whys one

Hi guys. I'm having an email discussion with a fundy friend. Please help me with a response to her. I'm having trouble articulating my thoughts.


This is in reply to my comment not believing the flood:

*Yep, I guess you can always find someone to support what you want to hear. Just like I choose to believe not only the Bible, but the many scholars who say there WAS a global flood. You and xxxx have chosen to believe the ones who say there wasn't.

And the design argument:

*That's right, but like I've mentioned before, there are MANY MANY scientists out there who do indeed believe in intelligent design. THose are the scientists I'm going to believe because they are in alignment with the Bible.

And the age of the earth:

*Did you know that at mount st. helen's which we KNOW blew about 20 years ago, they're doing some carbon dating of the materials that came out and are finding the dating to be 20 million years old? They have admitted that there are a lot of problems with current methods of carbon dating.


Thanks.
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Laera

Ask her to give you her scholars' names, then look them up and tell her about their (likely poor) credentials. Meanwhile, find out which respected scientists have published studies that conclude there was NO flood and point her to those articles. My guess is that she doesn't even know of any "scholars" who've concluded a global flood happened (outside of the "Trinity Broadcasting Network," of course)

Ditto

Have her show you the article/study to which she is referring. Look for reputable peer-reviewed journals that might have published comments or articles on this finding.

Sometimes the worst thing you can do to a Christian's arguments is to ask them to substantiate them. It may require a bit of research on your part, but it's worth it sometimes to find the REAL truth (as opposed to the xian "truth")

[edited to add: There are plenty of people and resources here to help you find out about "scholars'" credentials and maybe they can even point you to a few articles that'll help you out.]

[ August 02, 2002: Message edited by: Laera ]</p>

Laera

Also on this one, maybe ask her if you should trust the "scientists" that tell you the moon is made of green cheese just because that's what you already believe.

Or alternately, tell her you were taught that the civil war was fought between the East and the West and you believe that (maybe because you trusted your teacher). Therefore, you're only going to trust the history books that say the civil war was between the east and the west.

Does she use this logic in the rest of her life? (only listening to things that agree with what she already believes) Or maybe does she look at the reliability (aka credentials) of the source from which she gets her information about the world? (if she's prone to reading tabloids, this line of reasoning might not get you very far...)

[edited to add: Likely she thinks her viewpoint is defensable and supported by "scholars" only because she was told so by someone she trusted, like a pastor, parent, youth minister, etc. She's not going to want to believe that they were wrong so she'll likely fight it with everything she's got, but you might try telling her it's not the end of the world if other *people* are mistaken, no matter how trustworthy they may seem. But she needs to do some verification work for herself if she's going to try to prove to *you* that they're worth trusting. It's generally a good idea to do your own research when you enter into a debate instead of relying on heresay (not heresy) and the reliability of teachers (especially those with motives for propegating myths). Stress to her that her teachers are fallible people, too, and there are ways for her to find things out on her own - if only with the intent of verifying teachers' claims.]

Good Luck!

[ August 02, 2002: Message edited by: Laera ]</p>

Rational Ag

Here are a few websites with tough questions for your friend:

<a href="http://riceinfo.rice.edu/armadillo/Sciacademy/riggins/flood.htm" target="_blank">The Whole Silly Flood Story</a>

<a href="http://www.talkorigins.org/origins/faqs-youngearth.html" target="_blank">Talkorigins.org archive on the Age of the Earth</a>

<a href="http://www.talkorigins.org/origins/faqs-flood.html" target="_blank">Talkorigins.org archive on a Global Flood</a>

There are MANY more. Try digging into the <a href="http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/science/creationism/index.shtml" target="_blank">Infidels.org library on Creationism</a>.

Good luck and happy reading!

-Rational Ag

Sephiroth

Carbon dating can't date anything over 50,000 years old. Even if another form of radioactive dating did say the rocks were 20,000,000 years old, so what? It's the rocks that get dated, not the lava.

[ August 02, 2002: Message edited by: Sephiroth ]</p>

Viti

I do not understand this argument and never have. The eruption does not create or form materials, so of course the rocks and stuff that were part of a mountain and pushed out in an explosion were old...am I missing something?

Mageth

In the Mt. St. Helens dating, I believe some K-Ar radiometric dating techniques indicated some of the lava flows to be between .35 and 2.7 million years old, not 20m years.

I'm not sure what the margin of error for K-Ar dating is, but note that some error may be introduced in K-Ar dating if excessive Argon escapes or is added to the sample at formation.

Also note that there are often muliple, reliable other dating techniques that can be applied to a sample to detect erroneous results and improve the probability of a proper dating.

And that many radioactive dating techniques are used to date samples in the many millions to billions of years range. A margin of error of +-a few million years in a technique is acceptable - and still shouts out against a young earth.

Further, young earthers are always harping on about a few dozens or hundreds of cases where radioactive dating techniques have given erroneous results. They conveniently ignore the thousands upon thousands of cases where such techniques have given correct results, and often validated by other methods. In fact, scienctists typically detect erroneous datings and re-test or throw the samples out (such erroneously samples are not so plentiful as to be statistically significant enough to discredit dating techniques).

<a href="http://my.erinet.com/~jwoolf/rad_dat.html" target="_blank">Here's</a> a good article debunking young earthers' arguments.

Bookman

This really isn't a support topic. I'm moving it to Biblical Criticism and Archaeology. Hopefully, you will get a number of additional constructive responses there.

Bookman (Moderator)

The Lost Number

First and foremost; it is a must for anyone debating creationists to remember that they are notorious for giving twisted information about real events, discoveries and such, and sometimes just making up a complete lie about them. If you remember only one thing about creationism, remember that it is highly prone to being dishonest. Therefore there are other plausible explanations for much of it's data, simply because so much of it is misinformation in the first place.

However, what you said was partially correct - though virtually every volcanic eruption does in fact create some new materials (namely lava and ash), it also churns up that which has already been there, and quite easily gets some of it absorded into it.

Thus the dated rocks could easily have been millions of years old, and the claim of their being created by the recent volcanic activity stems from creationist ignorance of confusing the new rocks/material with the old ones that were very near and/or entrapped them.

Hope that helps to answer your question, Lady.

Viti

Thanks...yes that answers it nicely. I guess what floors me every time is the sheer absence of coomon sense with creationists. I am no scientist, I don't have a degree....but stuff like this just seems obvious to me....a many millions of year old mountain explodes it should be expected that some of the stuff is also millions of years old.