Wednesday, April 25, 2012

Into the breech...

Wow this is a boring slog.

Apparently the rule about creationists taking twice as long to refute as they take to make a claim presents us with a divergent series and thus an exchange which expands at about 2^n.


>>You also accuse the studies shown of not taking this into account. However, you then provide no evidence and no data to back that up.

You posted the studies. Do they show tectonic forces being taken into account? We're discussing the study you posted. I'm pointing out something it fails to note. Does it fail to note the massive amount of salt loss?

http://orgs.usd.edu/esci/age/content/failed_scientific_clocks/ocean_salinity.html 




It continues like this for 15000 words. Literally, I did a word count. 15623 in total. Below the fold.





>>You claimed that tectonic activity is the major player in removing salts from the ocean. You claimed that this is what geologists have pointed to as the biggest player.

You could check it. I made a claim about your study and about the bulk of the entire field of geology. My claim is common enough it's on wikipedia. Salt levels haven't changed. I pointed out the scientists who proved it doesn't change and the papers where they did it. Did so in the very post I made.

"Tatarize: http://www.clays.org/journal/archive/volume%208/8-1-203.pdf Paleosalinities is an actual bit of science. Goldschmit determined the relationships needed to directly calculate the salt levels in the ocean over time. They have remained steady. They have been steady and therefore cannot be used as a clock."



>>This is unfortunately circular reasoning again. All the Goldschmidt's paper really claims (as his conclusion at point number 5 shows) is that the paleosalinities of the sedimentary rock layers at the times they were laid down show no real change in salinity levels. I won't even dispute that. I'll grant you that just for the sake of your argument.

And so you agree that salt levels haven't changed greatly regardless the age of the Earth. Which means the salt levels are not relevant to the question.


>>Unfortunately, the conclusion uses the assumption that those rock layers are hundreds of millions of years old, and then extrapolates that to show that ocean salinity levels haven't changed over millions of years. But as mentioned, that's circular reasoning.

No. You are mistaking depending on other premises with being circular. If I were using this as evidence that old earth geology is true, then it would be circular. I would use old earth geology to say this can't be true, and this to prove old earth geology. That is something you really can't do. You need objective data. And oddly this is the problem you are suffering from here. Because you're trying to use salt levels as evidence. When regardless salt levels haven't changed. You can't use salt levels and YEC to prove YEC, because that actually is circular. I'm simply pointing out that geologists say that this is wrong and the salt levels haven't changed at all. You cannot have a salt clock. It's wrong. This is not evidence for your position because nobody on either side is saying the salt levels should have changed.

Salt levels haven't changed. If all the other science of geology is right, then clearly there's no problem here. It's your argument that all of geology is wrong and therefore there's a problem here because without all the science that explains the point, it's a serious problem. So if geology is correct, your salt argument fails. My statements about the state of modern geology has nothing to do with your salt argument. I'm saying that salt isn't a clock. And we're both in agreement that the levels haven't changed.

To make your argument here you now need "There is a Young Earth" in order to get yourself to the conclusion that There is a young Earth.


>>As such, all Goldschmidt's data really shows is that the salinity of the ocean hasn't changed significantly in the last few thousand years - a perfectly acceptable conclusion for a creationist.

The conclusion to draw is that the salt level in the ocean hasn't changed since the rocks were laid down. Whether that's millions or thousands, it still demolishes your argument. If I'm right, I'm right. If you're right, you're right. So salt doesn't work as a clock and the argument which needed salt to work as a clock fails.


>>Really? I find your definition of "consistent" quite interesting! How about these 70+ different geochronometers?

Most of those are bullshit based on the same kind of influx into rivers nonsense as the above salt argument. Except that many of them have different methods of removal. Radiometric dating is different. We look at the actual decay of rocks from the start of Earth. We look at several different methods of decay and we get consistent results with the age of the Earth.



>>But they never actually address any of the geochronometers that don't say that.

None of those proposed methods work on known physics and and many suffer from rather notable problems. I'm talking about all the various radioactive decay things, where changing the half-life would require changing the properties of the universe.

>>They simple pick and choose whatever geochronometers give them the age of the earth that they like, and ignore the rest.

No. They pick the ones that should be the most reliable. Go ahead and pick any one of those listed and give a reason why it should perhaps be more reliable than a dozen independent methods based on concrete nuclear physics all lining up to the same consistent date.


>>They are based upon claims that we can know for certain the initial conditions, which we categorically can not know.

We really can tell decay from simply mixing. Decayed elements happen randomly so the inter mingling of the elements will be in a random pattern rather than a pattern set down by mixing them. Further with isochron dating you can even better establish such initial conditions because of the known ratio of isotopes in the original sample and the decayed sample.


>>They are based on claims that rates of change over time have been constant, which we categorically can not prove.
But rarely ever will an evolutionist admit that.

They are contingent on the laws of physics remaining the same. Namely the fundamental laws. You can't really mess with those without serious trouble ensuing.


>>See (http://www.icr.org/article/2467/) for evidence that shows radioactive decay rates have categorically NOT remained constant throughout history.

Uranium decays to radon and plutonium which causes the halos. This isn't even a mystery. Or that interesting. Radioactive elements can decay into radioactive elements which then can decay. So yeah, million year old rocks can have elements which decay in a matter of days, so long as something in those rocks decayed into that element. We can test this, you will always find Uranium in any such rocks that sport such halos. Lo and behold we do.


>>Or for secular evidence, see (http://news.stanford.edu/news/2010/august/sun-082310.html) for categorical proof that radioactive decay rates CAN be changed through outside effects.

In the aggregate any cycles like that would average out. And we're talking about a very minor change. Not enough to make 4.5 billion years into 6000.


>>These studies fundamentally undercut the very foundation of the strongest known dating methods that conjecture an old earth.

No they really don't. One is already known and takes an huge misunderstanding to come by and the second is a real somewhat awesome factor that isn't going to bias the results by 99.9999%, as they would need to be to be wrong.


>>Once again, you are assuming the very thing you are being asked to prove. You are assuming that the ocean is old, and then are showing that salinity levels haven't changed during a certain period of it's existence, and using that to "prove" that the ocean is old.

No. I'm using that to show that your argument fails. Your argument says that Old Earth requires that the oceans be overwhelmingly salty, and therefore the since they aren't Old Earth must be wrong. I'm saying that Old Earth makes no such requirement. And It doesn't, so the argument you are making fails. Old Earth doesn't require something like that. So you gain nothing, and the argument fails, the geologists who say that salt isn't a clock are right.


>>Using the claim that you are attempting to prove as an assumption in your argument is circular reasoning.

Salt clock isn't my argument. It's your argument. I'm not using Old Earth Geology Science to prove and old earth. You are trying to use YEC to prove YEC. It's your argument. And if you need to say that the rocks are new rocks to explain the ocean salt levels, you are actually making a circular argument. I'm making the argument if Old-Earth is true, then the ocean salt hasn't changed. You are making the argument that if Old-Earth is true, then the ocean salt should be extremely high. I've notabily shot down that claim. All you're trying to argue now is that my claim is that if Old-Earth is true, then ocean salt hasn't hanged is contingent on Old-Earth being true. And well, frankly that's not a valid point. The theory the Earth is Old, is entirely consistent with regard to salt levels. Also, the theory the Earth is Young, is entirely consistent with regard to salt levels. But, this isn't a draw, it's you losing. Because you were making the argument that the ocean salt levels were inconsistent with an Old Earth.

You're confused here. But, it's pretty easy, that's what defeat looks like in this argument. I can't use salt to prove an old earth, because salt levels haven't changed. I can just show that it's not an argument that succeeds for you.


>>It's the fallacy of begging the question, and is fundamentally, logically invalid.

Nope. The entire point is to show that theory X is inconsistent. You failed to do that because X is consistent. It's not using X to prove X. It's using X to show that assumption Q given X does not follow.


>>You can't assume the ocean is old, and use that to prove the ocean is old.

You are delightfully close to making the argument that the ocean is new, and using that to prove the ocean is new. After all you disregarded the geologists I showed who demonstrated that the ocean salt levels haven't changed because you disagree with the age of all the rocks. You're the one advancing the claims about ocean salt, and you're defending those claims with the claims that the rocks are young.

You say salt in the ocean would be exceptionally high if the Earth was very old. I showed that if the Earth was very old the salt levels would not be very high. That's not a circular argument. I'm not trying to prove that the ocean is old. I'm trying to prove that the ocean we observe is consistent with an Old Earth. That's all I needed to do to demolish your argument.


>>As for your claims that is hasn't changed over time, once again, you are ignoring the fact that current measurements would not be able to detect the level of change proposed by the evidence of salt influx and removal.

I'm not doing that at all. That's irrelevant to my point. I'm entirely sure that the levels of salt in the ocean can easily be consistent with a Young Earth that simply proposes the oceans began that salty. Salt is not a clock. I cannot use it to show the age of the Earth, neither can you. You're the only person trying to. I just need to show that it's crap. It's your argument, not my argument. My arguments would be Lead Isotopes, Expansion of the Universe, Radiometric Accumulation, Isochron Dating, Fission Track Dating, Star Age, The Age of Elements, Radiocarbom Dating, etc. I can't use salt because it can't prove the oceans are old or new. I only needed to show that they can't prove the oceans are new.


>>They believe that ocean salinity levels are changing - and believe it strong enough to spend significant finances to study the details (http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2011-172)

You are confused. They want to measure the salt levels in various locations because the differences in salt in different parts of the ocean is critical information in understanding climate change. There are points in the ocean where super salty super cold water flows into less salty less cold water and causes that water to ice over (the salt changes the freezing point). The salt levels differ not only on the surface but under the surface too and comprises most of the water cycle on Earth. Understanding that and being able to tell if it changes suffices, is rather critical to understanding changes with regard to global warming and climate change. They do not believe that the over all salt level of the ocean is changing over time. Just that the ocean currents are hugely influenced by salt and that measuring those are critical to understanding them and seeing if those ocean currents will change.


>>Then come up with some actual data, evidence, and support, instead of simply whining about it!

You said your paper covered all the ins and outs. It didn't. Therefore the paper is flawed. It's refuted. No need to do anything else unless they come up with a better paper. Ultimately the levels of salt in the ocean haven't changed over time. So there's no there there.


>>Tatarize: "I wouldn't really call it science."
>>Smacks of a No True Scotsman logically fallacy coming on there.

No. The No True Scotsman fallacy has to do with shifting the goal posts when a good counter example is shown. I'm not saying that. I'm not saying that X doesn't count because of Y. I'm saying that Creation Science isn't science, it's Cargo Cult Science. It's like those polynesian tribes who do everything they saw done in WWII to receive cargo from the sky and expect cargo. Creationists go through a lot of the motions, but they aren't actually doing any science they are trying to look sciency. Apparently science commands respect, and so if they look all sciency and use many of the same words they should equally command respect. It really doesn't work that way.


>>Tatarize: "It borrows the basic concept that Barnes came up with and re-adjusted them with a lot of random speculation and outright lies."
>>Prejudicial Conjecture - no real argument presented.

It does exactly that. It was Barnes who said that the magnetic field was decaying exponentially. He had 200 years of data that looked to form a fairly straight line. Because the dipole moment of the Earth's Magnetic Field actually was in decline. But, we did better readings and we know that it's actually fluctuated throughout history and even reversed. The dipole moment isn't actually the full strength of the field. It's more to do with the direction of it, and various opposing forces.

Humphrey took these criticisms to make a new model, not even based on the tiny amount of evidence Barnes had to say that the actual strength is declining exponentially. And proses a Velikovskian about the flood causing polar reversals and Jesus restoring the field and keeping his claims about exponential decay etc. But, there's actually zero evidence for this. Not even Barne's silly evidence applies anymore.


>>It may be accepted by a certain portion of geologists, but that's only because it is a working theory that fit's into the philosophical assumptions of naturalism and the Big Bang.

There are other ones. But, they don't have as much evidence behind them.


>>I don't blame them for accepting such a theory - if you choose to believe in such philosophical assumptions, then you have to come up with a theory that fits within that paradigm.

Well, I'm not a methodological naturalist, just a metaphysical one. You can claim things are supernatural. It's just that none of those claims have ever been true. Saying this mystery requires the supernatural is likely to be exactly as wrong as every time such claims were made in the past. None of them ever required the supernatural. It's like two horses who have run a million races and one of them has always won and one of them has always lost in each and every races and you want that we should be on the one that has lost every single time? Not without a very very good reason to do so. This is the case with supernaturalism and naturalism, never has supernaturalism been the correct answer for any mystery in the history of the world.


>>"The mechanism for generating the geomagnetic field remains one of the central unsolved problems in geoscience."

It's true. There are still parts we don't get. But, we are filling a lot of them in, even in the last couple years. We are doing actual research and actually finding things that we actually need to find. We need to find something that can conduct where we don't know of anything that conducts, lo and behold it turns out that this stuff at that pressure does conduct. We're not done solving the puzzle, but we've no reason to suppose it can't be done, after all we're finding the right pieces all the time.


>>I'd say that dynamo theory is simply a theoretical model, hardly close to an accepted fact.

Theoretical models are what science is about. Gravity is a theoretical model, evolution, geology, etc. We make good ideas and we test them against reality.


>>These include the facts that the majority of sedimentary layers were laid down during Noah's flood, and the locations of various magnetic rocks within those layers that show magnetic reversals.

Those aren't facts. The existence of Noah's flood is independently absurd.



>>Actually, it does no such thing! I can't believe you would even make such a claim, since the strength of the field over time is the fundamental measurement of the study!

There's actual data about the actual strength of the field. It was getting stronger 1500 years ago. Humpheys is trying to map his claims to the data and sweeping the stuff that doesn't fit under the rug.


>>The study in no such way glosses over the sediments. It just doesn't accept the philosophical assumption of your billions of years claim.

Then it doesn't actually show anything about the Old Earth model being inconsistent. So it's not evidence for the Young Earth Model. You don't win by simply mapping theory to data and saying, look it's consistent. You need to show how your theory is better than the other theory.


>>And why should it, since the majority of the evidence points to a young earth.

You've given two claims, salt and field strength. Neither one establishes that claim. Is there more evidence that does establish that claim?


>>The massive evidence for Noah's flood clearly gives overwhelmingly valid reasons to "suppose that it all happened during the flood". If you were ever able to take off your billions-of-years blinders, you'd see that the evidence all fits together naturally.

Being consistent is different than having evidence. If all the data you are presenting is simply consistent with young earth or old earth, you are doing nothing to decide the question. However, when I point out things like Chinese culture flourishing during the time of Noah's flood both before and after with the same culture, it's remarkably hard to explain that away and take a lot of speculation and ad hoc claims to make it fit.


>>You keep coming back to Barnes. Once again, I can barely believe that you read Dr. Humphreys' paper on this issue, or any of the supporting work. Although inspired by Barnes' ideas, Humphreys began with an entirely different starting point - a propositional model of the creation of the Earth.

He took a lot of Barnes claims, which within Humphreys model are completely unsupported. He's just making claims drawn from YEC to conclude YEC. Unless he has good evidence to say that this is consistent with YEC but inconsistent with the other claims, he's not going to get anywhere.


>>because the true history of the universe doesn't change! That is evidence of the STRENGTH of creationist arguments, not WEAKNESS! The only change over time is a better understanding of how things happened - which is the fundamental purpose of science, is it not?

Science progessively changes to better explain things, or to replace a theory that failed to fit well enough with the evidence. That's what science does. Because science is real science. Creationism doesn't change because it's not really based on evidence, it's based on a work of fiction with little relationship to the real world. That's not getting better when more data comes in, that's trying to maintain credibility for acting sciency based on some old mythology of some Semitic tribe.


>>Yes, which you would know if you ever bothered to read the science you are trying to refute. It's a well known creation fact, completely supported by the bible by the way.

So why are they often out of order? Why can we have rocks that date to millions of years over rocks that were apparently laid down by the flood and then more rocks over more time. With the bones of critters who lived during that time in them and only in those particular layers?

And completely supported by the Bible? Why not also by the Koran or the Gita or is only the Bible the core of good science? Or some endeavor that tries to look sciency.


>>>>Tatarize: "The problem with creationist claims is they typically offer up absurd nonsense like top soil should be miles thick, sea water should be overflowing with water, the Moon would be inside Earth, the moon should have had unfathomably much moon dust."

>>More Straw Men.

No. I can prove these exact arguments are offered. Offering absurd arguments doesn't make one science it makes one sciency looking. I can show that these are creationist arguments and they fit well into exactly the claims I've been making. The point of creationism is to look sciency, not to do science. And that these arguments are absurd.


>>Well, that's pretty good inferential science. In fact, it's the exact same method that evolutionists try to use to prove that the earth is OLD!

The difference is that we bother to account for things. You can well take a snail shell that is derived from non-atmospheric carbon and say it dates to be 50k years old in this living snail. And forever rehash that argument to claim that radiocarbon dating is wrong. But, it ignores all the points about why that doesn't work, and the issues relating to it. You bring in several different points and several different lines of evidence and you see how much agreement there is and how much they should agree. And look for reasons for disagreement and see if they are good reasons. You don't just take the stock market decline from yesterday to conclude the stock market is crashing exponentially or that the oceans should be too filled with salt. That's stupid and wrong. And ignores all the real points of robust understanding science brings us. It's not just look this rock shows signs of having something that decays quickly and the rock is very old so it must be very young. No. You look into it and note that other elements decay into short half-life elements and actually explain them. Rather than taking anything that doesn't fit on the first brush, concocting a just-so story and concluding God did it. That's not the way real science works, that's the way cargo cult science works.


>>So to claim that it is an unscientific method for creationists, but is valid for evolutionists, is merely special pleading, another logical fallacy. You seem to be getting good at those.

No. It's because there's a difference between concluding that since it got rapidly warm today between 5AM and 7AM that by 10PM the Earth will be a fiery inferno. There's actually other things to take into account, and you're refusing to see the bigger picture.


>>But you still ignore the fact that, regardless of the presuppositions involved, the vast majority of such measurements point toward a YOUNG earth, not an OLD earth.

No. There are no measurements which completely independent of your presuppositions say the Earth is Young.


>>Evolutionists just pick and choose whichever methods they want to suit their philosophical beliefs of naturalism.

No. We typically go by radiometric dating because those rates are much better than other methods we've tried. They are consistent with all the other methods that should be consistent.


>>Well, when the evidence clearly shows that the timeframe for the existence of the earth and the universe is clearly nowhere near long enough for evolution to even be possible, (let alone all the other evidences against it), then "Therefore God" is a pretty basic conclusion.

God proves YEC. YEC proves God.


>>Add this to the fact that the overwhelming evidence supports numerous aspects of biblical history

There is no such evidence. There are only your misinterpretations of things.

>>(all humanity is descended from one woman,

Mitochondrial eve was not the only woman on the planet. She is just a common ancestor to all humans. But, not the only ancestor. She likely lived in a group of several hundred. And that's no even counting the Neandertals and Denisovians.

>>a catastrophic global flood in recent history,

There was no such flood. And there's no good evidence for such a flood.


>>the appearance of multiple languages near simultaneously in the recent past,

Many languages are tens of thousands of years old, some of the protolanguages older yet, and many of them fit into the Indo-European language tree and show clear evolution with various branches happening later and more recently and other branches being far older and far more primitively. The indo and European split being one of the older ones, but then the European breaking down into the romance and Germanic and Germanic into German and English. They aren't all at all suddenly everywhere but actually undergoing a well understood and pronounced evolution through linguistic history. It has everything to do with the slow migration and exodus of humans out of Africa 15-20 thousand years ago and the migrations since then.

>>the birth of culture,

150k years ago.

>>agriculture,

10-15k years ago.

>>and animal domestication all in the recent past in the fertile crescent of the middle east,

8-15k years ago.

Pretty much everything you mention predates the creation of the universe as given by the Semitic mythology you accept as truth.

>>etc) and the conclusion of the truth of "Therefore God" is one of the easiest conclusions that rational people can come to.

It may well be. There are cultures all over the world who do not share your religion who equally came to the same sort of conclusion that their gods did that. Humans are very motivated by agency and think that gods did it. They are overwhelmingly wrong. They believe roughly the same sorts of things you believe but worship monkey gods and false gods by the score. Humans are primed to suppose that spirits of the ancestors, ghosts, or gods did things, and they are overwhelmingly wrong.

>>Based on a philosophical assumption of naturalism.

No. Based on anything. It's the foremost theory because it's the foremost theory. Trying to disparage it due to lack of magic doesn't negate that it's the foremost explanation.


>>But personally, I think that limiting the search for truth to only a subset of possible explanations (which is precisely what naturalism does) is a terrible way to search for truth.

But, those explanations have never been true in the history of the world. For every phenomenon ever offered somebody claimed that a God did it, and they were always wrong. If the theory has never been right for anything, why should be be scoffed at for not testing the most failed hypotheses first? Shouldn't we test whether it's an unknown but perfectly natural phenomenon first? After all that's always been the right answer to every mystery in the history of the world.


>>If truth falls outside that specific subset, then you'll never find it, no matter how hard you try.

Well, we'll get there when there stops being natural explanations for everything. So far, it's not hindered us at all, and we looked for supernatural explanations over the years many many times and always found that the natural explanations were scores better. Perhaps when we find something and utterly exhaust other possibilities or and actually find evidence that actually supports the supernatural claims we'll have evidence for them. And conclude they are real. However, until such time, it's still the most wrong claim we've ever come across sporting a zero % successrate, whereas unknown natural explanations are sporting a 100% successrate.

>>Humphreys' theory blows the dynamo theory out of the water! Humphreys' theory provides a simpler explanation of Earth's magnetic field than the dynamo theory. By quite a lot!

The lack of evidence here is a problem. And the evidence against it is seriously at odds. You need to assume a lot of silly stuff to assume Humphrey's model. And you only need to look at the physics and the known workings of dynamos and all the pieces we have that says it works to conclude otherwise. Why should the polarity shift under Humphrey's model? Well there's no reason for it, save that it's clearly true so he includes it, but the dynamo model actually does explain it. These are where the evidence actually exists. Humphrey's model fits itself to the data, the data actually supports the Earth being a Dynamo. Oh, this is this way, let's interject so ad hoc claims to explain that. This is what crackpots with theories of everything try to do. They make up claims for new data.

>>The article you linked to is not complete - I can simply access the abstract. If you have the full version, I would be happy to review it.

Peer review stuff is often in journals. Some of these have pay walls. The point is that there is active research and it's finding exacting what it needs to find to be true.


>> And yet this prediction is not exclusive to the dynamo model. Predicting that some type of conductor would exist is almost irrelevant - it would have to exist necessarily, regardless of which model of the source of the magnetism is correct.

Nah, you simply can't generate more field without it, you could still just have one. It would however go away. This point was a requirement for dynamo. Some creationists even argued it was a serious problem for geology and therefore they were right. And yet, no, the actual evidence backs again the horse of unexplained but perfectly natural explanations.

>>Not magical rock formation - Flood based rock formation, which is well studied, and well known. When you call it magical, all you do is show your biased ignorance of the facts here.

No. I know it's magical. That's not how rocks actually form. It also includes a lot of absurdities like sorting out fossils by age for no particular reason at all. Critters we suppose lived 100 million years ago are found in rocks we believe to be 100 million years old, and are not found in newer rocks. But, apparently according to flood theory all died at the exact same time. And mysteriously floated to the correct layer.

>>On the contrary, such explanation exists, and provides accurate predictions, as I have already shown.

That the Bible says something about volcanos does not suffice to show the entire bulk of geology is wrong.


>>>>Tatarize: "You do not solve the mystery of missing socks by involving elves. The mystery of the elves is necessarily greater than the mystery of the missing socks."

>>This is quote possibly the worst analogy I've seen in months. Humphreys has done nothing but postulate a scientific idea, and used standard scientific modelling to substantiate it.

And part of the substance he's used is the Bible. Consistent claims + Bible does not make a good theory. Consistent claims across all disciplines + huge amount of evidence does make the case.



>>He's provided a testable, falsifiable theory, and it keeps passing test after test,

He invents new claims. That's not science, that's Calvin Ball.

>>>>Tatarize: "No, it uses the giant pile of evidence to establish that."
>>First, there is an even larger giant pile of evidence that does not establish your long ages.

No. It uses a bunch of ad hoc claims to try and explain away the giant pile of evidence. That's completely different than actually proving the claim.


>>And second, when discussing the viability of a dating method, it IS circular reasoning to simply say that a different dating method contradicts it.

All the valid ways of dating things tend to agree within the margin of error. Those dating methods which don't agree are investigated and we find good reasons why they don't agree. But, most all of the dating methods we have that work are based on rather basic nuclear physics and agree the Earth is 4.5 billion years old.

>>instead of arguing against the facts of the method being discussed, you ignore it's conclusions and dismiss it due to outside influences.

You could independently be trying to argue that the moon is made of green cheese. And after changing the claim to a very dense cheese and below the surface where we couldn't see, you could well end up with an ad hoc set of claims which is entirely consistent with all of the evidence we have about the moon. You could explain away everything with new ad hoc claims, and make a consistent theory of a green cheese moon. Then when I go about to argue that it's stupid and therefore wrong because we know where cheese comes from and there are no cows in space and no methods by which cheese could get in space much less ferment and how consistent the properties of the moon are with a giant rock, and how we know how giant rocks are made naturally, you could just insist that I'm dismissing your claims due to outside influences. Oh, it's all this other science that makes you make those claims. And yes it is, but that's how evidence works.


>>That is the very definition of circular reasoning - assuming what you are trying to prove. Instead of appealing to outside sources, how about you actually discuss the merits of this dating method here.

No circular evidence is using something to prove that something. It's using the thing your discussing as evdience of what you're discussing. Like trying to prove YEC by citing a theory based on YEC and trying to dismiss all the claims against it by appealing to YEC. That's circular. You really need actual evidence to establish claims. And that's the serious problem with your claims. Not that they can't be rendered coherent. You can make the moon out of green cheese coherent with enough extra claims, but that there's no good reason to suppose you're right. It's nothing but a house of cards. And you add cards to dismiss evolution, genomics, morphology, geology, radioisotope dating, the history of China, etc.


>>I could easily sit back and claim that magnetic field dating is right because it matches up with helium diffusion rates, or supernova remnants.

You should try to do that. But, then you need to add new cards to explain how it is we can see supernovas more than 6000 light years away, and more to try and defend that nonsense about helium (which fits the same paradigm as other creationist arguments, it doesn't go down at the rates proposed and we have a proper explanation).

>>But I'm not doing that - I'm dealing with the subject at hand. How about you deal with it too?

Because truth doesn't fit with falsness. You can't get a lie to agree with all the truths in the world, only a truth will do that. In fact, that's how we can tell true things from false things. Trying to focus on each claim ignores all the serious problems. The Bible is fiction, the flood never happened, the Chinese were alive during 4000 BC and 2000 BC. The Americas were populated 10-15 thousand years ago and were not barren of human life after the time of Noah's supposed flood, we can see stars millions of light years away, the sun age is independently established to 4.5 billion years old, we can tell the universe is 13.75 billion years old through many different means and a variety of sciences. We can tell that all life on this planet are closely related and some species are more closely related than others but they all fit into the same nested hierachy.

All of these are thorns in your side, from the 11,700 year old King Clone Creosote bush to the age of the Assyrian culture, to the clear influences from local cultures of the Jewish people, to the archeology which utterly destroys the bulk of the supposed history of the Bible. There's no reason why these should be ignored because you want to focus on one point. These points are the reason why your one supposed coherent theory doesn't work, it rests on a giant pile of bullshit.



Tatarize: "Regardless of these silly arguments we can and do accurately date things through very robust dating methods."

>>And yet, they aren't anywhere near as robust as you think. Radiometric dating gives false dates all the time, such as recent lava flows dating as hundred of thousands or millions of years old (http://creation.com/excess-argon-within-mineral-concentrates-from-the-new-dacite-lava-dome-at-mount-st-helens-volcano),

K-Ar dating only works on things older than 2 million years old. Ofcourse if you feed it recent and biased samples (Austin himself noted he didn't give the dating lab a homogeneous sample) you'll get erroneous numbers. The lab made no equivocations of the point. If you try to date something out of the known error and specificity of the dating method and you'll get an error date. Duh. That's not a condemnation of radiometric dating, that's a testimony to the fact that creationists are dishonest bastards.

>>or top layer rock layers dating as older than lower layer rock layers.(http://creation.com/more-and-more-wrong-dates-radio-dating-in-rubble)

The same dishonest person here mixed up a bunch of stuff from different areas screwing up the isochron dating. You must have cogenetic samples which is to say that all your stuff is created from the same event. If you mix a bunch of various isotopes together you'll get an error date. You cannot just mix a bunch of samples from a bunch of different lava flows and apply isochron dating to the bunch.

Your so called evidence is one guy sending crap in and ignoring the well stated assumptions and requirements for the dating methods.


>>At that point in time, millions of years was still a flat out assumption, with no evidence at all.

Lyell's geology at the time was actually pretty good. The dates were still pretty far off, but it was a reasonable set of guesses. And sufficient to think that the geologists were on to something.

>> It was a philosophical belief system entirely (which it remains as almost to this day).

Actually it's pretty much the core of geological science now with back up from physics, biology, chemistry, to name a few. The Uniformitarianism is pretty clearly the correct and obvious way of geology. Though I hadn't previously considered it but creationism like Velikovsky's theories, and modern day lightning-universe theorists really are followers of modern day catastrophism.


>>So it's clear your claim is false - anyone who wants to can go and verify this.

I didn't imply differently.


>>Once again, this comment clearly shows that you only want to accept science built upon your philosophical assumptions.

No. It shows that the bulk of the evidence supports one side and not the other. Regardless that we had no idea why Kelvin was wrong at the time, we can see quite clearly that there was a heck of a lot of good evidence for an old Earth even then. A couple odd results didn't, even then overturn all of geology. Just as the lack of techtonics at the time didn't negate the need for them.


>>The majority of the evidence actually points to a young earth, not an old earth -

I'm not remotely convinced of that because to date I haven't seen any good evidence that you're right, and I've seen a heck of a lot of evidence to suggest that you're wrong.

>>but if you want to stick to your philosophy, and interpret science only within that construct, then you are welcome to do so. But don't pretend that your philosophical assumptions don't affect your view of the scientific data.

You interpret things with regard to the various theories they have at their disposal. The question isn't strictly can I make this fit my theory? But, what do I need to suppose to make this fit my theory, does it fit the other theories well? What would the data look like if my theory were correct? What would the data look like if my theory were wrong? If geology is entirely consistent with an old earth. Further if geology is entirely consistent with a new earth, then the only thing to consider is which one is more reasonable. The old earth theory assumes things like the Earth is old and things happen currently much like they happened in the past. YEC seems to include things like God changed the decay rate of various elements at various times to make it all look like they decayed fast. Then he expanded the size of the universe 20X in order to cool off the Earth (which wouldn't work). Then during the flood rocks were quickly made and all the fossils sank to the level they would need to be at to make it look exactly like the biologist were right and/or the devil/God buried those fossils to fool us. And all fossils use rapid fosilization as can be done under specific laboratory conditions. And then though there were only specific kinds of animals saved God made them all diverse exactly as they would have evolved were there not a massive flood killing them all, and various amounts of hyper-evolution to restore the species diversity super-quickly.

If you bend far enough, you can argue that the moon is made of green cheese or that YEC is true, but you have to interject more absurdities than you can even keep track of to try and paste it all together. The problem here isn't just consistency, but simplicity. It's to do with how ad hoc your claims are. You can defend the moon being made of green cheese but you need to interject a lot of claims which are unproven and made up on the spot. The same is true of creationism, with it's invented star light, and expanding universe to cool off the Earth when God sped up the radioactive decay, to make all the decaying stuff look to be 4.5 billion years old. Or alternative methods of making rocks.


>>And that's exactly what I said. The evidence of the magnetic field is in the rocks. You are imposing your external dating system for the rocks onto the magnetic field therein. This is once again circular reasoning. "The rocks can't be young because they are old". That's not even close to a rational scientific conclusion. It's pure logical fallacy at it's best.

The problem here is that the entire date set is consistent with an old Earth. Just because Humphreys can interject a lot of ad hoc claims to make it also consistent with YEC, doesn't save the theory. It must be completely inconsistent with and Old Earth, and it's not. Clearly the Earth's magnetic field has varied in the past and continues to vary but shows no signs whatsoever of decreasing much less exponentially. So clearly it's not a problem for an Old Earth, in fact the data shows that it's not a problem at all. The only way of preserving your claims and your argument is for your conclusion to be true. You need all that fluxation to exist during the flood and all rocks to be made during the flood because that's what explains away the data of an old Earth. But, you can't then turn around and use your assumption of YEC to prove YEC. Clearly such arguments fail. You need there not to be any good explanation for a given phenomenon. And the explanation is that what we see is what we get, the field varies. We have a number of very good reasons to think this, and so your argument fails. There's no sound reason to think the field is exponentially weakening. In fact, to preserve that claim Humphreys had to smuggle all of geological history into 40 days (or 120 days) and have the magnetic field flipping around all over the place (regardless that you couldn't both flip that and set the rocks fast enough in place, as the rocks would have to form even more absurdly quickly). So the field was dropping from Adam to Noah and then was restored by Jesus and started dropping again. Ignoring that it was increasing up to 1000 years ago and started dropping again, and that doesn't actually fit with the dates given. And no reason to suppose any of that is true.

The problem here is much like you had with the salt. It's an argument for a young earth, it needs to show that independent of the age of the Earth. Radiometric dating works regardless of the age of the earth. Tree rings work regardless how old the Earth is (and at least 11k years). Just as genomics find relationships millions of years old with good accuracy. Just as the speed of light shows us galaxies and such which are millions and billions of years old, regardless how old the universe might be. Just as we can tell the age of stars completely independent of how old the Earth is. You only dismiss it because the evidence is consistent with an Old Earth. But, that's what I need to show to show what I'm showing. There's no problem for geology here. So there's no problem here. It doesn't matter if your just so story is consistent with a young earth, it's not a problem for an old earth and thus constitutes no evidence.



>>I apologize - this comment may have been misconstrued to mean that I think you yourself did the calibration. Clearly, I know that is not the case. However, you have accepted an external calibration, as I mentioned above.

The claim is that half-life should remain what it is, there's every reason to think that that is true.


>>And once again, as I have already proven, the different methods you claim don't give anything close to the consistent age you would wish for.

Because some crazy guy ignored the requirements for various dating methods and got error dates? Ignoring that we use dozens of different methods to date such things. And find a very consistent date for the particular samples by using many different independent dating methods. That's what is meant by consistent.


>>As mentioned, that's just not the case. The dating methods do not usually agree - and they often disagree by significant factors well outside any reasonable possible error factor.

Those things given in that link of a list of things are not dating methods. Most of them are utterly flawed, and a lot of them still give very high values for the age of the Earth. But, wrongly assume things we do not know to be true. However we have a very robust method with radiometric dating, and a few other methods which work but aren't as clear cut and precise.


>>You paint a rosy picture of everything agreeing.

It's not simply that it agrees but also that it fits the known facts. The evidence supports it and constant influx of new evidence also supports it.


>>Unfortunately, it doesn't. And this fact is well known. I've already provided enough evidence to show why these dating methods are flawed.

You'll have to be more specific. Was it the crazy guy who dating things that are explicitly going to give error dates or something else you cited. You provided one guy being dishonest and some conjecture as best as I can tell.

>>And I can easily show other dating methods which all agree with a young earth, and build up an even more consistent lattice of ideas backed by the evidence across all fields.

The agreement isn't the problem. They have to disagree with an old Earth explicitly and be valid clocks to use. The majority of these supposed Creationist Clocks are utter nonsense. Things like the moon slowly moving away at a constant rate but if you go backwards it's not far enough for the earth to be billions of years old, ignoring the fact that it's not constant. Or moon dust, or salt, or any of the various nonsense I've seen offered up. But, that is entirely what you'd need to do. Build a consistent lattice not only of the ideas but the evidence for those ideas which cannot be consistent with an old earth.


>>But this is just getting off topic again. If you'd like to open up another topic considering other dating methods, we can consider that.

The problem is that it's consistent with all science. So the inconsistencies you're generating here have to be fixed elsewhere. Just like Humphreys claim about changing the decay rates would absolutely broil the Earth, so he equally needs to conjecture out of nothing someway to cool the Earth, and fails horribly.

>>But for now, how about you address the issues here.

I have.


>>But your analogy IS false, for the exact reasons that I clearly stated. You didn't even attempt to refute that.

A false analogy needs to be a false analogy. You can't just make a bare assertion that it's wrong.

It's an analogy to the claims creationists make. I can show you plenty of times creationists make arguments just like that. That even you make arguments just like that. Wrongly conjecturing that something is constantly going this one way when it's not and extrapolating backwards to find absurdity. It wouldn't amaze me at all if Global Warming finally was accepted by the YEC group if only to argue that if temperature rises 1C a century that 60 centuries ago it would have been a frozen wasteland and so God must have made it warmer via Jesus and something about Noah's flood.


Tatarize: "Suppose since something is at some rate it must always have been. That's what Barnes did. And Humphreys is entirely based on those same claims, that the field is dropping exponentially! Except that it's not and the data says it's just on a downshift today."

>>But once again, you are wrong. You are making statements about the data that just aren't correct. I'm not sure what more to tell you than to go back and look at the actual data. The data points were all clearly measured, and are available through publicly available literature, which is well referenced.

There is no data. The data given is Barnes' data. And Barnes' is wrong for the criticisms given to him. Humphreys is trying to eat his cake and have it to.


>>The extrapolation is done through well tested, widely used, verifiable scientific statistical modelling. If you want to attack it, go ahead. But don't just sit there and whine that you don't like it. Try actually putting some effort into refuting it - if you can.

You can look at the data, and draw the line yourself. It would only fit linearly from Barnes and certainly not exponentially. And it ignores all the millions of years of good data of the fluctuations, which is the antithesis of something exponentially decaying.

>>Once again, all you've done here is commit another logical fallacy of false analogy. Humphreys' data contains significantly more data points than "one".

He uses the same data as Barnes to conclude roughly the same thing, but adding in parts where Jesus restores the magnetic field and where Noah's flood is injected with explaining all the data we have from sediments. It's a bunch of ad hoc nonsense added to Barnes' silly idea and conclusion to try and invent something for which there's no evidence and claim a problem for geology which has no problem. If you don't explain away all the clear data by appealing to YEC claims, you get Old Earth claims that are entirely consistent with the data.


>>And you know this. To make this comparison, you are being completely dishonest in your representation. You can't hide behind any claim of reasonableness here - you are clearly being dishonest, and you really have no recourse on this one but to admit you've overstepped the bounds of rationality and withdraw your analogy.

It's a valid analogy. This is generally how creationism works. It's cargo cult science. Not real science. Try and find something silly and suppose it's always been that way and extrapolate backwards towards more absurdity and blame that absurdity on naturalism. Millions of tons of carbon dioxide are added to the atmosphere every year, but the universe can't be millions of years old because even a few thousand years ago the atmosphere would have no CO2 at all and the entire planet would be completely frozen.


>>And again, you are simply confusing field strength and field polarity. You keep mixing these terms, and as such are trying to refute an argument that neither I, nor Dr Humphreys, are making.

Then why does Humphrey bother to work these into his claims. Why explain the flips in polarity with Noah's flood if he's only talking about the overall strength which isn't at all measured and he has absolutely no data at all to suppose (save that the strength of the field towards one polarity would set a minimal value, but the magnitude of the polar maximums don't decrease over time.


>>Once again, I point you to only 2 of multiple evidences that prove you wrong: Polonium radio halos prove non-constant radioactive decay rates in the distant past

No it proves that elements decay into other unstable elements, and those elements decay at other rates than the base element.

>>unknown particles from solar flares alter radioactive decay rates (http://news.stanford.edu/news/2010/august/sun-082310.html)

A value so minor we needed a hell of a lot of averages to see it.

>>Definitive proof that shows you are wrong. Radioactive decay rates have changed in the past, and we have verifiable experimental evidence that we have seen them change in the present day.

No. It's a series of rather absurd claims based on misunderstandings. Halos being the prime example. The explanation is not only trivial but something we already knew about and expected. The stupid rocks didn't start with those short half-life elements, they decayed from Uranium into those short half-life elements, this clearly predicts that you'll always find Uranium with these halos and look at that you do!


>>Finding 30 year old lava to be hundreds of thousands or millions of years old is NOT a minor issue

It is when the dating method at hand requires that the sample be older than 2 million years to allow the outgassing of the original argon. With that particular method there's short half-life elements which will screw things up, so it doesn't work until they decay. The method explicitly makes this point and requires that the samples be over 2 million years old to prove effective dates. A dishonest guy (Austin) sent in samples that the method cannot date and got an error date. It's not even a minor issue, it's an abuse by a dishonest bastard.

>>Finding a rock layer that is supposedly hundreds of thousands of years younger than a rock layer above it is NOT a minor issue

The same dishonest bastard mixed several different samples together and did isochron dating which requires that all the sample be cogenetic. He abused the system there too. It's the same guy, specifically ignoring the known limits. Just like checking radiocarbon dating of a snail shell derived from inorganic carbon is going to equally provide an error date. The carbon must be organic and part of the carbon cycle. These are dishonest abuses by one silly guy, they are not major issues for the overall system of dating things typically with a dozen or so different independent methods which all find a coherent and consistent date.


>>Finding a 45 thousand year old forest that was burnt by a 45 million year old lava flow is NOT a minor issue

Coal contains a few things that cause trace amounts of C14 to be produced. You can carbon date coal and get an error date accordingly of about 45 thousand years, depending on the amount of contamination. Carbon dates don't really work back that far, and trace contamination will give dates at the maximal end of the scale ~50k years.

>>Finding 36 thousand year old wood in 20 million year old rock layers is NOT a minor issue (http://creation.com/dating-in-conflict)

Carbon dating things with contamination will give you an error date. So things with bacteria on them or exposed to ground water will produce error date especially if they don't naturally have any carbon-14 in them.

http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CD/CD011_5.html


>>Finding carbon-14 of any amount in diamonds that are supposedly billions of years old is NOT a minor issue

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-o7ArSeSOY

You end up with trace amounts of carbon-14 in most samples. That's why at the far end of the spectrum we can't use carbon-14. It's really good with things that have a lot of carbon-14. But things which should have nearly none, will typically sport some trace amount due to contamination. That's why we don't date them using that method on things that are that old.


>>You can't just do some hand-waving here and claim these are minor issues

They all fail to the same thing. Carbon get into anything and trace amounts in a sample will cause a serious error at the extreme of the sample. No hand waving needed, it's a known limit about carbon-14 dating.

>>And these are but a handful of the HUGE problems with radiometric dating. There are plenty more where these came from.

These are all issues of the methods being grossly misused, by Austin dating samples too young to be dated with K-Ar to trying to date things that are too old with C-14. There's a reason all that stuff shows up with dates of around 40-50k with carbon-14 (that's where trace amounts would be consistent and contamination could provide). And Austin also mixing a bunch of different lava samples together and trying to do isochron dating which explicitly requires that things be from the exact same sample. These aren't problems at all, these are generally speaking lies.

>>But this just isn't true. The methods don't come up with the same answer, as I've previously shown.

No. You previously showed how it's possible to abuse the system. Not how consistent the methods are when they are used together with several methods to accurately date things, as scientists are apt to do.

>>And even further, experts in radiometric dating know this! When labs accept samples for testing, the first thing that the ask is "how old do you think the sample is" so they can then choose the dating method to use which might give an answer in the range expected!

Because many of the methods don't work outside particular ranges. If you think it's 10k years, they will use carbon dating and not U-Pb. You need to try and guess at which methods will be best. It can still be done, but the methods used depend on particular error bars at particular ages. You can't use K-Ar younger than 2 million, you can't use Carbon Dating older than 50k. They need to know which methods they should be able to use, to give the correct answer rather than an error date.


>>Not only that, it's commonly known that, if a radiometric date confirms an estimated date obtained from fossils in the nearby rock layers, then it is used.

Consistency is somewhat important. If you've got a 7-9 million year old pig tooth in that same layer and the date you get is 7.4 million years, that's a pretty clear indication that you have a fairly good date. Biostratification is a pretty usable method, and agreeing with radioisotope dating gives you a pretty clear reading.

>>But if the radiometric date does not confirm the date expected from fossil evidence, then it is simply thrown out as anomalous for some reason (contamination is the easiest solution, but other reasons are often given also.)

You could try a few other dating methods but a lot of indicator fossils are so well dated that it would be utterly bizarre to find them where they don't belong. It's best to try a half a dozen different methods or so to get a consistent date. But again, none of these are so utterly contaminated as to give 6,000 years or anything absurdly that young.

>>So despite your claim, the multiple dating methods do NOT come up with the same value on anything close to a consistent basis.

You can abuse the system and get error dates. But, most of the time they are used correctly and we can well date things to a few hundred thousand years as they are sandwiched between two lava flows or something that are easily dated by many different methods. In fact, sometimes in anthropology they look at places where the dates are really good because the dates are really good not because there's particularly more fossils there, but rather when you find one you can get a very accurate date for them.


>>I'm glad you admit that, since I have provided verifiable evidence of this above. From both creationist and secular sources.

How praytell is a minute fraction of a minute fraction of one percent going to give an error rate of 99.99999% as one needs to conclude a 4.5 billion year old planet is 6,000 years old? And those halo things are just stupid and wrong, that's nothing to do with shifting decay rates, but the decaying of elements into other elements with other half-lifes, a fact that we can actually predict from nuclear science.

>>So I guess we can then agree to set radiometric dating aside, as it is fallible.

No. You don't get to site a crazy guy a few abuses of the system and a misapprehension about halos as proof of fallibility. It's proof that creationists are at times dishonest and tend to make some terrible arguments.


>>Once again, Straw Man arguments against points which I have not made.

But, creationists do. It's a cargo cult science and the vast majority of arguments are much like the arguments you make here.


>>Creationists do - as I have shown here.

You have not. You've shown sciency looking claims, but no actual science. It's mostly rock throwing and name calling and abuse of the known limits of particular methods.

>>But when the evidence comes from a creationist, you seem to summarily dismiss it just for that reason alone.

I don't. I actually pointed to good reasons why it's wrong. I didn't just dismiss the claim about halos, I explained why it's wrong and the wrong assumption it's based on.


>>Amazing, truly staggering. And yet, all that proves is that the universe is expanding, and accelerating.

Yes, but considering the rate we can actually calculate it backwards and find out that it's not 6000 years old. In fact, it's at least 12 billion years old. And the CMBR as measured by WMAP puts the number pretty well at 13.75±0.15 billion years old. Even the light from the Andromeda Galaxy is 2.5 million years old.


>>That's all the evidence provides for. Extrapolating backwards to get the Big Bang only happens if you accept certain philosophical assumptions - naturalism, materialism, etc.

You assume that things tend to be what they were. You can't assume that God suddenly expanded the universe for no reason, jiggered with the decay rate, cooled off the planet, invented starlight, and then made everything look exactly like it would need to look to be as old as scientists now think it is.


>>Not to mention the scientific assumptions that the Big Bang is built upon (the universe is effectively homogeneous everywhere, it has no centre and no edge, etc) which are completely unverifiable.

We can look in different directions and see the same thing. In fact, we can see back to the early universe and early stellar nurseries and look at stars which are billions of years old. We really can see differences there and can look at Hubbles evidence and rightly conclude that there's no center or edge. Those claims are perfectly verifiable with relativity as well as observations of the universe.

>>If you accept those assumptions, then the Big Bang is a decent theory.

If you don't accept those you need to explain why the data strongly indicates they are true.


>>But if you don't accept them (and there are significant, compelling reasons not to) then the Big Bang falls apart.

The universe is expanding. And it's expanding away from us, or rather spacetime everywhere is expanding and we see this as distant objects getting even more distant the more distant they are.


>>Except for the fact that the data doesn't actually say that.

You agreed that it did. The bulk of geologists claim tectonic forces explain the out levels and in fact, the amount of salt in the land is there because of those same tectonic forces.

>>As mentioned, the only way you get that is either through Goldshmidt's data, which circularly assumes the very thing you are trying to prove,

It shows the evidence is consistent with an old Earth. Given an Old Earth, we cannot conclude any different. Even if we couldn't explain the loss of salt *cough* tectonics *cough*, it's still the case the geology does not at all support the idea that salt levels are fluctuating.


>>Again, you have conjectured this with no supporting data or evidence, or even an argument for a viable method that could be tested.

Geology has shown this repeatedly. Land that use to be ocean often has a lot of salt in it. It's entirely consistent with the mixing of various rocks and such, as lava contains salt, and got it largely from the Earth and a lot of salt laced rocks are flowing into subduction zones. Geology backs this position because there's a pile of evidence behind it.


>>Once again, you have this backwards. Creation science is the system that is completely consistent, explaining every piece in concert with every other piece.

You don't get consistency by interposing God everywhere where you hit a problem. And you don't get draw inconsistency out of misunderstanding the actual science as creationists are apt to do.

>>Evolutionary science is the system which is fractured, and which consistently causes problems with other areas of science.

No. It doesn't.


>>>>Tatarize: "That's more science. Sure, if you're going to undercut such science"

>>And this gets down to the heart of the issue, which unfortunately, I'm not sure you can accept. I'm not undercutting such science. No creationist is.

You don't think poopooing radiometric dating by citing a couple isolated examples of dishonest people abusing the dating methods is trying to undercut science.


>>We are undercutting the philosophical belief systems upon which such science is built.

It's not that science is built on denying the supernatural. It's that the supernatural theories turned out to be horrible at explaining anything. They are so of the most failing set of theories ever. They were offered for pretty much every mystery and were always wrong. That's not something you want to offer up next time you need a theory.


>>If you believe in naturalism, materialism, empiricism, then you really have no choice but to force discordant data into the explanatory framework which you have done.

That's the problem, no I don't. All the data fits perfectly fine. And it doesn't require supposing gods, ghosts, ancients, or magic


>>You've left yourself with no other option. And that's the fundamental issue.

Your "discordant data" is a bunch of fooey. It's a couple examples of dishonest people, and wrong claims. You might as well offer human footprints of giants with dinosaurs and claiming that only God could design nature, because let's ignore evolution.

>>It's not a question of science vs religion, it's a question of the science of naturalism, materialism, empiricism vs the science of creation.

It's a question of reality. Has supernatural things ever really answered any question ever? Has naturalism? Well no supernatural things ever were shown to be right. And natural explanations have been the right answer to every mystery ever found.


>>And quite frankly, naturalism, materialism, empiricism have way too many flaws to built a coherent view of the universe.

Are you referring to the cited claims you made earlier or are there some other flaws you'd like to suggest. Because as far as I can tell the universe is exactly as it should be if there is no God. It looks exactly like it should look if it were only built by random happenstance.


>>which is similar to the claims you end up with when approaching the science without the presuppositions of naturalism, materialism, empiricism.

Way to render yourself into rubber and me into glue. But, it doesn't escape those problems. There are more than a few things which are older than your supposed age of the universe. Even the story of Noah's flood dates back to before that tribe with that mythology puts the origin of the universe.


>>But no one is throwing out physics - just the philosophical assumptions through which the conclusions of physics are then interpreted.

That things are what they are? That nuclear physics is what it is? That the speed of light is what it is? You are trying to suggest that where-ever counter examples crop you you get to invoke God and pretend they don't. That's not science. That's Calvin Ball.


>>Again, which is where you end up when you abandon the less than rational claims of naturalism, materialism, and empiricism.

When you abandon science you can well make up whatever you want. Because you're no longer dealing with reality.


>>Very interesting, but again, built upon philosophical assumptions

It relies on other science. So you'll just disregard it. Because, as I said, you're just disregarding science.


>>I'd suggest you read up on the concept of gravitational time dilation.

I'm very well versed on such things. They don't make Andromeda's light less than 2.5 million years old.


>>Perhaps Dr John Hartnett's "Starlight, Time and the New Physics", or his "Dismantling the Big Bang". Ridiculously simple explanations of how we can see distant starlight in a young universe, based entirely on Einstein's Theory of Relativity and Dr Moshe Carmeli's 5 dimensional space-time-velocity model of the universe.

God on the 4th day of creation caused the universe to hugely expand and the rest of the universe underwent several billion years while Earth did not experience any more than a normal day. That's the sort of stuff I was talking about. You can easily render the moon as being made with green cheese if you're allowed to suddenly suppose a bunch of pointless nonsense.


>>Not only that, but Hartnett's model explains the cosmos and accelerating expansion without the need for hypothetical, unobserved phenomena like dark matter or inflation.

You mean just dark matter. That doesn't really have any relevancy there anyway. Dark matter has to do with fixing the values for the rotation of a galaxy and the mass of that galaxy. The better evidence is the filaments of the universe, and the bending of light around the bullet clusters. But, it's neither here nor there. Inflation however is observed and in fact it's odd that 1/Ho is 13Gyr. If we flip Hubble backwards the universe seems to be as old as the cosmic microwave background radiation independently suggests.

My point throughout is that if you make crap up you can make anything fit, but you end up with things like God expanding the size of the universe for no particular reason when the actual mythology means that God spread the firmament, and spend the 4th day simply adding bling to it.



>>Except that Humphreys' model does all this way better, with a simpler theory,

No it doesn't. It likewise interjects a bunch of crazy nonsense to try and fit the data. If the data were different his theory would simply include different ad hoc suggestions to make it include everything. By the same token Velikovsky explained a hell of a lot. He just did it with absurd things like Venus popping out of Jupiter for no reason and passing by Earth and causing Noah's flood and various other ad hoc claims. That's not science. That's Calvin Ball.


>>with wider explanatory scope, with stronger explanatory power, and with an unbeatable track record of correct predictions. THAT'S how science works, my friend.

And in the future, as cosmology continues and dark matter gets some better evidence and eventually gets fully accepted, the theory will be changed to explain Dark Matter and how God made dark matter and how Dark Matter supports a young universe. It's not explaining more with less. It's explaining things with ad hoc secondary claims, that were pulled from his ass.

>>Dr Humphreys on the other hand has published his theories in peer-reviewed scientific journals,

They published such things not in peer reviewed journals but in creationist publications. They are no better than some website. And the rebuttal had good evidence and explanations behind it. Subjects really do rise and fall on their own merits. For example the best rebuttal of the Aquatic Ape Hypothesis is done by an amateur on a website. You can hardly expect real scientists to bother to publish rebuttals to such nonsense in journals. Though some geologists have addressed such claims, but did things like had an honors geology class rebut the points made and simply vetted them and put them on a website.

http://orgs.usd.edu/esci/age/index.html

>>Second, Meert seems to have a continuing dislike for Humphreys on a level that goes beyond the actual science. It can be seen through his desire to attack

To be fair, dishonest people are generally very dislikable. And if one bothers to go through the entire laborious process of refuting claims that have no compunction of invoking magic, it's going to seem as petty. Deigning to even discuss the claims requires going into the breech of the absurd.


>>Third, despite the unwarranted attacks, and unprofessional, unpublished attempts at refutation, Humphreys has still taken the time to fully rebut Meert on every point that he has brought up. It always follows a simple pattern: Humphreys publishes a theory, Meert throws out a few half-hearted attempts at identifying problems,

Humpreys simply invents new ad hoc claims. Sure, changing the rate of decay would fry the Earth, but that makes Humphreys expand the universe. But, expanding the universe won't cool the Earth off, so he'll just make up another claim to explain it.


>>Humphreys refutes them all, but Meert (and all the atheist websites which follow him) keeps pointing back to the same original criticisms, even after Humphreys has debunked them.

Has invented new claims to explain the problem with the old claims. The original criticisms were still valid. Just inventing more claims to explain away the problems with the old claims doesn't stop that from being the case.

>>It's sad really, but people keep on referring back to information that has already been addressed and handled (this is one of the main faults of that TalkOrigins site I warned you about earlier - nothing but first level issues, most of which have been suitably handled.)

While it's true that sometimes the newer claims are offered to explain away the faults of the older claims, it doesn't negate the usefulness of the older claims. You made quite a few claims that are accurately listed with their original sources and why the claims are absurd. While one could invent a reason why halos can't be the result of the decayed element the decayed from Uranium. One could suppose an ad hoc interjection that God didn't allow Uranium to decay into Plutonium and Argon prior to Noah's Flood or something, it wouldn't really solve the problem. It would add to the problem.

The more absurd a theory is, the worse it is. Adding layers on to the absurdity doesn't save the theory it makes it worse. To say that God creates evil to test humans, doesn't explain away why an all-good all-powerful being would allow the holocaust, it simply makes the claim that much more absurd. Now this all-testing, all-powerful all-good-when-not-conducting-tests God is that much more absurd.


>>I agree! Which is why I can't believe in evolution, or the Big Bang, or deep geologic time! They are simply vastly inconsistent with so much of what we know.

No they really are perfectly consistent with things from chemistry, physics, geology, genomics, genetics, biology etc. You can Calvin Ball your way out of a few things by piling on the absurdity of your creation story, but you cannot really make it mesh with the rest of science. Or even recorded history which predates your mythologies origin of the universe.

>>They depend upon ridiculous miracles with no possible way of them ever occurring (naturalism, by definition, disallows miracles of any kind).

They don't require any miracles.

>>The Big Bang itself would be a miracle.

Nope. It doesn't require anything more than cosmology.


>>Abiogenesis would be a miracle.

It only requires chemistry and time. And we have both of those. In fact the universe looks exactly like one that could easily have chance explain abiogenesis. So much so that it's easy to conclude that it might have happened elsewhere than just Earth.


>>Numerous elements from geology would be miracles,

B2FH.

>>like the previously mentioned discordant radiometric dates, or things like polystrate fossils.

Those are mistakes and dishonesty. They aren't miracles.


>>Biological evolution would be nothing but miracle after miracle, all with no method for their occurrence.

Evolution by natural selection doesn't require anything other than populations and genetic noise, and necessarily will result in better and better design. Oh, and there's literally a world of evidence to support this.


>>So I agree, the facts that point to creation and a young earth could never go into partnership with the miracles required for evolution and naturalism.

None of those are miracles. However, things like God interjecting to move the stuff in the universe, change the decay rates of atoms, restore the magnetic field, flood the planet, expand the size of the universe, create star light in it's path, etc, would all be miracles and outside what we see from the evidence.


>>And once again, I can only say, if you want to believe that, you are welcome to do so.

I don't want to believe such things, I'm compelled to because the opposite claims are idiotic.


>>No - the data fits clearly within the creationist framework

No, the creationist framework is interjected with things like God making redshift and causing the universe to pointlessly age during time dilatation that wouldn't exist for Earth but rather the moved bits of the universe, and somehow magically ignore the light bouncing off them and somehow travel for billions of years in a day.

>>that has been effectively consistent for the past 6000 years.

No. It demands that during the flood God changed the decay rate of radioactive particles, that Jesus restored the magnetic field, that God expanded the universe to cool off those decaying particles.


>>It's amazing how consistent it's been, and still getting things right.

Science discovers things, then creationism makes up something to also explain that thing. That's different than getting things right. That's making up new claims for new data.

>>But then again, when there was an eyewitness to everything who wrote it down for us, I will admit that creationists do have inside information! :)

Was it the emotionally stunted YHVH the war God of a small tribe of locally disaffected people? And why then is it mostly wrong? Why does it seem to be exactly the sort of thing people would have invented and demonstratively did invent all over the place.


>>No - you'd just have to eject the philosophical assumptions of naturalism, materialism, empiricism, and things like that, upon which evolutionary views are falsely built.

I would have to reject the idea that the universe is not a game of Calvin Ball.

>>But since those are such flawed philosophies anyway, ejecting them would probably be a good thing.

So that we could suppose anything we wanted by tossing in a God did it from time to time?


>>Except the evidence says that they ARE decaying.

No. There's no evidence there. There are Barnes' numbers but those are polarity, and nothing for the absolute field. Not one jot.


>>Radiometric dating could still be useful, once we determine why there are the immense flaws which we clearly see.

Because there are clear limits to radiometic dating that are well known and well understood and a couple people ignore them and suppose that those hasty generalizations are true for all the methods. If I can kill a person with drugs clearly medical professionals can only kill people with drugs.

>>Once we understand that, we may actually be able to recalibrate it such that it provides the correct answers.

We don't need to recalibrate it, we have proper calibration and rules. If you ignore those you get error dates, so we don't. All the examples you gave were specifically claims exactly in line with the limits.


>>Maybe not, but maybe. As for rocks forming, we already have great understanding of this. And it doesn't require much time at all! If you want, I can provide you tons of evidence of rapid rock formation.

Because some rocks can be formed rapidly or fossils if you do the specific right stuff it doesn't at all suppose you can make all rocks in a couple thousand years. In fact, it's rightly absurd. But, you could interject some more ad hoc absurdity and equally support this claim. Just as you could for a moon made of green cheese.

>>>>Tatarize: "I would need to throw out nuclear physics. I'd need to get rid of electromagnetism and how atoms work."
>>No - since effectively none of this supports an old earth as opposed to a young earth.

No. The only way to get rid of the former is by getting rid of the latter. Regardless how useful understanding atoms is, if we're going to be jittering with weak nuclear force, we need to jitter with electroweak force, which means we need to change how electromagnetism works.

You are trying to throw out one branch of science without the need to chuck out all the other branches which are closely interconnected. You can't change decay without changing weak nuclear without changing electromagnetism.


>>Or maybe simply that it was a coincidence that it was approximately at that time frame.

The last change was around 1000 years ago when the strength started going back down. That's hardly at Jesus. but Humphreys says Jesus restored that.


>>But if that's where the evidence points, why would you ignore it, regardless of the reason?

I'm not. I'm not ignoring any of the evidence. It was increasing from 4000 years ago to 1000 years ago, and before that too but since that's Noah's flood stuff we'll just ignore that. So the evidence doesn't at all support that, even if we throw all of prehistory before 4000 years ago, it hasn't been declining. And coincidentally having it not declining wouldn't save your claims but hugely wound them. Unless you can explain away the counter evidence with Jesus or something you'd need to face the facts that it's not at all true. It hasn't always being decreasing. Even if we throw out all the shifts and changes and all the old rocks and everything. It still can't fit. Humphreys needs Jesus to restore the field from before Noah's flood to a thousand years after his death. For no reason at all. Or have it constantly decreasing except for when Jesus makes it increase. Or something equally absurd.


>Now you seem to simply want to bash Christianity. If that's the route you would like to go, we can have that conversation.

Well apparently it's a premise in your claims. Jesus restored the Magnetic field or something.

>>But that's drastically different than the science that we are discussing here. I'd rather stick to the science.

No. It is the "science" we're discussing. Humphreys specifically makes the claim. God plays a central role in the game of Calvin ball you call creation science. The fact that it's based on something that people could only have made up and which certainly could not be true, is problematic for your "science".

>>Once again, you are making arguments for points that we aren't discussing.

It all ties together. If Jesus is absurd by being a demigod who sacrifices himself to himself, then Humphreys is wrong to site him to restore the magnetic field strength, and then we just have fluctuations of magnetic field strength, and not a natural decay.

>>If you want to discuss those we can, but none of them really should have any bearing on the issues of ocean salinity levels or the Earth's magnetic field.

They do if your explanation is that God did it, and it is. If the earth is old, then neither the steady level of ocean salt or the fluctuating levels of the Earth's magnetic field are problematic. They are what the evidence says they are and for the reasons our theories rightly suppose.


>>Those should stand or fall on their own.

If Jesus doesn't restore the magnetic field then clearly the argument fails. If the universe isn't made a thousand years after the Egyptians brewed beer, then ocean salt levels must be steady and the problem must be in missing one of the losses of salt (like tectonic forces which geologists insist explains the difference).

>>Analyze them on their own merits, and then we can go on and look at all these other issues.

They are based on absurdity. And they require that we reject the bulk of science that we can agree on. If you adjust things enough you can claim the moon is made of green cheese, and without pointing out the absurdity of this by other methods the ad hoc claims could suitably come up with a seemingly consistent set of claims. Even if they involve particularly dense cheese covered with a surface of rock.


>>Incidentally, there are many other reasons that adequately explain many of the genome similarities that you brought up,

Common descent is easily the best.


>>none of which would require common ancestry,

Sure, we could ad hoc together a reason why God needed to put the same faulty pseudogene into chimps and humans in the same place. Or why the same virus appears in all the apes at the same chromosome level. Or why humans somehow have a non-functional gene for a yoke protein and yet don't have yoked eggs.

>>and none of which suffer from the problems for common ancestry.

Suffer? It's not suffering to explain a huge array of discordant data. Like why whales can have legs and sharks never do, why humans can have tails but never have wings. Why the same gene for humans to make eyes can also make fruit-flies have eyes.

>>As for your claim that all genomes fall into a nested hierarchy, in the method of common descent, that just simply isn't true.

Yes it is.
http://www.timetree.org/

There are huge arrays of studies which properly show taht all life on this planet falls into a nested hierarchy. Spiders share a lot of genes with insects they don't share with mammals. Mammals and spiders share a lot of genes they don't share with fungi. Humans and chimps share a lot of DNA that we don't find in the monkeys, and humans and monkeys share a lot of DNA that they don't share with birds. And birds and reptiles share a lot of genes that aren't shared with sharks. We really can plot it all out into a nested hierarchy. Not just taxonomy but beyond that into all the binary pairs. We can show how humans are more related to squirrels than to bats. That dogs are more related to bears than hyenas. That cows are more related to whales than to otters.

>>And it's not even close.

It's exact.

>>And a pseudo-nested hierarchy is exactly what would be expected in a creationist model,

No it wouldn't. You just inteject that God was lazy and cut and pasted a lot of stuff from the genome of one thing to another thing. That's not a prediction, that's something made up to explain why the human gene for making teeth is the same as the whale gene for making teeth (even for whales without teeth).

>>so it fits much better anyway.

No it doesn't. God could just make a few critters utterly unrelated and they would clearly testify to the existence of God and allow for people to convert. Instead we can tell specific genes in corn are the same between humans and corn. That corn is more related to bamboo than to peaches. God could just make anything. And wouldn't need to make humans a great ape species evolved in Africa from the African apes and more related to the African apes than the Asian apes.

>>We can discuss that if you want, but I'd advise against it for your sake.

It's a rather absurd advisement.

>>The area of genetics so clearly falls on the side of creation, and so much can't even begin to be explained by evolution,

Um, not even remotely true. There's plenty of misconceptions but, it gets into even more laughable territory than geology. Also, I program evolutionary algorithms so it's even more amusing.


>>I can't fathom how biologists hang onto the quickly dying theory of biological evolution.

By not believing bullshit from liars who are wrong. I'd presume. Because I've seen the creationist arguments here and they are absolutely awful.

>>Geologists at least have radiometric dating, and cosmologists at least have distant starlight,

They do. As well as star age and a few other things.


>>both of which seemingly might be hard for creationists to reconcile.

Nah, just Calvin ball some idiotic new ideas into play that make no sense and simply claim that God did it.

>>But biology is nothing but an evolutionary mess,

Biology accurately predicts thing that intelligent design and creationism wouldn't. Like why eye balls put together backwards, and why humans have terrible backs and poor knees. Why everything fits into nested hierarchies not only morphologically but genetically and molecularly. And a sound mechanism by which the whole thing works which isn't only true based on the evidence but mathematically as it works though a well understood mechanism.

>>and a creationist viewpoint is literally thousands of times more coherent.

Only if you ignore the evidence.

>>I'm well aware of how connected it is. And quite frankly, it all fits so well into the creationist paradigm,

Because when you can glue discordent facts together with bullshit and God, you can make any square peg fit any round hole.


>>I stand in awe of how amazingly connected God did design this world.

I'm amazed that science is to the point where God is an unneeded hypothesis.


>>I actually think it's you who underestimate how interconnected evolutionary science is with the philosophical foundations of naturalism, materialism and empiricism.

Because looking evolution wrongly hinges on looking at reality, testing things, and concluding that no magic interceded in the mean time? Yes, it's amazing how much evolution fits with observable facts.


>>You don't have to reject any part of science really - to get to the truth, you just need to eject faulty philosophical assumptions.

That we can discover things by looking at reality? That we can suppose something didn't magically change things when our backs were turned? That there aren't sneaky forces that mess with experiments? We don't need to make those assumptions, we can show that they work anyway. It might be that elves mess with our data, but it's not a very common thing to suppose and we'd be forgiven for not supposing it given the utter lack of evidence and the utter failure of all such claims in the past.


>>In the end, it simply seems to come back to the fact that you reject the science because you don't like where it leads.

No I love science because it accurately models reality. Creationism however, isn't science. It's a cargo cult of science playing Calvin Ball.


>>You clearly reject God, so I guess it seems natural that you would reject any science that would lead to him.

If you'd like to put forward evidence which can only be explained by an actual God, feel free. I've plenty often looked at all such evidence and very little of it isn't utterly laughable. And you yourself have insist that your arguments are true because the Earth is Young. Most of Humphreys theories require a young Earth and at best argue that he can make a consistent theory by interjecting a bunch of ad hoc claims. But, they are all dependent on YEC, and thus can't really prove YEC.


>>If you want to reject God, you need to have some platform upon which to build your beliefs about the universe.

Really considering the absurdity of the proposition I could just slap down an I don't know but it's not magic, and I'd be on better grounds than a deity.


>>And those platforms, no matter how precarious or flawed, will have to be absolute,

No they wouldn't. Science isn't about absolutes, it's about evidence and the best explanation.


>>for they are the only thing you have to explain the world around you.

They only need to explain the world better than the alternatives. That doesn't make them true, it makes them the best theory we have.

>>But that doesn't mean they lead to truth - they simply lead to a philosophically preferred explanation.

They lead to the best approximation of the truth and epistemological sound conclusions.


>>Moreover, that materialism is an absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door."

Mine isn't. I'm more than happy to allow supernaturalism to play the game. I think methodological naturalism gives supernaturalism way too much credit. We need not assume naturalism to do science. We can use science to show that since naturalism has always been the correct answer and supernaturalism has never been the correct answer that if we're to place our bets, we should bet against supernaturalism every time. Because it's never ever been the right answer to any question ever asked, and it's been offered for everything from genetics to lightning to life itself.

>>Science itself doesn't disprove creation, it actually supports it immensely.

No. Science finds that the universe has no need for gods. And that there's considerable evidence that humans just invent gods. And that Christianity is just an invented religion. The nature of evidence shows these points quite well.


>>Only if you were to preemptively believe creation was false do you end up with a version of science which attempts to disprove creation.

There's no real need to disprove it. There's no evidence that needs rebutting.

>>And even then, it falls far short.

It explains pretty much everything and doesn't resort to God did it when ever it hits a snag.

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