil Must Exist

eradraw wrote:There are 6 types of evolution.

eradraw wrote: evolution then you must know which one the 6 you are debating. Macro-evolution is the 5th type. This is the belief that dog type can become a cat type or dinosaurs type can become bird types. Micro-evolution is the 6th type which is the process by which two dog types inter breed to produce offspring with combined features.

eradraw wrote:Exhaustive? After only a few hours of looking on the internet, I have found things that were left out of your exhaustive paper. K40 - Ar40 and Ar40 - Ar39 http://geoinfo.nmt.edu/labs/argon/methods/home.html This paper shows the flaws that are not covered in your paper. Ar/Ar requires a known date in order to adjust the amount of time the sample is exposed to the reactor. According to this scientist the K/Ar method is not good enough for the adjustment and recommends U/Pb or astronomical polarity time scale(APTS). Everything I have found on the APTS says that K/Ar or Ar/Ar method is how they determined the dating of the magnetic reversals.

New Mexico Bureau Lab wrote: The material in question is a closed system. In other words, no radiogenic 40Ar has escaped from the rock/mineral since it formed. In the case of a volcanic mineral, this means rapid cooling. Likewise, potassium has not been gained or lost.
A correction is made for atmospheric argon (40Ar from the 40Ar/36Ar ratio = 295.5 subtracted).
No non-atmospheric 40Ar was incorporated into the rock/mineral during or after its formation.

The isotopes of potassium in the rock/mineral have not fractionated, except by 40K decay.

The decay constants of 40K are accurately known.

The quantities of 40Ar and potassium in the rock/mineral are accurately determined.

NMBL wrote: The 40Ar/39Ar dating technique is a more sophisticated variation of the K/Ar dating technique. Both techniques rely on the measurement of a daughter isotope (40Ar) and a parent isotope. While the K/Ar technique measures potassium as the parent, the 40Ar/39Ar technique uses 39Ar.

Principles of the 40Ar/39Ar method
Because the relative abundances of the potassium isotopes are known, the 39ArK (produced from 39K by a fast neutron reaction) can be used as a proxy for potassium. Therefore, unlike the conventional K/Ar technique, absolute abundances need not be measured. Instead, the ratios of the different argon isotopes are measured, yielding more precise and accurate results. Additional advantages of the single isotopic measurements of the 40Ar/39Ar technique are decreased effects of sample inhomogeneity and the use of smaller sample sizes.

my original source wrote:Now let's look at how the actual dating methods work. Igneous rocks are good candidates for dating. Recall that for igneous rocks the event being dated is when the rock was formed from magma or lava. When the molten material cools and hardens, the atoms are no longer free to move about. Daughter atoms that result from radioactive decays occurring after the rock cools are frozen in the place where they were made within the rock. These atoms are like the sand grains accumulating in the bottom of the hourglass. Determining the age of a rock is a two-step process. First one needs to measure the number of daughter atoms and the number of remaining parent atoms and calculate the ratio between them. Then the half-life is used to calculate the time it took to produce that ratio of parent atoms to daughter atoms.

However, there is one complication. One cannot always assume that there were no daughter atoms to begin with. It turns out that there are some cases where one can make that assumption quite reliably. But in most cases the initial amount of the daughter product must be accurately determined. Most of the time one can use the different amounts of parent and daughter present in different minerals within the rock to tell how much daughter was originally present. Each dating mechanism deals with this problem in its own way. Some types of dating work better in some rocks; others are better in other rocks, depending on the rock composition and its age. Let's examine some of the different dating mechanisms now.

Potassium-Argon. Potassium is an abundant element in the Earth's crust. One isotope, potassium-40, is radioactive and decays to two different daughter products, calcium-40 and argon-40, by two different decay methods. This is not a problem because the production ratio of these two daughter products is precisely known, and is always constant: 11.2% becomes argon-40 and 88.8% becomes calcium-40. It is possible to date some rocks by the potassium-calcium method, but this is not often done because it is hard to determine how much calcium was initially present. Argon, on the other hand, is a gas. Whenever rock is melted to become magma or lava, the argon tends to escape. Once the molten material hardens, it begins to trap the new argon produced since the hardening took place. In this way the potassium-argon clock is clearly reset when an igneous rock is formed.

In its simplest form, the geologist simply needs to measure the relative amounts of potassium-40 and argon-40 to date the rock. The age is given by a relatively simple equation:

t = h x ln[1 + (argon-40)/(0.112 x (potassium-40))]/ln(2)

where t is the time in years, h is the half-life, also in years, and ln is the natural logarithm.

page 5

However, in reality there is often a small amount of argon remaining in a rock when it hardens. This is usually trapped in the form of very tiny air bubbles in the rock. One percent of the air we breathe is argon. Any extra argon from air bubbles may need to be taken into account if it is significant relative to the amount of radiogenic argon (that is, argon produced by radioactive decays). This would most likely be the case in either young rocks that have not had time to produce much radiogenic argon, or in rocks that are low in the parent potassium. One must have a way to determine how much air-argon is in the rock. This is rather easily done because air-argon has a couple of other isotopes, the most abundant of which is argon-36. The ratio of argon-40 to argon-36 in air is well known, at 295. Thus, if one measures argon-36 as well as argon-40, one can calculate and subtract off the air-argon-40 to get an accurate age.

One of the best ways of showing that an age-date is correct is to confirm it with one or more different dating

Some young-Earth proponents recently reported that rocks were dated by the potassium-argon method to be a several million years old when they are really only a few years old. But the potassium-argon method, with its long half-life, was never intended to date rocks only 25 years old. These people have only succeeded in correctly showing that one can fool a single radiometric dating method when one uses it improperly. The false radiometric ages of several million years are due to parentless argon, as described here, and first reported in the literature some fifty years ago. Note that it would be extremely unlikely for another dating method to agree on these bogus ages. Getting agreement between more than one dating method is a recommended practice.

method(s). Although potassium-argon is one of the simplest dating methods, there are still some cases where it does not agree with other methods. When this does happen, it is usually because the gas within bubbles in the rock is from deep underground rather than from the air. This gas can have a higher concentration of argon-40 escaping from the melting of older rocks. This is called parentless argon-40 because its parent potassium is not in the rock being dated, and is also not from the air. In these slightly unusual cases, the date given by the normal potassium-argon method is too old. However, scientists in the mid-1960s came up with a way around this problem, the argon-argon method, discussed in the next section.

Argon-Argon. Even though it has been around for nearly half a century, the argon-argon method is seldom discussed by groups critical of dating methods. This method uses exactly the same parent and daughter isotopes as the potassium-argon method. In effect, it is a different way of telling time from the same clock. Instead of simply comparing the total potassium with the non-air argon in the rock, this method has a way of telling exactly what and how much argon is directly related to the potassium in the rock.

In the argon-argon method the rock is placed near the center of a nuclear reactor for a period of hours. A nuclear reactor emits a very large number of neutrons, which are capable of changing a small amount of the potassium-39 into argon-39. Argon-39 is not found in nature because it has only a 269-year half-life. (This half-life doesn't affect the argon-argon dating method as long as the measurements are made within about five years of the neutron dose). The rock is then heated in a furnace to release both the argon-40 and the argon-39 (representing the potassium) for analysis. The heating is done at incrementally higher temperatures and at each step the ratio of argon-40 to argon-39 is measured. If the argon-40 is from decay of potassium within the rock, it will come out at the same temperatures as the potassium-derived argon-39 and in a constant proportion. On the other hand, if there is some excess argon-40 in the rock it will cause a different ratio of argon-40 to argon-39 for some or many of the heating steps, so the different heating steps will not agree with each other.

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Figure 2. A typical argon-argon dating plot. Each small rectangle represents the apparent age given at one particular heating-step temperature. The top and bottom parts of the rectangles represent upper and lower limits for that particular determination. The age is based on the measured argon-40 / argon-39 ratio and the number of neutrons encountered in the reactor. The horizontal axis gives the amount of the total argon-39 released from the sample. A good argon-argon age determination will have a lot of heating steps which all agree with each other. The "plateau age" is the age given by the average of most of the steps, in this case nearly 140 million years. After S. Turner et al. (1994) Earth and Planetary Science Letters, 121,
pp. 333-348.

Figure 2 is an example of a good argon-argon date. The fact that this plot is flat shows that essentially all of the argon-40 is from decay of potassium within the rock. The potassium-40 content of the sample is found by multiplying the argon-39 by a factor based on the neutron exposure in the reactor. When this is done, the plateau in the figure represents an age date based on the decay of potassium-40 to argon-40.

There are occasions when the argon-argon dating method does not give an age even if there is sufficient potassium in the sample and the rock was old enough to date. This most often occurs if the rock experienced a high temperature (usually a thousand degrees Fahrenheit or more) at some point since its formation. If that occurs, some of the argon gas moves around, and the analysis does not give a smooth plateau across the extraction temperature steps. An example of an argon-argon analysis that did not yield an age date is shown in Figure 3. Notice that there is no good plateau in this plot. In some instances there will actually be two plateaus, one representing the formation age, and another representing the time at which the heating episode occurred. But in most cases where the system has been disturbed, there simply is no date given. The important point to note is that, rather than giving wrong age dates, this method simply does not give a date if the system has been disturbed. This is also true of a number of other igneous rock dating methods, as we will describe below.

radiometric dating wrote:Some doubters have tried to dismiss geologic dating with a sleight of hand by saying that no rocks are completely closed systems (that is, that no rocks are so isolated from their surroundings that they have not lost or gained some of the isotopes used for dating). Speaking from an extreme technical viewpoint this might be true--perhaps 1 atom out of 1,000,000,000,000 of a certain isotope has leaked out of nearly all rocks, but such a change would make an immeasurably small change in the result. The real question to ask is, "is the rock sufficiently close to a closed system that the results will be same as a really closed system?" Since the early 1960s many books have been written on this subject. These books detail experiments showing, for a given dating system, which minerals work all of the time, which minerals work under some certain conditions, and which minerals are likely to lose atoms and give incorrect results. Understanding these conditions is part of the science of geology. Geologists are careful to use the most reliable methods whenever possible, and as discussed above, to test for agreement between different methods.

/pubs/crossref/1995/94GL03214.shtml That's kind of circular thinking. This guy says the recalibration of the APTS for the K-P layer needs to fit 65 ma.

U/Pb is not a closed system and can still give incorrect results. http://www.answersingenesis.org/creatio ... ranium.asp No mention of Rubidium-strontium sources of errors. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubidium-strontium_dating Just to name a few, I haven't investigated the rest yet.

This is from your paper "Ice Cores. One of the best ways to measure farther back in time than tree rings is by using the seasonal variations in polar ice from Greenland and Antarctica." "Ice cores are obtained by drilling very deep holes in the ice caps on Greenland and Antarctica with specialized drilling rigs." That's why I brought up Greenland and the WW II aircraft under 250 ft of ice. http://www.nytimes.com/1988/08/04/us/wo ... -deep.html 46 years after they belly landed in Greenland were covered in 250 ft of ice. Your paper claims they have cored to 9,000 ft of ice. These planes were covered in 46 yrs with 250 ft of ice. There appears to me to be a small problem with 9,000 ft = 160,000 years and 250 ft = 46 years.

erawdrah wrote:I believe the conditions were perfect in the garden of Eden. Whatever perfect would include I do not know. I don't believe that plants grew thorns or thistles were in the garden of Eden or anywhere else.

erawdrah wrote:Couldn't he just walked miles to food? He probably had some food left from the ark. This is where God told man to eat animals and up to this point man didn't eat animals.

erawdrah wrote:There are 6 types of evolution. If you're going to debate evolution then you must know which one the 6 you are debating. Macro-evolution is the 5th type. This is the belief that dog type can become a cat type or dinosaurs type can become bird types. Micro-evolution is the 6th type which is the process by which two dog types inter breed to produce offspring with combined features. The theory is that micro-evolution left alone for millions of years can produce macro-evolution. You can shrink a dog type by breeding smaller adults together until you get a very small dog. How do you think we got all of the types of dogs today? Man breed them for his purpose. This can happen in <6,000 years. I do not believe that a dog type has ever produced a non-dog type, ever. Micro-evolution is a horrible term, it implies that one who believes this believes in macro-evolution too.

erawdrah wrote:I don't think bugs were on the ark except if they were hitching a ride on an animal. Bugs breathe through their skin and can survive a flood with no problems.

erawdrah wrote:Now that assumes that there were saltwater life. I don't know one way or another. I do know that freshwater fish can survive in saltwater if the salt is added slowly. Guppies have been the most experimented on. When they put these guppies back into fresh water they die. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guppy#_note-6 http://forum.marinedepot.com/Topic83121-4-1.aspx

erawdrah wrote:Did God break the laws of physics with the plagues of Egypt? Ex 9:21 Hail with fire mixed in it. Jesus walked on the water. Or Judges 6:37-40. Those seem to be outside of physics.