Toto

I guess it's time for us her at II to issue a belated welcome to Dave's Fan Club. Feel free to pull up a chair and pass around the drinks or whatever helps you concentrate.

But please take careful note of our few Rules, which may seem strange to you, but have served us well. No personal insults, no accusations of lying, be nice to the moderators. And have a good time while you're here.

:wave:

Calilasseia

Ah, forgot all about this nice archaeological find.

Which on its own should be a killer blow.

jemand

Oh, please everybody. Talking snakes don't require any miraculous intervention at all. Haven't you ever seen one? A cartoon, movie, comic strip, etc...?

'Snake' can be widely interpreted...
:wave:

mung bean

The "iceman" is no good, guys. Dave will claim that the C14 dating is not reliable, due to the skyrocketing levels of atmospheric C14 post-Flud. Whether this is congruent with Brown's theory or RATE's will, of course, remain unanswered.

@Toto: Yes. it's happy-happy-joy-joy time. Teh circus is in town.

SAWells

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.

Hang on...

Calilasseia

Oh he's in serious trouble if he goes down that route.

For those IIDB members unfamiliar with this particular subject matter, Dave launched into a critique of C¹⁴ dating on RDF using a model based upon the work of a creationist called R.H. Brown from GRISDA, which was thoroughly dismantled by Mike PSS (who laboured long upon a whopping 7.6 megabyte Excel spreadsheet to do so - I'm sure he'll provide a link if you ask him nicely). The trouble is, not content with this, Dave wanted to bring into the picture RATE's notion of accelerated nuclear decay, only to discover when the long awaited conference call with Brown was conducted, that Brown did not subscribe to RATE's accelerated nuclear decay theory. This left Dave facing an unexpected decision point, namely:

[1] Continue to support Brown, who included invariant nuclear decay rates as a key assumption of his model (the same invariant nuclear decay rates accepted by real scientists, incidentally), and thus abandon any chance of calling upon RATE to support his assorted assertions, or;

[2] Abandon Brown and his model altogether and side with RATE, thus paving the way for the introduction of accelerated nuclear decay.

Whichever path Dave chooses of these two (and thus far over at RDF, he's shown every inclination of wanting to pick both as and when it's convenient for him to do so, despite having been admonished about this in advance by several posters) he's left with some serious issues to address. if he supports Brown, he still has to address the flaws and unsupported assertions contained in Brown's model (Mike PSS will fill you in on the details). If he abandons Brown and runs with RATE, then matters are far worse, because 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. Consequently, any attempt to use accelerated nuclear decay to cast doubt upon Deep Time results in the problem of Earth being smeared all over the cosmos in a thermonuclear detonation of all the Helium being generated by the alpha decay of U²³⁸ and Th²³², and the not insignificant problem of how Noah and his little wooden boat survive being propelled into space (presumably to end up in a parking orbit around Jupiter) at a speed that is normally considered way in excess of that usually attained by water-borne craft. The mere fact that assorted people in the creationist world are having to resort to this kind of farcical invention in order to prop up a literal interpretation of Genesis, almost certainly makes CM's forthcoming refutation of Genesis as a reliable historical document a foregone conclusion. I leave it to the interested reader to guess how many dissenting voices there will be to that view, and the likely identity thereof.

deadman_932

Thanks, Toto... although I'm personally not a big fan of Dave (more of a tormenter) I appreciate well-defined moderation and I'll certainly be on my good behavior. I'm sure others will as well. Cheers!

edit: question removed.

mung bean

For those IIDB regulars who have not been following the Dave saga over at RDF I thought I should provide the relevant links.

The Great Flud "Formal" Debate: http://www.richarddawkins.net/forum/...ic.php?t=10675

Its associated comment thread: http://www.richarddawkins.net/forum/...ic.php?t=10678

The Dendrochronology/ Carbon 14 debate (wherein Dave is trying to avoid all other data sets for calibration curves ): http://www.richarddawkins.net/forum/...ic.php?t=15538

Dendro debate comments and giggles: http://www.richarddawkins.net/forum/...ic.php?t=15539

And last but not least, the C14 thread, wherein our intrepid Duracell bunny runs afoul of the topics Callilassotehmoocow mentioned: http://www.richarddawkins.net/forum/...ic.php?t=13805

A veritable motherlode of tard at its finest. Enjoy in moderation.

Sven

I'm not sure, but perhaps it's a lame attempt to address Finkelstein & Silberman, who argued in The Bible Unearthed (or via: amazon.co.uk) that the Bible describing chamels is an anachronism which points to a far younger age of the manuscript than claimed by literalists.

hecate

Anyone who takes genesis literally can not be serious. The universe after the 'big bang' consisted mainly of hydrogen, helium and a little lithium. It wasn't after much, much later (certainly more than a few days) that heavier elements formed. This genesis timespan is impossible. (Not to mention that according to genesis god created the sun, moon and stars on the fourth day, so how could there have been any earlier 'days' when the sun had not even been created)