Freethought & Rationalism Archive

pariah · 06-13-2003, 01:25 AM

I'm no expert on evolution...could someone please refute this antievolution chick tract for me?

http://www.chick.com/catalog/comics/0106.asp

NonHomogenized · 06-13-2003, 02:16 AM

Well, I don't have many resources available at the moment, but let's see what I can do.

1) panel 9 has calculations by ICR, which a) means they're suspect, and b) happens to ignore replenishment of material.

2) panel 10... well... I'll just refer to talk.origins' faq on the age of the earth:

Quote:

The most common form of this young-Earth argument is based on a single measurement of the rate of meteoritic dust influx to the Earth gave a value in the millions of tons per year. While this is negligible compared to the processes of erosion on the Earth (about a shoebox-full of dust per acre per year), there are no such processes on the Moon. Young-Earthers claim that the Moon must receive a similar amount of dust (perhaps 25% as much per unit surface area due to its lesser gravity), and there should be a very large dust layer (about a hundred feet thick) if the Moon is several billion years old.

Morris says, regarding the dust influx rate:

"The best measurements have been made by Hans Pettersson, who obtained the figure of 14 million tons per year1."
Morris (1974, p. 152) [italic emphasis added -CS]
Pettersson stood on a mountain top and collected dust there with a device intended for measuring smog levels. He measured the amount of nickel collected, and published calculations based on the assumption that all nickel that he collected was meteoritic in origin. That assumption was wrong and caused his published figures to be a vast overestimate.

Pettersson's calculation resulted in the a figure of about 15 million tons per year. In the very same paper, he indicated that he believed that value to be a "generous" over-estimate, and said that 5 million tons per year was a more likely figure.

Several measurements of higher precision were available from many sources by the time Morris wrote Scientific Creationism. These measurements give the value (for influx rate to the Earth) of about 20,000 to 40,000 tons per year. Multiple measurements (chemical signature of ocean sediments, satellite penetration detectors, microcratering rate of objects left exposed on the lunar surface) all agree on approximately the same value -- nearly three orders of magnitude lower than the value which Morris chose to use.

Morris chose to pick obsolete data with known problems, and call it the "best" measurement available. With the proper values, the expected depth of meteoritic dust on the Moon is less than one foot.

Furthermore, most of that dust is packed quite tightly. It's not loose filler.

Also note that not one of the scientific sources was less than 35 years old.

3) Panel 8, well, here's what I found at http://www.swcp.com/~diamond/cre_radio6.shtml :

Quote:

This is a complete mischaracterization of what really happened. Robert MacNaughton has looked this incident up, and he e-mailed me the following information:

"As outlined by Brush (1983), certain creationists have alleged that volcanic rocks formed in 1801 near Hualalai, Hawaii, gave anomalously old ages. By the K-Ar method of dating, the ages ranged from 160 million to 3 billion years. This sounds bad at first analysis, all right -- ages out by orders of magnitude. But the story is not as simple as it seems. Both Brush (1983; p. 70-71) and Dalrymple (1982) have debunked the creationist interpretation of these lavas.
"Here's a few tid-bits:

The research in question, for starters, was not done by creationists, but by geologists interested in finding out the limitations of the K-Ar method of dating. The original paper was written by Funkhouser and Naughton, and published in 1968 (see below for list of references).
The dates in question were obtained by dating xenoliths within the lava flows. Xenoliths are pieces of pre-existing rock that become incorporated within a magma--they may be much older than the material that encloses them. Radiometric dates obtained for xenoliths within a lava flow might reasonably be expected to be a good deal older than the actual age of the lava flow.
It seems that Henry Morris (1974, p. 145-148) has misinterpreted the reasons that Funkhouser and Naughton gave for the anomalously old ages (over and above the fact that xenoliths won't necessarily give reliable ages for the enclosing rock body). According to Morris (p. 147), the original authors attributed the anomalously high potassium-argon dates to 'the incorporation of environmental argon at the time of lava flow'. However, Funkhouser and Naughton (1968, p. 4605) attributed the incorporation of excess argon to processes taking place within the magma chamber, prior to extrusion.
In a letter to Stephen Brush, part of which was quoted in Brush's 1983 paper, Naughton expressed the opinion that his papers on anomalous K-Ar dates 'only give strength to the applications of K-Ar dating as a geochemical method, in that they point out instances (ultrabasics and basalts erupted in the very deep ocean) where it is unsuitable to apply the K-Ar method. To say that because the K-Ar method should not be applied to such rocks, . . . it cannot be applied to any rocks is as logical as saying that because some plants cannot be used for human food, . . . all plants should not be used for this purpose. . . .We have continued to use K-Ar dating in our researches out here with caution, but without any hesitation as to its reliability when properly used.' (quoted in Brush, 1983, p. 71; ellipses and emphases as used by Brush)."
This leads us to the major flaw in Colson's reasoning. He assumes that, since one dating attempt produced an unreliable result, then they all must be flawed. However, as Chris Stassen points out in his Age of the Earth FAQ:

"This is perhaps the most common objection of all. Creationists point to instances where a given method produced a result that is clearly wrong, and then argue that therefore all such dates may be ignored. Such an argument fails on two counts:
First, an instance where a method fails to work does not imply that it does not ever work. The question is not whether there are 'undatable' objects, but rather whether or not all objects cannot be dated by a given method. The fact that one wristwatch has failed to keep time properly cannot be used as a justification for discarding all watches.
How many creationists would see the same time on five different clocks and then feel free to ignore it? Yet, when five radiometric dating methods agree on the age of one of the Earth's oldest rock formations (Dalrymple 1986, p. 44), it is dismissed without a thought.

I couldn't find any non-creationist refernces to the 1963 issue of science mentioned, but I fully expect that, once again, it was either mischaracterization or outright lying. If someone else has access to that issue, I'd be interested to know what the real article was.

pariah · 06-13-2003, 02:25 AM

Yeah, the mollusk thing was what I was primarily interested in.

A quick search on google, I found out why. Carbon 14 dating doesnt work on things that don't get their carbon from air.

Quote:

This leaves out aquatic creatures, since their carbon might (for example) come from dissolved carbonate rock. That causes a dating problem with any animal that eats seafood.

http://www.don-lindsay-archive.org/creation/carbon.html

Arikay · 06-13-2003, 02:34 AM

A good page, http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/hovind/howgood.html

Well, since Internet Exploder, Exploded while I was typing, and you already got some good info, Ill go over the quick responses.

"C14ing a Living Molusk"

Stupid. C14 is used to date Dead, Again, dead animals.

"Lava Rocks"

More info above about it being fault, but the fact that someone would try to date something that is 200 years old with K/Ar and get an odd date makes perfect sense since K/Ar doesnt do well on young things.
When the creationist goes off on how it still shows the method to be false, you can always mention that why scientist cross check their information.
This could get much longer explaining why its wrong, but I did mention quick responses didnt I.

"errosion"

I would question their figures here. However, one seems to forget that many mountains are not as old as the earth (oldest isnt even 1 billion years old I dont believe). That different rocks effect errosion. That many mountains are also being pushed up still. The continents are dynamic and growing

"Moon Dust"

Stupid, used old figures that were found to be wrong. The data about fall rate on earth was collected poorly as explained above.

This kind of crap might have been accepted in the 70's but 30 years later the fact that some still use this stuff as evidence, might possibly relate to the Character of these people at these creationist groups.

JonF · 06-13-2003, 05:29 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by pariahSS
I'm no expert on evolution...could someone please refute this antievolution chick tract for me?

A lot of Chick's material comes from Kent Hovind, and a lot of Hovind's stuff is so horribly wrong that most YEC's repudiate it. A few things I don't see posted already:

"Lava rocks were tested in Hawaii ..." Not just misleading, an outright lie. Xenoliths ("foreign rocks") were tested. The xenoliths are known to have not melted in the laval flow, and are older than the lava flow. The question was whether the method could reliably determine how much older; sadly, it couldn't.

The surrounding lava was dated correctly, as acurately as could be done with the available instrumentation. We could probably do a lot better now; the tecniques have improved considerably.

See Fresh Lava Dated As 22 Million Years Old.

The erosion thing is addressed at http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/hovi....html#proof15.

THe moon dust argument is addressed (by rabid creationists) in Moon-dust argument no longer useful and Moon Dust and the Age of the Solar System. See also Meteorite Dust and the Age of the Earth and A Dusty Young-Earth Argument Backfires.

lpetrich · 06-13-2003, 08:07 PM

I'm unable to reach that link; would that be his well-known epic Big Daddy?

I remember seeing it long ago; my mother had received it from some pamphlet-distributing fundie. She told him that she believed that we had come to Earth in flying saucers, and he snarled that she would go to Hell. Or something like that.

SLD · 06-13-2003, 10:17 PM

Amusing, but not nearly as good as Big Daddy:

BIG DADDY

Big Daddy is an all time great for Chick. IIRC, it's a collector's item now isn't it and is actually worth something? Or is Chick printing more and more of these old classics?

SLD

Coragyps · 06-14-2003, 07:45 AM

Quote:

I couldn't find any non-creationist refernces to the 1963 issue of science mentioned, but I fully expect that, once again, it was either mischaracterization or outright lying. If someone else has access to that issue, I'd be interested to know what the real article was.

It was Keith and Anderson, Science, v141, pp 634-637, and it title was "Radiocarbon Dating: Fictitious Results with Mollusk Shells." That's "fictitious," as in, "not so." The article carefully dissects the reasons for their snails having low 14C levels - it's due to groundwater flowing through ancient humus in their most striking cases - and warn other researchers to watch out for the effect.

Another similar work that Hovind cites is "Major Carbon-14 Deficiency in Modern Snail Shells from Southern Nevada Springs" by A C Riggs, Science, v224, pp58-61, (1984). (Dr Dino doesn't quote the title.) This is similar to the above, but gives 27,000 year dates for shells, because the snails live in "ancient" groundwater.

Both of these indicate deliberate deceit on the part of the YEC apologist that first dug them up - I'm sure no more than two people in that camp have ever bothered to look them up since.

06-13-2003, 01:25 AM	#1
pariah Banned Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: الرياض Posts: 6,456	refute this chick track? I'm no expert on evolution...could someone please refute this antievolution chick tract for me? http://www.chick.com/catalog/comics/0106.asp

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06-13-2003, 02:34 AM	#4
Arikay Regular Member Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: Ca, Usa Posts: 262	A good page, http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/hovind/howgood.html Well, since Internet Exploder, Exploded while I was typing, and you already got some good info, Ill go over the quick responses. "C14ing a Living Molusk" Stupid. C14 is used to date Dead, Again, dead animals. "Lava Rocks" More info above about it being fault, but the fact that someone would try to date something that is 200 years old with K/Ar and get an odd date makes perfect sense since K/Ar doesnt do well on young things. When the creationist goes off on how it still shows the method to be false, you can always mention that why scientist cross check their information. This could get much longer explaining why its wrong, but I did mention quick responses didnt I. "errosion" I would question their figures here. However, one seems to forget that many mountains are not as old as the earth (oldest isnt even 1 billion years old I dont believe). That different rocks effect errosion. That many mountains are also being pushed up still. The continents are dynamic and growing "Moon Dust" Stupid, used old figures that were found to be wrong. The data about fall rate on earth was collected poorly as explained above. This kind of crap might have been accepted in the 70's but 30 years later the fact that some still use this stuff as evidence, might possibly relate to the Character of these people at these creationist groups.

06-13-2003, 08:07 PM	#6
lpetrich Contributor Join Date: Jul 2000 Location: Lebanon, OR, USA Posts: 16,829	I'm unable to reach that link; would that be his well-known epic Big Daddy? I remember seeing it long ago; my mother had received it from some pamphlet-distributing fundie. She told him that she believed that we had come to Earth in flying saucers, and he snarled that she would go to Hell. Or something like that.

06-13-2003, 10:17 PM	#7
SLD Veteran Member Join Date: Feb 2001 Location: Birmingham, Alabama Posts: 4,109	Amusing, but not nearly as good as Big Daddy: BIG DADDY Big Daddy is an all time great for Chick. IIRC, it's a collector's item now isn't it and is actually worth something? Or is Chick printing more and more of these old classics? SLD

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