Freethought & Rationalism Archive

TacticalLoco · 06-26-2007, 10:16 AM

Quote:

See, it proves that a text which talks about domesticated camels way back then, i.e. Genesis, is clearly flawlessly correct in all particulars including the bits about the talking snake and the global flood, for exactly the same reason that Schliemann's discovery of the archeological site of Troy proves conclusively that Achilles was the son of the sea-nymph Thetis.

Yes, but you underestimate the level of delusion operating here. Since camels existed 'way back then' the book itself was written 'way back then. And therefore folks, it was written as the events happened and is (probably) completely accurate.

JonF · 06-26-2007, 01:52 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Calilasseia

... I ran the numbers for heat production via radioactive decay, based upon equations supplied by an accredited geologist, and Excel spat back at me that the resulting temperature gradient was a number too large for Excel to represent. Whereupon, diving into Visual Basic and firing up double precision arithmetic, I was duly informed that RATE's version of accelerated nuclear decay would result in an Earth core temperature of ... are you all sitting comfortably ...

10¹⁸⁰⁶ Kelvins.

Even if we restrict accelerated nuclear decay rates to those that yield feasible temperatures, we still end up with a Planet Earth whose crust is heated to the temperature of incandescent plasma of the kind more usually associated with a class O blue supergiant star, and a core temperature sufficient to ignite thermonuclear fusion of Helium via the triple-alpha process.

Well, to be fair :devil1:, the RATE group acknowledges there's a bit of a problem. From Helium Diffusion Age of 6,000 Years Supports Accelerated Nuclear Decay:

"From the start, several members of the steering committee were convinced that episodes of greatly accelerated nuclear decay rates had occurred within thousands of years ago. For the preservation of life, such episodes seem possible only under special circumstances: (1) before God created living things, (2) after the Fall but well beneath the biosphere, and (3) during the year of the Genesis Flood, when the occupants of Noah's ark would be safe from most radiation (Humphreys, 2000, pp. 340-341).

...

One way to reconcile these two hourglass readings is to suggest that one of them has a "valve" at its bottleneck controlling the trickling rate, a valve that was adjusted drastically in the past, possibly by direct intervention from God.

...

For a feasibility study of this hypothesis, including God's possible purposes for such acceleration, Biblical passages hinting at it, disposal of excess heat, preserving life on earth, and effects on stars, see Humphreys (2000, pp. 333-379). The last three problems are not yet fully solved, but we expect to see progress on them in future papers."

I've never understood; since they are willing to propose miraculous intervention to accelerate decay, why won't they just say that God magicked away the heat and radiation?

Faid · 06-26-2007, 02:06 PM

Quote:

for exactly the same reason that Schliemann's discovery of the archeological site of Troy proves conclusively that Achilles was the son of the sea-nymph Thetis.

Shhhhh! Don't mention anything about the ILIAD to dave- otherwise he'll immediately go into full denial mode, lock all sensory apparatus, and probably put a paper bag over his head.

...

Ohmigod! Dave, did I say "ILIAD" out loud? I'm so sorry!

D-do I have to stand in the tea chest now?

Calilasseia · 06-26-2007, 07:19 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JonF

Quote:

Originally Posted by Calilasseia

... I ran the numbers for heat production via radioactive decay, based upon equations supplied by an accredited geologist, and Excel spat back at me that the resulting temperature gradient was a number too large for Excel to represent. Whereupon, diving into Visual Basic and firing up double precision arithmetic, I was duly informed that RATE's version of accelerated nuclear decay would result in an Earth core temperature of ... are you all sitting comfortably ...

10¹⁸⁰⁶ Kelvins.

Even if we restrict accelerated nuclear decay rates to those that yield feasible temperatures, we still end up with a Planet Earth whose crust is heated to the temperature of incandescent plasma of the kind more usually associated with a class O blue supergiant star, and a core temperature sufficient to ignite thermonuclear fusion of Helium via the triple-alpha process.

Well, to be fair :devil1:, the RATE group acknowledges there's a bit of a problem.

From Helium Diffusion Age of 6,000 Years Supports Accelerated Nuclear Decay

Oh, no, not THAT paper.

That paper has been roundly trounced in numerous circles. For three reasons:

[1] Humphreys could not even label his rocks correctly, as was demonstrated when an accredited geologist confronted him over this;

[2] The so-called 'experiment' that alleged to show that accelerated nuclear decay had taken place consisted of sucking the Helium out of the rocks with a vacuum pump, thus subjecting the rocks to conditions never encountered in a real geological stratum (pressures of at least 200 bar apply to the rocks in question, and to the deeper specimens, pressures of as much as 1,200 bar may apply - of course Helium is going to move out of rocks faster if you suck it out with a vacuum pump!);

[3] Humphreys took 1970s-era data from a Soviet geologists and manipulated it to fit his preconceptions.

I shall now cover this ground in more detail. Starting with the Soviet data.

The data in question came from a paper entitled Migration Of Radiogenic Products In Zircon, published in 1970 by on S. A. Magomedov. This paper included data on Helium diffusion. Since the original was in Russian, and not widely circulated, it took even a major literature search some time to uncover it on the part of Humphreys et al.

Now this is where it gets interesting.

We turn to this site which is basically an HTML version of this paper by Humphreys et al. The latter link provdes a somewhat more legible version, so I shall use that one (which is valid since it is the PDF rendition of Humphreys' original paper).

I notice that this paper contains some unusual paragraphs - unusual for a scientific paper that is. This one is a classic example:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Humphreys Paper Part 1

It is the uniformitarian assumption of invariant decay rates, of course, that leads to the usual conclusion that this much decay required 1.5 billion years. Uniformitarianism is the prevalent belief in this age that "all things continue as they were from the beginning" {II Peter 3:4] denying the possibility of any physical interventions by God into the natural realm. Uniformitarians interpret scientific data to support their idea of cosmic and biological evolution during billions of years of imagined time. We maintain that their interpretations are a distortion of observational data all around us. As the Bible predicted [II Peter 3:5-6], uniformitarians willingly ignore "the elephant in the living room" evidence for a recent creation and a worldwide catastrophic flood. In this paper we will include their assumption of billions of years of time and solely natural processes in the uniformitarian model we construct for diffusion.

So already we have an accusation that accredited scientists are being dishonest (the second bolded part in the above paragraph) and already, we have witterings about God (the first bolded part in the above paragraph), both of which, as well as being unusual in a standard scientific paper, would seem to set the scene for what follows.

Furthermore, this part of the document is of interest (note that I have used the word "nabla" in place of the usual inverted triangle symbol for the vector differential operator defined thus:

nabla = ∂/∂x i + ∂/∂y j + ∂/∂z k

because the board does not support the HTML entity for the symbol):

Quote:

Originally Posted by Humphreys Paper Part 2

If there is an initially high concentration of helium atoms in one part of the crystal, these random motions will eventually spread — i.e., diffuse — the helium more uniformly though the crystal and out of it. Let us define C(x, y, z, t) as the concentration, the number of helium atoms per unit volume, at position (x, y, z) at time t. Many textbooks show that when diffusion occurs, the time rate of change of C is proportional to the “sharpness” of the edges of the distribution of helium, or more mathematically, proportional to the Laplacian of C, nabla²C :

∂C/∂r = D nabla²C

where nabla² = ∂²/∂x² + ∂²/∂y² + ∂²/∂z² (1a,1b)

Equation (1a), called the "diffusion equation", occurs frequently in many branches of physics, for example to describe heat conduction in solids. Specialists in the diffusion of atoms through materials call it "Fick's Second Law of Diffusion". The factor D, the diffusion coefficient (or “diffusivity”), has dimensions of cm² (or m²) per second. (Most of the diffusion literature still uses centimeters and calories instead of meters and joules). Very often it turns out that at high temperatures, the diffusion coefficient depends exponentially on the absolute temperature T (degrees kelvin above absolute zero):

L=D₀ exp(-E₀/RT) (2)

where R is the universal gas constant, 1.986 calories per mole-kelvin (8.314 joules per mole-kelvin). The constant D₀ is independent of temperature. The “intrinsic” activation energy E₀ typically is between 10 and 100 kilocalories per mole (about 40 and 400 kilojoules per mole). Section 10 discusses how these quantities are related to the geoscience concept of closure temperature, and it shows why the concept is irrelevant to our conclusions.

Note the bolded part above, as it is important for what comes later ...

Now we turn to the part where the paper covers the Russian data. Interested readers will be able to home in on the graph in question. We have this:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Humphreys Paper Part 3

Magomedov was mainly interested in lead diffusion, so he did not list his helium data explicitly in a table. Instead he showed them in a small graph, along with data for lead diffusion and electrical conductivity, σ. His label for the ordinate was ambiguous: “ln(D, σ)”. In scientific literature “ln” with no further note usually means the natural logarithm (base e). The common logarithm (base 10) is usually shown as “log”. If we assume Magomedov was reporting ln_eD, the resulting diffusion coefficients would be very high, as the triangles and dotted line near the top of Figure 5 show. The RATE book shows that interpretation [14, p. 347, Fig. 6]. Another interpretation is that Magomedov was reporting ln_e(D/a²), where a is the effective radius of his zircons, about 75 μm. As Figure 5 shows (circles and thin solid line near middle), that still gives rather high diffusion rates in the temperature range of interest to us.

Based on those supposed high rates, we assumed in our first theoretical model [14, pp. 346 –348] that the zircons were a negligible impediment to helium outflow, compared to the minerals around them. But in 2001 we received a preprint of a paper [19] listing new helium diffusion data in zircons from several sites in Nevada. Figure 5 shows some of that data (Fish Canyon Tuff sample FCT-1) as a line of solid dots. These data were many orders of magnitude lower than our interpretation of Magomedov’s graph. The Russian data would agree with the Nevada data if we re-interpret Magomedov’s label as meaning “log₁₀D”, the common logarithm of D. Figure 5 shows that interpretation near the bottom (squares and thick solid line).

The paper listed as reference [19] above can be found here.

Now, this paper, written by Reiners, Spell, Nicolescu and Zanetti, refers in the discussion section to the 'closure temperature'. This is defined quite handily here, and is the temperature below which the mineral seals in radioisotopes, and, as that reference page says, "the dating clock begins to tick". Note that Humphreys asserted above (bolded part of quote [2] from his paper) that the closure temperature was irrelevant to his work. Unfortunately for him, Reiners et al disagreed. Moreover, if we look at the voluminous collection of graphs contained in the Reiners et al paper, their y-ordinate is defined as:

ln (D/a²)

Where ln(x) is the natural logarithm (i.e., logarithm to the base e) of x, and so Humphreys' arbitrary re-interpreting the data as meaning log₁₀(D) is an egregious manipulation of the data to fit his preconceptions - in this case, the data was manipulated deliberately in order to falsify a bogus interpretation of standard geological modelling erected specifically as a strawman for the purpose of supporting pre-conceived creationist notions. Upon relabelling the axis, the activation energy specified by Magomedov, namely 15 kcal/mole, undergoes a significant change to a value of 40 kcal/mole, contradicting the original Magomedov paper.

Furthermore, the bland assertion that 'closure temperature is irrelevant', when it was considered to be highly relevant to the Reiners et al paper's authors, is also an egregious piece of manipulation, because the moment one admits that closure temperature has an effect upon diffusion rates, age correlations climb significantly - indeed the Reiners et al paper routinely comments about the ages of its sampled rocks of being of the order of 400 million years old. It therefore seems strange that Humphreys would cite this paper as a reference intended to justify a YEC date of just 6,000 years, given that it makes repeated claims about 400 million year old rocks, unless his intention was to misrepresent the data from those authors as he did the data of Magomedov. His real agenda, of course, was made explicit in the thinly veiled accusation, contained in the first quoted piece from Humphreys' paper, that accredited scientists are interpreting their data to suit preconceptions of old rock ages, while engaging in deliberate falsification of other people's data to fit his own conclusions, about which he has been questioned.

A full treatment of this, including numerous other egregious manipulations on Humphreys' part, is given here.

Incidentally, Humphreys asserts that 'highly accelerated radioactive decay' took place. I've already demolished that by demonstrating how such accelerated decay rates results in manifestly unphysical conditions involving, if one uses the RATE group's own figures, Earth core temperatures of 10¹⁸⁰⁶ Kelvins, which no reasonable person could ever give credence to.

As to Humphreys being unable to label his rocks properly, take a look here and scroll down to the passage entitled "An Evening With RATE", where Dr Todd Feeley of the University of Montana attended a RATE conference. The following quote from that passage is apposite:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dr Todd Feeley

I also told him that he had a problem because the core sample he showed in his talk from where his zircons were separated was clearly a gneiss and not a granodiorite (‘with schist veins through it’), as he claimed. I could see this from the back row, as could the undergraduate geology students in attendance. At this point he called me “dumb” and asked if I had the guts to tell Baumgardner (who selected the core) that the sample was a metamorphic rock and not an igneous rock. Sure, I’d tell him. As we walked over to speak with Baumgardner, a young woman who identified herself as a Christian, scolded Humphreys for being mean and not behaving in a Christian-like manner by calling me evil and dumb. She didn’t think he was a very nice man either. To get back to the point, Baumgardner conceded that the core sample was indeed a gneiss and not a granodiorite. To his credit, Humphreys did begrudgingly apologize. Personally, I didn’t care about the apology, which wasn’t sincere anyway. I was more concerned that this guy was conducting expensive research on the age of the earth, yet couldn’t even tell the difference between a metamorphic rock and an igneous rock.

For more on the vacuum pump business, try here.

Entertaining, isn't it?

JonF · 06-27-2007, 06:33 AM

Yup,very entertaining. I'm quite familiar with Henke's destruction of Humphreys' zircon "study".

As is AfDave. Expect to see zircons come up during his sojourn here. Also expect lots of references to Arndts & Overn's "all isochrons are mixing isochrons" (e.g see ISOCHRON ROCK DATING IS FATALLY FLAWED and Dalrymple's discussion at Isochrons and Mixing Lines and one of my many attempts to cram some reality into Davie's head at AF Dave's UPDATED Creator God Hypothesis, Creation/Evolution Debate). Expect side-trips into "K-Ar is by far the most widely used dating method" and "nobody does mineral isochrons" and, if yu are really lucky, he'll post a picture of two lava flows (actually one mirrored in Phooshop) with dots placed on them.

TomboyMom · 06-27-2007, 09:33 AM

Although the competition for the Olympic Goal-Post Shifting Team is steep, I nominate Dave and urge him to try out in time for the 2008 games:

Quote:

It is impossible to demonstrate that Genesis is false as a historical record. Even if it were to have some incorrect details (I believe it does not), no historian could accurately say it is "false" as a historical record.

Now let me get this: Even if you prove that every word of Genesis is false, you can't prove that it's false "as a historical record," because all historical records are false. Therefore it's true "as a historical record," because in the case of historical records, "true" means "true or false." Since Genesis is either true or false, it's true as a historical record. Now that's olympic caliber goal-post shifting.

deadman_932 · 06-27-2007, 01:29 PM

Heh, yeah, I thought precisely the same thing when I saw that, TM. The cognitive dissonance and detachment from logic required to say Genesis can never be shown false is pretty amazing.

I think we better alert the courts regarding the holocaust-deniers. Dave hath opined that the denialists' position is still valid and they cannot lose.

Mike PSS · 06-27-2007, 02:09 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JonF

Yup,very entertaining. I'm quite familiar with Henke's destruction of Humphreys' zircon "study".

As is AfDave. Expect to see zircons come up during his sojourn here. Also expect lots of references to Arndts & Overn's "all isochrons are mixing isochrons" (e.g see ISOCHRON ROCK DATING IS FATALLY FLAWED and Dalrymple's discussion at Isochrons and Mixing Lines and one of my many attempts to cram some reality into Davie's head at AF Dave's UPDATED Creator God Hypothesis, Creation/Evolution Debate). Expect side-trips into "K-Ar is by far the most widely used dating method" and "nobody does mineral isochrons" and, if yu are really lucky, he'll post a picture of two lava flows (actually one mirrored in Phooshop) with dots placed on them.

Hello again JonF.
Dave has ran from every mention of Isochron dating, and I've had to rub his nose in his lack of taking up the subject a few times. Between Cali and I and deadman we have the C14 issue cornered, BWE has dendro and ice cores (if needed).
Dave is stuck trying to choose RATE over R.H.Brown but cannot get through his own haze as Cali pointed out.
I think the 'hard' sciences are kicking Dave's behind and he's trying to move onto the 'softer' side by discussin Crow versus Sanford.

Thanks for the links, I'm sure they'll come in handy. And make sure to disseminate the 'TARD' Isochron every chance you get.

SpaghettiSawUs · 06-27-2007, 02:16 PM

Well,
as any fule kno
in the world of AFScience^TM it is impossible to falsify a historical hypothesis since we cannot go back in time to test it.
Therefore it is impossible to prove genesis wrong.

In the world of AFScience^TM there are two kinds of scienceyness: nomological and non-nomological.
Nomological scienceynesses rely on natural law, and can be tested in the lab in real time.
Non-nomological scienceynesses are not based on natural law since they involve hypotheses which describe historical details. Since we cannot breach the natural law which states "thou shalt not time travel" these scienceynesses cannot be tested in real time.

Therefore, the book of Genesis is epistemiologically equivalent to the whole body of historical science. It has the same degree of scienceynesses from which we can infer whatever conclusions suit our worldview.

There are two worldviews:
1) The right one (based on a literal interpretation God's word teh bible (except where it comes to things like "pillars of the earth"), wot is always true because God wrote it (kinda) and he wouldn't lie).
2) The wrong one (any other worldview which denies the truthiness of 1).

If you approach the evidence with the assumption that God is a liar then you will reject any conclusion which agrees with 1.

This is not circular reasoning at all since Dave has clearly shown with emboldened capitalised headings, in many varied discussions, on fora of differing God denying agenda, that it is based on an irrefutable reading of the evidence.

Any questions?
Thought not.

Regards
Spags

06-27-2007, 02:54 PM

Ta Spags. All makes sense to me.

Btw, I have the "TARD" graph ready and waiting in my Photobucket should the occasion arise. Link can be provided to any Warrior for de Troof* upon request.

*Not you, Mr. Hawkins.

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06-27-2007, 06:33 AM	#155
JonF Veteran Member Join Date: Sep 2002 Location: Acton, MA USA Posts: 1,230	Yup,very entertaining. I'm quite familiar with Henke's destruction of Humphreys' zircon "study". As is AfDave. Expect to see zircons come up during his sojourn here. Also expect lots of references to Arndts & Overn's "all isochrons are mixing isochrons" (e.g see ISOCHRON ROCK DATING IS FATALLY FLAWED and Dalrymple's discussion at Isochrons and Mixing Lines and one of my many attempts to cram some reality into Davie's head at AF Dave's UPDATED Creator God Hypothesis, Creation/Evolution Debate). Expect side-trips into "K-Ar is by far the most widely used dating method" and "nobody does mineral isochrons" and, if yu are really lucky, he'll post a picture of two lava flows (actually one mirrored in Phooshop) with dots placed on them.

06-27-2007, 01:29 PM	#157
deadman_932 Veteran Member Join Date: Jun 2007 Location: Altadena, California Posts: 3,271	Heh, yeah, I thought precisely the same thing when I saw that, TM. The cognitive dissonance and detachment from logic required to say Genesis can never be shown false is pretty amazing. I think we better alert the courts regarding the holocaust-deniers. Dave hath opined that the denialists' position is still valid and they cannot lose.

06-27-2007, 02:16 PM	#159
SpaghettiSawUs Regular Member Join Date: Jun 2007 Location: Birmingham England Posts: 170	Well, as any fule kno in the world of AFScience^TM it is impossible to falsify a historical hypothesis since we cannot go back in time to test it. Therefore it is impossible to prove genesis wrong. In the world of AFScience^TM there are two kinds of scienceyness: nomological and non-nomological. Nomological scienceynesses rely on natural law, and can be tested in the lab in real time. Non-nomological scienceynesses are not based on natural law since they involve hypotheses which describe historical details. Since we cannot breach the natural law which states "thou shalt not time travel" these scienceynesses cannot be tested in real time. Therefore, the book of Genesis is epistemiologically equivalent to the whole body of historical science. It has the same degree of scienceynesses from which we can infer whatever conclusions suit our worldview. There are two worldviews: 1) The right one (based on a literal interpretation God's word teh bible (except where it comes to things like "pillars of the earth"), wot is always true because God wrote it (kinda) and he wouldn't lie). 2) The wrong one (any other worldview which denies the truthiness of 1). If you approach the evidence with the assumption that God is a liar then you will reject any conclusion which agrees with 1. This is not circular reasoning at all since Dave has clearly shown with emboldened capitalised headings, in many varied discussions, on fora of differing God denying agenda, that it is based on an irrefutable reading of the evidence. Any questions? Thought not. Regards Spags

06-27-2007, 02:54 PM	#160
mung bean Guest Posts: n/a	Ta Spags. All makes sense to me. Btw, I have the "TARD" graph ready and waiting in my Photobucket should the occasion arise. Link can be provided to any Warrior for de Troof* upon request. *Not you, Mr. Hawkins.

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