VoxRat

How can that be? Because if a "long time scale" is proved - i.e. the earth is >10000 years old, Genesis is wrong. QED.
No?

What? So no matter how many provably false statements one finds in Genesis, it's "impossible to demonstrate" it's false, as long as it contains, what?, anything at all that could be construed as "accurate"?

I submit that that is ridiculous.

I've read some of Oard's dreck, and I find him to be devoid of credibility. Why are you citing someone who "cites two studies"? Why aren't you citing those two studies? Are they "real-world" scientists? Or are we just following an infinite regression of creationist fantasies without grounding in actual data?

"Probably"? Now, how did we estimate that "probability"?

Really? Of the same algae/sediment alternating stripes as described in the Suigetsu studies? Did you actually read reference #11? Or are you just relying on Oard's, or some other creationist's, citatation of it?

So you doubt the integrity of these investigators, and that's what you base your doubts on? OK, sure. Let's stipulate that any research paper might be a complete lie that has not been caught yet. So we can't know anything at all, in an absolute sense. And therefore all the science that sure seems to contradict Genesis, could be wrong. Either in some incredibly bizarrely coincidental way that results in everything pointing to a 4.5 billion year old earth, or because there's a massive conspiracy to make it look that way. And if that's the case, Genesis COULD be accurate. Great!

Your job is to provide some reason to believe that.

ericmurphy

And of course, Dave has still not addressed the consilience of radiocarbon calibration curves. If he thinks lake-bed varves are inaccurate, then how does he explain the fact that they are inaccurate by the exact same amount as dendrochronologically-derived dates, but for completely different reasons?

Dave will never answer this question, because he cannot. He probably understands that this consilience kills his arguments re the inaccuracy of the various dating methods, but he's hoping no one else will notice.

My job is to ensure that they do notice.

Occam's Aftershave

The five D's of Creationist Formal Debate Dodgeball:

Dodge, Duck, Dive, Dip, and DAVE.

shirley knott

I believe your final two "D's" are redundant.
Oh, wait, the penultimate is a verb...
Emily LItella to the rescue

hugs,
Shirley Knott

Occam's Aftershave

Sorry to toot my own horn, but please notice that I was 4 for 4 with my predictions. :notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy:

Of course, predicting Dave's <evasiveness> is as risky as predicting that the tide will come in.

ck1

My favorite line so far:

Mike PSS

And OA gets an eBeer for his predictive power. :thumbs:

Let's look at Dave's outline here....
Now these are some headings I want to see on the next jeopardy show.
"Alex, I'll take "Early Use of Camels" for $400 please?"

Dave's numerical list about the Problems must have come from somewhere else. Was this same list in Oard? I wonder if Dave just took some of Oard's summary and typed it out. The reason is Dave has an extensive bibliography with this post (19 references) and this single list of problems uses over half of that number (reference #8 through #17, or 10 references). This list HAS to be from Oard or someone else. Which means that Dave isn't actually USING the referenced papers but only citing them because someone else did.

If this is the case we have a minor technical foul I think because if this list is copy/typed then a proper reference for the whole list is needed too.

Otherwise, there is enough handwaving logic to float this board into the stratosphere. I leave it to others to disect the specifics.

Occam's Aftershave

Oh, and I loved this one too, Dave talking about camels:

He cites empirical evidence from the first dynasty and dates it at 3000 BC, completely forgetting that according to him the FLUD completely destroyed everything at 2750 BC and the first dynasty didn't happen until AFTER the FLUD.

It's just like when he cited ICR's claim that the Ural mountains are 5 million years old in order to support his 10,000 year old Earth claim. :banghead:

Dave doesn't just shoot himself in the foot, he gets out the 20mm Vulcan Gatling gun and blasts away AGAIN.

Don't worry Davie - it's these incredible non-congruent mental boners you keep making that endear you to us so.

lpetrich

It would demonstrate that parts of Genesis are not literal history, and that therefore that it contains errors.

It does, however, mean that Manetho's history should not be presumed to be 100% reliable. If there are known errors in one part, then other parts may contain errors. According to Wikipedia, Manetho is far from our only source on Pharaonic Egyptian history; we have some Pharaonic-era records that we can use to check against Manetho's account.

And Manetho's history starts off with gods and demigods ruling Egypt. Does afdave consider that to be reliable history?

One can always look at the primary literature -- it's not some conspiracy to debunk creationism.

However, leaves, twigs, and insect wings are not fish flesh -- they are MUCH less digestible and decay MUCH more slowly. I remember swimming in a lake in the Pennsylvania mountains one time and dredging up some leaves from the bottom with my feet -- they were black, but they otherwise still looked like they were fresh off the tree.

The real history is rather different. Hebrew was first written around 1000 BCE, using an alphabet borrowed from the Phoenicians, who had lived along the coast. In the 6th century BCE, however, the Israelites adopted another alphabet, a Phoenician-derived one that had been used to write Aramaic, and their successors have used that "Square Hebrew" alphabet ever since.

By comparison, Egyptian and Mesopotamian writing are over 2000 years older.

As far as can be determined, that is demonstrably false. Pre-exilic Israel clearly had lots of polytheism, and was not much different from its neighbors in that regard, so it is reasonable to suppose that to be their original state.

And nearly all the older religions are polytheistic, as are nearly all of the religions of "primitive" peoples -- they have a multitude of gods and spirits and so forth. Monotheism is a later invention.

Efforts to argue otherwise are based on overimaginative "interpretations" that are poorly-supported.

Thumping the Bible won't prove anything.

Contrary to what afdave seems to think, the NCSE, the talkorigins.org webmasters, etc. are not seizing on some borderline science as part of an anti-creationist conspiracy. Radiometric dating is solid, mainstream science, no matter how much young-earth creationists wish to bury their heads in the sand about it.

BWE

Louis,
You missed the attempts to sound prophetic or at least intelligent that go so far awry: