Worldtraveller

There is very little E/C related content here, and even less in the debate itself.

Off to BC&H with you!

BWE

Somehow, I think I expected this move.

World Traveler,

Being new here I am curious, is this something you see a lot of? And for the record, is the debate no longer formal? If not, was the reason simple lack of substance?

Too many questions, let me sum up:

What just happened and why?

:Cheeky:

zagloba

Stop being so paranoid. WT just moved this thread to a different forum because the debate much more about Biblical Criticism and History than it is about about Evolution and Creationism. Won't change neither the fact that Dave is going to get his but kicked in the debate nor that we'll all be able to make sly observations from the sidelines on this thread.

Louis

Eric,

Your prediction is miraculous. Based on Dave's self attested honesty and probity through all of his previous interactions and his devastating evidence supporting his conclusions how can your prediction have had a hope of being correct? Surely you must have been divinely inspired. Please write to James Randi immediately to test for his prize.

;-)

Louis

SophistiCat

Well, I won't say anything about abduction in general, but the specific reasoning that you quoted is questionable at best and circular at worst. There is no universally agreed upon criterion for what constitutes a "surprising fact," but one popular definition given by Paul Horwich says (in part) that an event is surprising if there is an a priori improbable hypothesis that gives a high probability to the event, which is exactly what Dave's "LOGIC" says. But that means that his "LOGIC" is already implied by his "DATA".

Pappy Jack

Despite having the reasons for why writing developed when it did painstakingly explained to him by several posters at RDF, AFD continues to put forward the idea that because he can't understand why writing didn't develop for 194,000 years of homo sapiens' history, well then it's self-evident proof that mankind can hardly be older than the history of writing itself.

He also seems to think that what may be archaeological evidence for some of things in the Bible/Genesis (= good archaeology) is in some way more reliable than archaeological evidence for human activity that long predates any Biblical-literalist estimate of the age of the Earth (= bad archaeology). This despite the relevant evidence also being presented to him at RDF.

Makes you wonder how much of the rest of what AFD argues should be accepted at face-value? (Hint: not very much :devil1: ).

BWE

Well, I am really enjoying debating him on dendrochronology and 14C dating over at RDF.

The kind of logic he uses isn't.

Getting the chance to one-on-one with him is different than just sniping at him in a forum thread. Even if he uses his less-than-honest style he still has to post a reply and he can't edit it.

Fronkey

You can't say we didn't try to explain this! Many times.

But there's no hope in making a dent in anyone who can say this with a straight face:

"If man has been on earth for 200,000 years, we should have historical records going back much farther than 5000 years." AFDave

Occam's Aftershave

Wait till Davie trots out his famous "the oldest living Bristlecone pine is 4700 years old, which verifies that the FLUD killed the rest of the trees 4700 years ago."

Wonder why he didn't use "well, the world's oldest living human is 115 years old, so that proves the FLUD killed everyone only 115 years ago."

Like I've said many times, you can't make sh*t this funny up, you just can't.

Occam's Aftershave

At the risk of being a spoiler, I can't wait until CM hits Dave with the C14 calibration curves.

Radiocarbon (C14) dating is an extremely mature science, and is one of the cornerstones of modern archaeology. As such, scientists are always trying to make their C14 dating results more accurate. The C14 decay rate is known very precisely, so the only thing that needs to be verified is the historical C14/C12 ratios for accurate dating. To that end, many independent methods of historical C14/C12 ratio calibration have been devised. They all involve using annual natural phenomena as a independent year counter, then cross referencing with measured C14 results. Simple, right? Take dendrochronology - count the total of yearly tree rings, C14 date the rings, compare the results to get one calibration curve. Another example - lake varves. Count the annual layers, C14 date organic samples from the layers to get a second curve. Do the same for ice core samples, and ocean bed samples, and speleotherms (layered stalagmites found in caves)

When you compare all these independent curves, a neat thing happens. All the curves overlap almost exactly, especially below the 40,000 YBP date.



Now the punch line:

We've been asking Dave for the YEC explanation for these curves for over a year now. Dave managed to C&P an AIG article that claims dendrochronology gives bad results, and an AIG article that claims ice core samples gives bad results, an AIG article that claims lake varves gives bad results, but he could never explain why if all the results are wrong, why do they all cross-correlate so closely? In other words, how can they be wrong but all be wrong in exactly the same way?

It's become a standing joke at RD.net. Every time Dave starts in on his 4700 year old FLUD, someone just mentions
C14 calibration curves and Dave soils himself and runs away.

Apologies CM if I swiped too much of your thunder, I couldn't help myself :devil3: