Answers to Creationist Attacks on C-14 Dating

[_bomgeography]

You do not know why god wanted Noah to sail to the Middle East only god knows

Your perspective is grossly limited to how the human race fits in to gods grand scheme of things.

[_spotlight]

Evidently standing for something is only for the members, not the scriptures. Those ought to be like Jello before it sets.

[_Themis]

You do not know why god wanted Noah to sail to the Middle East only god knows

He didn't need to bring any animals. He lied telling Noah he was going to destroy all humans except his family.

Your perspective is grossly limited to how the human race fits in to gods grand scheme of things.

When you want to change the story to fit it a little closer to reality, some will bring up why it still doesn't get close to reality. Most Christians don't have a problem just calling it Myth. Unfortunately for Mormons, Joseph attached to many claims to Noah and the flood.

[_LittleNipper]

And I believe that man is a separate creation made of dust in the image of God. Man didn't evolve upward from lower lifeforms but is devolving further and further from God. And atheists and the society they are creating is proof of that transition. However, God has permitted man to create things so that they may cope with a dying planet and a Universe moving towards the brink.

Why have science when we can have the ravings of LittleNipper's beliefs?
by the way Humans aren't made from dust. We're about 80% water.

Which one is your God?
SEE https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn ... evolution/

Why make theories when we have science? by the way --- what do you imagine holds the dust together?

[_LittleNipper]

The story came from the texts of an earlier civilization, which recorded it differently. I have no problem with it, either, as a story. It's when people start teaching it alongside scientific explanations and start building "parks" using public tax credits, resources, etc. It's when folks like Nipper use it as an excuse to stop learning and thinking.

If you're LDS, you are expected to accept that the teachings are of a global flood as the Earth required baptism.

The Noah story, like the Garden of Eden and the Tower of Babel, is a myth. Culture was more oral in those days and such stories lent themselves to entertaining the kiddos and providing deepity messages, cartoonish history and traditions for the rest. Nobody thought to authenticate or compare them in those times. They were too busy just living their lives day to day to be able to invest in investigation.

Not really. That has been suggested before, but as we demand unanimity for anything to become doctrine that particular idea doesn't meet that test.
SEE http://eom.BYU.edu/index.php/Earth
THE GREAT FLOOD. The Old Testament records a flood that was just over fifteen cubits (sometimes assumed to be about twenty-six feet) deep and covered the entire landscape: "And all the high hills, that were under the whole heaven, were covered" (Gen. 7:19). Scientifically this account leaves many questions unanswered, especially how a measurable depth could cover mountains. Elder John A. Widtsoe, writing in 1943, offered this perspective: The fact remains that the exact nature of the flood is not known. We set up assumptions, based upon our best knowledge, but can go no further. We should remember that when inspired writers deal with historical incidents they relate that which they have seen or that which may have been told them, unless indeed the past is opened to them by revelation.

The details in the story of the flood are undoubtedly drawn from the experiences of the writer. Under a downpour of rain, likened to the opening of the heavens, a destructive torrent twenty-six feet deep or deeper would easily be formed. The writer of Genesis made a faithful report of the facts known to him concerning the flood. In other localities the depth of the water might have been more or less. In fact, the details of the flood are not known to us.

My concern is only with regard to the Bible. High hills are not mountains and mountains are the end result of the Flood. Pre-Flood there was obviously more landmass and likely only one sea.

[_LittleNipper]

Maksutov:

I don't have a problem with Noah as a Prophet of God building a boat to save what he could from a massive albeit regional flood.

The story came from the texts of an earlier civilization, which recorded it differently. I have no problem with it, either, as a story. It's when people start teaching it alongside scientific explanations and start building "parks" using public tax credits, resources, etc. It's when folks like Nipper use it as an excuse to stop learning and thinking.

If you're LDS, you are expected to accept that the teachings are of a global flood as the Earth required baptism.

The Noah story, like the Garden of Eden and the Tower of Babel, is a myth. Culture was more oral in those days and such stories lent themselves to entertaining the kiddos and providing deepity messages, cartoonish history and traditions for the rest. Nobody thought to authenticate or compare them in those times. They were too busy just living their lives day to day to be able to invest in investigation.

It would seem that people like yourself let men calling themselves scientists (who throw data out the window along with God) design theories so you don't have to think for yourself.
And let's face facts. Today's evolutionists are the students of evolutionist professors and attend evolutionist science classes in evolutionist promoting institutions. Not a healthy place for Creationists let alone Creationism; however, they have had an influence. https://www.icr.org/article/95/

[_spotlight]

Why make theories when we have science? by the way --- what do you imagine holds the dust together?

Dust or soil is mostly composed of silicates and contains far more metals than the human body. We get the materials for our bodies from plants and other animals. The plants, though living in soils, get the majority of their mass from the atmosphere rather than the soil. What organics are found in soils got their from dead animals and plants not the other way around.
The similarity between dust and the human body such as it is is due to evolution and not to your primitive myths.

[_LittleNipper]

Why make theories when we have science? by the way --- what do you imagine holds the dust together?

Dust or soil is mostly composed of silicates and contains far more metals than the human body. We get the materials for our bodies from plants and other animals. The plants, though living in soils, get the majority of their mass from the atmosphere rather than the soil. What organics are found in soils got their from dead animals and plants not the other way around.
The similarity between dust and the human body such as it is is due to evolution and not to your primitive myths.

Not so primitive ---- https://www.icr.org/article/95/
And this one --- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pS5j3XccmUM
What Elements Are Found in the Human Body?

There are 92 elements that occur naturally on Earth. For living things, only 11 of these elements are found in larger than trace quantities. Any amount 0.01% or less is considered a trace element. For vertebrates, such as humans, there are two additional elements that occur in larger than trace amounts these are Iodine and Iron.

[_spotlight]

Hi Little Nipper,

Let's start first with your YouTube video. The Doctor has 14 papers that he participated in at an average rate of 1 per 15 months. He should have been able to answer the scripted questions cold as any good first year biology student would be able to today.

You are aware that ad hominem is a logical fallacy I take it? Good, then you should also be aware that appeals to authority are a fallacy as well. And your authority is apparently pretty weak at that. Even Einstein was wrong a couple of times.

And what have you got? Oh, more PRATTS.

last month you taught how mutations were genetic disasters? How by natural selection can they produce new and better structures?
Good question, good question, I'll probably have to think more about that.

Since this is a PRATT the answer already exists and has existed for quite a while.

Most mutations are neutral. Nachman and Crowell estimate around 3 deleterious mutations out of 175 per generation in humans (2000). Of those that have significant effect, most are harmful, but the fraction which are beneficial is higher than usually though. An experiment with E. coli found that about 1 in 150 newly arising mutations and 1 in 10 functional mutations are beneficial (Perfeito et al. 2007).

The harmful mutations do not survive long, and the beneficial mutations survive much longer, so when you consider only surviving mutations, most are beneficial.

Beneficial mutations are commonly observed. They are common enough to be problems in the cases of antibiotic resistance in disease-causing organisms and pesticide resistance in agricultural pests (e.g., Newcomb et al. 1997; these are not merely selection of pre-existing variation.) They can be repeatedly observed in laboratory populations (Wichman et al. 1999). Other examples include the following:

Mutations have given bacteria the ability to degrade nylon (Prijambada et al. 1995).
Plant breeders have used mutation breeding to induce mutations and select the beneficial ones (FAO/IAEA 1977).
Certain mutations in humans confer resistance to AIDS (Dean et al. 1996; Sullivan et al. 2001) or to heart disease (Long 1994; Weisgraber et al. 1983).
A mutation in humans makes bones strong (Boyden et al. 2002).
Transposons are common, especially in plants, and help to provide beneficial diversity (Moffat 2000).
In vitro mutation and selection can be used to evolve substantially improved function of RNA molecules, such as a ribozyme (Wright and Joyce 1997).


Whether a mutation is beneficial or not depends on environment. A mutation that helps the organism in one circumstance could harm it in another. When the environment changes, variations that once were counteradaptive suddenly become favored. Since environments are constantly changing, variation helps populations survive, even if some of those variations do not do as well as others. When beneficial mutations occur in a changed environment, they generally sweep through the population rapidly (Elena et al. 1996).

High mutation rates are advantageous in some environments. Hypermutable strains of Pseudomonas aeruginosa are found more commonly in the lungs of cystic fibrosis patients, where antibiotics and other stresses increase selection pressure and variability, than in patients without cystic fibrosis (Oliver et al. 2000).

Note that the existence of any beneficial mutations is a falsification of the young-earth creationism model (Morris 1985, 13).

http://talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB101.html

You need to study both sides of an argument dispassionately otherwise you just go through life committing confirmation bias. Think for a moment about a creator that creates organisms in an environment where mutations occur (that you assert via this video are all harmful) but fails to provide for that contingency. Color me unimpressed by the creator you champion.

Aren't the odds of the random assembly of genes mathematically impossible?
You've had your share of mathematics. Let's see if we can't figure that out. ... Those are pretty formidible odds aren't they?

Another PRATT deserves another canned response:

Problems with the creationists' "it's so improbable" calculations

1) They calculate the probability of the formation of a "modern" protein, or even a complete bacterium with all "modern" proteins, by random events. This is not the abiogenesis theory at all.

2) They assume that there is a fixed number of proteins, with fixed sequences for each protein, that are required for life.

3) They calculate the probability of sequential trials, rather than simultaneous trials.

4) They misunderstand what is meant by a probability calculation.

5) They seriously underestimate the number of functional enzymes/ribozymes present in a group of random sequences.

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/abioprob/abioprob.html

Why is it that we have the same genes for laying eggs in the same location as a chicken? Ours are mutated so they are no longer functional? Did your creator create mutations? Because there really hasn't been enough time since your beginning for that mutation to have happened naturally. Did Adam and Eve lay eggs like birds? Your creator scenario really is rife with many more (actual) problems than the imagined problems you raise about evolution theory.

Where are the transitional forms?

Another PRATT?
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CC/CC200.html

Tiktaalik was in the spot in the geologic column where it was expected to be found rather than being discovered out of sequence. Now ask how it is that lifeforms were sorted into an evolutionary order or sequence in the geologic column by your flood explanation. Again the problems posed by your myths are far more substantive than the imagined problems you see with the theory of evolution. How did the plants sort themselves? How did the isotopes?

You really have nothing at all do you? A scripture comes to mind about motes and beams.

[_spotlight]

Hi Little Nipper,

So on to your ICR propaganda piece article:

So an employee of Answers in Genesis and also the Institute for Creation Research, okee dokee.
His doctorate is in education from Ball State University. Notable alumni include David Letterman but unfortunately not Dr. Parker.

The primary point of the article is to showcase an example of someone who was an atheist who became a creationist purportedly because of the scientific evidence. Well if we are fighting that battle then you will note that there was a time in our past when almost all geologists were creationists. The tide has been moving away from creationism due to the facts and data that have come to light in that field of study.

Today creationists are roughly 0.0007% of the number of geologists.

ICR lists 12 people that are in Geology or related fields. By comparison the Geological Society of America has over 17,000 members (keep in mind that not all geologists are members, just like not all young earth geologists are listed by ICR). That equates to 12 young earth geologists and 17,000 old earth geologists, or .0007 percent. This is by no means a scientific determination, but can be used to give a rough estimate.

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


So starting off, I find that I agree with Dr. Parker's reasoning about the theological case against theistic evolution. I don't think that works either. The difference of course being that he went on to creationism where I left creationism and apparently for the same reason.

the bulk of scientific data actually argues against evolution.

Where I found the opposite to be the case (as does the scientific community at large).

Oh more PRATTS, why am I not surprised?

Please be specific with your criticism of nuclear dating issues and the assumptions. The real issue for creationism is that various dating techniques that are independent from each other agree with one another. That consilience is a bit hard to explain when one tries to throw out dating techniques.

For example the rate of slowing of the earth's spin on it's axis as recorded in geologic strata agrees with radiometric data. Thermoluminescent dating techniques agree with radiometric methods. The length of time the sun has been around burning fuel based upon it's elemental makeup agrees with when the planets formed due to radiometric methods. Why all of this agreement? It is again a much larger problem for creationism than a misunderstanding of radiometric "assumptions" is for dating techniques. And then there are techniques such as isochron dating that also are in agreement and are self-correcting. The results themselves indicate when the assumptions used are not valid.

paraconformities is another PRATT. So here you go:

http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CD/CD102.html

Dr. Parker comments about modern interrelationships between DNA and proteins.

No one believes that the modern state of affairs was how life began. But we can nevertheless study and test common ancestry vs multiple original forms.

Theobald was able to run rigorous statistical analyses on the amino acid sequences in 23 universally conserved proteins across the three major divisions of life (eukaryotes, bacteria and archaea). By plugging these sequences into various relational and evolutionary models, he found that a universal common ancestor is at least 10^2,860 more likely to have produced the modern-day protein sequence variances than even the next most probable scenario (involving multiple separate ancestors).

https://www.scientificamerican.com/arti ... -ancestor/

There are 92 elements that occur naturally on Earth. For living things, only 11 of these elements are found in larger than trace quantities. Any amount 0.01% or less is considered a trace element. For vertebrates, such as humans, there are two additional elements that occur in larger than trace amounts these are Iodine and Iron.

Yes, it is unsurprising that the same elements that are found in nature are found in lifeforms. It is the relative percents that are different in life forms and soils. And the organics that are in the soil arrived there from dead lifeforms over great lengths of time.