Originally posted by Reborn Outcast
1. Comets disintegrate too quickly.
The problem that is referred to by the creationist here is that the short- period comets have not occupied their present orbits for very long (in astronomical terms). Each time a comet passes close to the sun, some of its matter is driven off into space by the sun's energy (forming its "tail"). "Short-period" comets are believed by astronomers to have a lifetime of only a few thousand years, because after that all of their "tail-producing" matter would be used up (indeed, astronomers have noted comets to "vanish"; the remaining material only makes its presence known upon entering the Earth's atmosphere; this is likely the origin of meteoroid swarms.)
However, the fact that a comet cannot have occupied its present orbit for very long does not automatically imply that it is young. The Oort hypothesis does explain this problem as well, in that long-period comets -- if frequent enough -- will be moved into short-period orbits by a relatively near approach to a planet (comet loses momentum, planet gains it, comet is now in a vastly shorter orbit, planet is now in a very slightly longer orbit).
In fact, of the short-period comets, roughly half orbit pretty much between the sun and jupiter, leading astronomers to believe that jupiter "captured" them into their current orbits. (Statistically, we would expect the largest planet -- the best "capturer" -- to have captured the most short-period comets).
2. Not enough mud on the sea floor.
According to secular scientific literature,
Which? Most likely another out-of-context quote or a "scientific litterature" of dubious origin.
And plate tectonics do take care of that problem. Otherwise we'd be up our hips in mud in a few thousand years.
3. Not enough sodium in the sea.
This is just unfounded hogwash. As far as anyone knows, these things move in cycles.
4. Earth's magnetic field is decaying too fast.
The decay is not a steady state. In fact, there is considerable evidence for reversals. The atlantic ocean floor as it spreads shown the weakening - reversing - strengthening recorded in its stone as the continents spread from the mid-atlantic ridge.
The field is expected to reverse sometime in the next few thousand years. A time scale on page 78 shows the reversals over the past 170 million years, as deduced from the magnetic patterns in oceanic crust. I counted about 200 reversals on the chart.
5. Many strata are too tightly bent.
I'd like to see this applied to a real observation, rather than mere speculation of "many mountaineus regions".
6. Injected sandstone shortens geologic 'ages'.
It is very unlikely that the sandstone would not solidify during the supposed 430 million years it was underground.
Documentation?
Regardless, that is one weird result among many correct ones. The way things work is that you have to present proof of the dating method being consistently wrong, and on occassions where most modern scientists had proved themselves correct. It just doesn't help to whip out an example of grotesque results, which most scientists likely already know can't be used for anything.
7. Fossil radioactivity shortens geologic 'ages' to a few years.
Read this. I can't bother with cut n pasting a huge piece of text. (
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-meritt/age.html#polonium)
8. Helium in the wrong places.
This statement is false. It falls precisely within predicted limits.
9. Not enough Stone Age skeletons.
This implies that the Stone Age was much shorter than evolutionists think, a few hundred years in many areas.
Why does this imply this? Because skeletons get pulverized? Because we haven't dug up enough "artifacts" yet? And where do they get this notion that 4 billion should have lived and have become buried, all readily available for excavation?
The false reasoning abounds, it seems.
10. Agriculture is too recent.
The usual evolutionary picture has men existing as hunters and gatherers for 100,000 years during the Stone Age before discovering agriculture less than 10,000 years ago.
And with good reason. Due to the climate, animal life and the recent ice age, the stone age people would have to be nomadic hunters.
And this is a completely unproven hypothesis. By the same standards, I could say that because the medieval people were just as intelligent as us, we should have built nukes in the late 16th century. You can't a theory on what we "should have been able to do". That must be tested.
It is more likely that men were without agriculture less than a few hundred years after the Flood, if at all.
The mere mention of the Flood gives me fits. What did the meat eaters eat after landfall? Were viruses taken aboard the ark? And how many numbers of self-replicating species would be taken aboard?
11. History is too short.
Prehistoric man built megalithic monuments, made beautiful cave paintings, and kept records of lunar phases.
Which megalithic monuments is he referring to? What "beautiful" cave paintings is he referring to? It's not very difficult to record the lunar phases. Establishing formal grammatic for writing would take a lot of time, the uselessness of history recording would make it highly unlikely.
Here is an answer to your dating methods...
Nope.
Rates of radiometric decay (the ones relevant to radiometric dating) are thought to be based on rather fundamental properties of matter, such as the probability per unit time that a certain particle can "tunnel" out of the nucleus of the atom. The nucleus is well-insulated and therefore is relatively immune to larger-scale effects such as pressure or temperature.
Significant changes to rates of radiometric decay of isotopes relevant to geological dating have never been observed under any conditions. Emery (1972) is a comprehensive survey of experimental results and theoretical limits on variation of decay rates. Note that the largest changes reported by Emery are both irrelevant (they do not involve isotopes or modes of decay used for this FAQ), and minuscule (decay rate changed by of order 1%) compared to the change needed to compress the apparent age of the Earth into the young-Earthers' timescale.
As described above, the process of radioactive decay is predicated on rather fundamental properties of matter. In order to explain old isotopic ages on a young Earth by means of accelerated decay, an increase of six to ten orders of magnitude in rates of decay would be needed (depending on whether the acceleration was spread out over the entire pre-Flood period, or accomplished entirely during the Flood).
Such a huge change in fundamental properties would have plenty of noticeable effects on processes other than radioactive decay
While it is not obvious, each of these observations is sensitive to changes in the physical constants that control radioactive decay. For example, a change in the strength of weak interactions (which govern beta decay) would have different effects on the binding energy, and therefore the gravitational attraction, of different elements. Similarly, such changes in binding energy would affect orbital motion, while (more directly) changes in interaction strengths would affect the spectra we observe in distant stars.
The observations are a mixture of very sensitive laboratory tests, which do not go very far back in time but are able to detect extremely small changes, and astronomical observations, which are somewhat less precise but which look back in time. (Remember that processes we observe in a star a million light years away are telling us about physics a million years ago.) While any single observation is subject to debate about methodology, the combined results of such a large number of independent tests are hard to argue with.
The overall result is that no one has found any evidence of changes in fundamental constants, to an accuracy of about one part in 1011 per year.
It is true that some dating methods (e.g., K-Ar and carbon-14) do not have a built-in check for contamination, and if there has been contamination these methods will produce a meaningless age. For this reason, the results of such dating methods are not treated with as much confidence.
Also, similarly to item (1) above, pleas to contamination do not address the fact that radiometric results are nearly always in agreement with old-Earth expectations. If the methods were producing completely "haywire" results essentially at random, such a pattern of concordant results would not be expected.
All your "assumptions" are answered in the above if you care to read it.
Congratulations on making your first Redwing (In honour of Redwing's obscenely long posts which were a pain in the behind to reply to).
Now, since I've taken time to answer all your cut and paste work to the best of my ability, I now present to you questions I'd like to see answered as well:
1. Is there any reason to believe in your theory rather than some other version of creationism?
2a. Is there any observation which was predicted by your theory? (I'd like to see you present evidence of this. I'd very much like it, actually)
3. Is there any comprehensive and consistent statement of your theory?
4. Why is there the remarkable coherence among many different dating methods -- for example: radioactivity, tree rings, ice cores, corals, supernovas -- from astronomy, biology, physics, geology, chemistry and archeology?
4a. Explain the distribution of plant and animal fossils. For example, the limited distribution of fossils of flowering plants.
6. Why is there the present distribution of animals and plants in the world? How is it that marsupials are restricted to Australia and nearby islands and the Americas, monotremes to Australia, and few placental mammals are native to Australia? Why are tomatoes and potatoes native to the Americas only? (This is not a question merely of how they could have arrived there, it is also of why only there.)
9. What did all of the carnivores eat after leaving the Ark? (This is not a question about what they ate on the Ark.) In other words, explain how the food chain worked before the present ratios of a few predators to many prey.
Explain how the degree of genetic variation in contemporary animals resulted from the few on the Ark.
10. Is it possible to fit the pairs (male and female) of all kinds of land animals and birds on the Ark? The answer must give a detailed calculation. Remember to include all invertebrates as well as vertebrates, food and water, and neccesary environmental controls. Remember to include all kinds of cattle. Explain the meaning of the word "kind".
10c. Explain how there were pairs, male and female, of social (forming colonies), parthenogenic (female only) and hermaphroditic (both sexes in one individual) animals.
Take a close look at this yet again. (
http://rhein-zeitung.de/on/03/01/22/topnews/fossil.html)
Remember what I wrote about a "flying squirrel dinosaur"? I, not even an expert by far, predicted this fossil discovery! Remarkable. It really is. And not mere luck - the theory of evolution was a clear indication that such a fossil would be found.
Now, let's see you creationist predict ANYTHING at all with your theory. Fossils, natural phenomena, geological excavations - I don't care. Just predict something, and you can stop looking stupid in the light of evolution.