Jack the Bodiless

A common misconception. Science DOES deal with facts, and proofs.

Scientists are very reluctant to declare that a theory has been proved true, because there's always the possibility that a better theory might in future explain all observations compatible with the current theory, and more besides.

However, falsification is very much a part of science. Scientists can declare that a theory which is incompatible with observed evidence has been proved false.

It is a fact that the Biblical creation story is false, and this has been proved.

Jayhawker Soule

I notice that you chose to ignore CX's observation, prefering instead to misrepresent science while trying to shift the burden of proof.

DrJim

I wonder why everyone always argues about the opening chapters of Genesis but forgets Lady Wisdom's memoirs about her role in creation in Proverbs 8:22-31. Surely the first of God's creations wouldn't lie to us about stuff like that!

It must be the insidious patriarchal biases of that horrible Priestly writer in Genesis 1:1-2:4a: make man and woman 'equal' by ignoring the pre-eminence of first gendered creation, Hokhmah, the master builder (was this a plot to keep women out of the ancient trades-guilds?, Hmmmmmmm the plot thickens).
And what of that chauvanist (insert the name of your favourite non-kosher mammal...) Yahwist in 2:4bff. who not only 'forgot' Lady Wisdom too, but had Eve, the mother, created second.

Its all a male plot! Thank whatever that the plot was not fully successful, and the actual role of Lady Wisdom in God's creation can be appreciated by creationists world wide.

Or is Hokhmah in Proverbs 8 a metaphor for a divine attribute and not a real entity with an independent existence who can really mean it when she says, "I was beside him..."? Is she just a rhetorical ploy to create a sacred ideal of femininity with which to counter the seductive and destructive wiles of the shameless tarts the young ancient Israelite males were having dirty dreams about (if so, I suspect the ploy had only limited success).

Jeepers, maybe all the creation accounts are symbolic and have more to do with the social realities and intentions of their writers than any real objective 'facts' about the way the world came to be?

Or am I plotting again?

Mageth

Jeepers, maybe all the creation accounts are symbolic and have more to do with the social realities and intentions of their writers than any real objective 'facts' about the way the world came to be?

Bingo!

Of course, the hard-liners around here will gladly admit that the Proverbs creation account is metaphorical while clinging to the historicity of the Genesis account.

thebeave

I doubt there's a single serious scientist out there who believes the earth hasn't changed tremendously since its beginning almost 5 billion years ago. Ever heard of plate tectonics, for example? Or ice ages? Consider this: the earth's atmosphere right now is nothing like it was in its early days (i.e. there was little to no free oxygen in the early earth's atmosphere). Dude, you really need to sit down and read even just a basic geology book. What you just said was about this biggest load of ca-ca I've heard on this forum in a long time.

Magus55

I meant by haven't changed as in, the atoms within rocks haven't been changed by catastrophes. The environment does affect radiometric dating you know. Scientists date a rock and say its so and so million years old, assuming that the environment hasn't changed its age. How do you know whether the amount of carbon atoms for example, has been steadily decreasing at a constant rate with no alteration from the environment? Or how do you know the half-life of a particular radioactive isotope has been constant throughout time?

Mageth

Magus:

This really belongs in the Science or Evolution forums, you know.

I meant by haven't changed as in, the atoms within rocks haven't been changed by catastrophes.

I asked you some questions about this earlier that you haven't addressed. If you think this happens, tell us how, and give examples of these catastrophes. And tell us how a strata exposed hundreds if not thousands of miles apart consistently yields similar dates if catastrophes have been busy "changing the atoms within rocks". Also tell us how the dating methods consistently give dates of oldest to youngest from lower strata to upper strata if catastrophes have affected the rocks. Here is an example of Stratigraphic Position dated using K-Ar dating. If what you say is true, we should be finding jumbles of dates, strata out of sequence, etc.

You can also tell us how different dating techniques consistently yield similar dates. Here is a comparison between sedimentary, radiometric and astrochronological dates (Milankovitch cycles) that shows strong agreement between these dating methods, further illustrating radiometric dating's reliability.

The environment does affect radiometric dating you know.

Tell us how, if you know so much, and give examples where these effects have been detected.

Scientists date a rock and say its so and so million years old, assuming that the environment hasn't changed its age.

Again, tell us how, and give examples of where such a phenomenon has been detected.

How do you know whether the amount of carbon atoms for example, has been steadily decreasing at a constant rate with no alteration from the environment? Or how do you know the half-life of a particular radioactive isotope has been constant throughout time?

So to defend your belief in an invisible being, you have to resort to proposing that the laws of physics have changed over time? How desparate, how sadly desparate.

Further, I don't see how this helps the case in defense of the Biblical creation accounts at all.

Note that for potassium/argon dating, the crucial decay has a half-life of 1.1*10^9 years (1.1 billion), and is used for rocks of the age between 550 million years and 3.8 billion years. So even if it has changed over time, I doubt if it would be by much, and thus I doubt if the change would have much if any effect on the dating of the earth's rocks.

On top of all that, scientists do recognize and admit to some potential problems with radiometric dating techniques, and take measures to account for that. See here for a good writeup on the reliability of radiometric dating techniques that I think addresses most of your concerns.

Qinopio

Just thought I'd throw in this link that explains radiometric dating really well (for Magus and the like) which is written by a Christian fellow with a Ph.D in Physics. It's quite substantial - it goes through several of the dating methods [with a focus on radiometric dating] and how they agree with each other, in addition to the limitations on the methods and how it's very often possible to know if you're getting a bogus date. It's important to note that they usually use more than one method, too, which further reduces the risk of error.

Jack the Bodiless

Carbon dating is irrelevant. It cannot be used to date anything older than a few tens of thousands of years, and therefore isn't used for dinosaur foosils or determination of the Earth's age.

But we can SEE that the half-lives of radioactive isotopes have not changed! These are entirely dependent on the balance of forces in the atomic nucleus: most notably, the strength of the so-called "strong nuclear force" that holds the nucleus together. Any change in these forces would produce a visible change in stellar emission spectra: we would see it in the light from distant stars.

Even if the effect was confined to Earth: the millionfold acceleration in radioactive decay rates required by Young-Earth Creationism would produce a blast of radiation so intense that it would melt the Earth, and it would still be molten. I'll leave it up to you to imagine what this would do to all those fossil critters we find between layers corresponding to planet-melting radiation...

...But, yes, this is Evo/Cre stuff. Why don't you hang out there more often, Magus?

Radcliffe Emerson

I'm sorry, but that's a classic pro-religious b.s. response.
Christians argued for decades that the bible had to be believed literally, that was a vital part of the equation until the 19th century, when archaeologists and historians started questioning the inerrancy of the bible.

The "metaphor" arguments evolved because it became painfully clear the bible was not a valid historical document.