Melding Evolution and Creationism

Off Topic Politics & World Issues
201

[quote]lothario1132 wrote:

Sorry. You’re right. I did mis-quote you. But you mis-quoted your source. I was speaking to the point of your link. And notice the last few sentences of your quote? I think this answers your point on the erosion thing too. Do you honestly think that geological stuff like erosion of topsoil or anything to do with weather or climate follows a linear progression, or a constant rate? You do think that there was an ice age, right? Well, has the earth always been that cold? This means that it was warmer, then colder, then warmer again. Not linear.
[/quote]

Actually no I didn’t mis-quote my source. I just only posted the part that includes Helium escaping the atmosphere. Here is more of the article. You really should read it. It would save me having to correct you falsifying things. Really those last few lines answer me? Well glad to see you are finally open minded, Then you would be willing to admit that all science regarding evo. is based off of guesses. So we are back at square one. It could be really old, it could be really young. Take of the Presupposition glasses and see that the people you trust are biased, and interpretating the evidence the way they want it to be. I have already provided links for problems with Carbon dating.

“Air is mainly nitrogen (78.1%) and oxygen (20.1%). There is much less helium (0.0005%). But this is still a lot of helium?3.71 billion tonnes. However, since 67 grams of helium escape from the earth?s crust into the (atmosphere) every second, it would have taken about two million years for the current amount of helium to build up, even if there had been none at the beginning. Evolutionists believe the earth is over 2,500 times older?4.5 billion years. Of course, the earth could have been created with most of the helium already there, so two million years is a maximum age.”

Once again you fail to understand that if this was so open and shut like you put it geologist would say it doesn’t matter. It obviously must matter if they are trying to use it as some way determine the age of the earth. The Last time I checked scientist said the Ice age was long before the estimated time it would of taken for the continents to have erroded. I will stop at this statement. If it is so open and shut like you say, then why would they even bother trying to prove the age of the earth by it?

I am going to post a few links even though I know you will not read them. I pose one question if there was no global flood then why do so many cultures speak of a massive flood? Guess what they were not all local mesopotamaia cultures either.

Flood link

Geology
http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v21/i4/geology.asp

Problems with a comet killing the dinosaurs by secular scientist.
http://www.answersingenesis.org/tj/v12/i2/dinosaur.asp

I am not trying to explain creation. I am merely stating that there are problems with the theory of evo. Well if you are an atheist I feel sorry for you. It would seem that not only is your existance meaninless once it is over, but you have no hope of anything worth while to live for other than the here and now. I especially feel sorry for you since it is obvious you are as closed minded to God, as so many fundamentalist are closed minded to Evo. being true. You choose ignorance rather than knowledge, and you justify it by degrading the other.

I will let this quote answer you here.

? I?ve been accused of teaching the verbal plenary inspiration of the Scripture. I want it to be understood that I have never taught this. All I have ever said is that in all of my archeological investigation I have never found one artifact of antiquity that contradicts any statement of the Word of God.?
~ Nelson Glueck

202

[quote]ShaunW wrote:
Haney:
How about instead of taking the bible verbatim, lets assume there are some tiny exagerations in these stories.
Lets take these little birds you?ve brought up a few times:
http://sol.sci.uop.edu/~jfalward/YahwehsQuails.htm
[/quote]

ok. that is interesting it still doesn’t answer anything. That math is highly skewed. For instance out of 3 million people they only picked up 178 birds a minute? That is highly unlikely!

Some books are meant to be literal and some are not. Some are poetry, and some are historical accounts. Leviticus is kind of like the laws used for the IRS. It is something we would use if we were a theocracy. I believe it is literal. I also understand it is meant for a theocratic rule. Since we have a non God government it would not apply to us. Also Leviticus to the Christian is a representation of the law that would have to be followed if you were to try to get to Heaven on your own. You could not do it. So that is why grace comes into play.

Because the Bible is the inerrant word of God. If you can prove part of it wrong, then there is a chance all of it could be wrong. It is like building a house on a foundation that is cracked! It wouldn’t stand very long.

How is that an example?

A jury of OJ simpsons peers found the idea of Him not killing His wife plausible. Who believes it? no one! why? because there are too many things which were never explained away.

I think there is a big difference in God doing a miracle to demonstrate a certain purpose, and Him being in a cheese sandwich.

I would love to hear your explanation on Jesus rising from the dead!

Sorry it took so long to post I didn’t even see this until today.

203

You can’t use helium to date the Earth.
Also, since carbon dating is only valid to about 40-50K years ago, there are other radiometric dating methods that point to the earth being atleast 4.3 Billion years old.

Excerpt taken from the talkorigins.com website.

"1. Accumulation of Helium in the atmosphere
The young-Earth argument goes something like this: helium-4 is created by radioactive decay (alpha particles are helium nuclei) and is constantly added to the atmosphere. Helium is not light enough to escape the Earth’s gravity (unlike hydrogen), and it will therefore accumulate over time. The current level of helium in the atmosphere would accumulate in less than two hundred thousand years, therefore the Earth is young. (I believe this argument was originally put forth by Mormon young-Earther Melvin Cook, in a letter to the editor which was published in Nature.)

But helium can and does escape from the atmosphere, at rates calculated to be nearly identical to rates of production. In order to “get” a young age from their calculations, young-Earthers “handwave away” mechanisms by which helium can escape. For example, Henry Morris says:

“There is no evidence at all that Helium 4 either does, or can, escape from the exosphere in significant amounts.” ( Morris 1974, p. 151 )
But Morris is wrong. Surely one cannot “invent” a good dating mechanism by simply ignoring processes which work in the opposite direction of the process which the date is based upon. Dalrymple says:

“Banks and Holzer (12) have shown that the polar wind can account for an escape of (2 to 4) x 106 ions/cm2 /sec of 4He, which is nearly identical to the estimated production flux of (2.5 +/- 1.5) x 106 atoms/cm2/sec. Calculations for 3He lead to similar results, i.e., a rate virtually identical to the estimated production flux. Another possible escape mechanism is direct interaction of the solar wind with the upper atmosphere during the short periods of lower magnetic-field intensity while the field is reversing. Sheldon and Kern (112) estimated that 20 geomagnetic-field reversals over the past 3.5 million years would have assured a balance between helium production and loss.” ( Dalrymple 1984, p. 112 )
Dalrymple’s references:

(12) Banks, P. M. & T. E. Holzer. 1969. “High-latitude plasma transport: the polar wind” in Journal of Geophysical Research 74, pp. 6317-6332.
(112) Sheldon, W. R. & J. W. Kern. 1972. “Atmospheric helium and geomagnetic field reversals” in Journal of Geophysical Research 77, pp. 6194-6201.
This argument also appears in the following creationist literature:"

204

[quote]beaudry wrote:
You can’t use helium to date the Earth.
Also, since carbon dating is only valid to about 40-50K years ago, there are other radiometric dating methods that point to the earth being atleast 4.3 Billion years old.
[/quote]

Those methods are not as trusted as radio carbon dating therefore they can not be used. I could also use YEC dating systems, but I am not. I am only showing flaws in the most trusted one. you article while interesting does not conclude, instead it assumes that there have been changes which would account for this.
My article did allow for helium to escape. Your article does not even address the helium in rocks. Bottom line there is too much in the rocks, and not enough in the atmosphere, for it to so cut and dry. Since helium is produced through radioactive decay in rocks we can safely use helium to be used to date the earth system. After all we can use rocks for all sorts of other dating systems. Why not use the production of helium through radioactive decay as a basis?

Your article is wrong about the argument too. we allow for 2 million years not 200,000, and it is based off of removing all helium from the Atmosphere. It was also James Clerk Maxwell who did the math to figure the rate of helium. Your article is full of errors about simple things why would it be correct about the bigger issues?

expert, J.W. Chamberlain, said that this helium accumulation problem ?? will not go away, and it is unsolved.?

atmospheric physicist C.G. Walker, who stated: ?? there appears to be a problem with the helium budget of the atmosphere.

205

Haney,

Radiometric dating is a valid and consistent form of measuring the age of the earth. Far more valid and consistent than helium dating.

Here is a excerpt from “Radiometric Dating, A Christian Perspective”

Give it a read and I’ll read your links.

http://www.asa3.org/ASA/resources/Wiens.html

"Radiometric dating–the process of determining the age of rocks from the decay of their radioactive elements–has been in widespread use for over half a century. There are over forty such techniques, each using a different radioactive element or a different way of measuring them. It has become increasingly clear that these radiometric dating techniques agree with each other and as a whole, present a coherent picture in which the Earth was created a very long time ago. Further evidence comes from the complete agreement between radiometric dates and other dating methods such as counting tree rings or glacier ice core layers. Many Christians have been led to distrust radiometric dating and are completely unaware of the great number of laboratory measurements that have shown these methods to be consistent. Many are also unaware that Bible-believing Christians are among those actively involved in radiometric dating.

This paper describes in relatively simple terms how a number of the dating techniques work, how accurately the half-lives of the radioactive elements and the rock dates themselves are known, and how dates are checked with one another. In the process the paper refutes a number of misconceptions prevalent among Christians today. This paper is available on the web via the American Scientific Affiliation and related sites to promote greater understanding and wisdom on this issue, particularly within the Christian community.
"

Another article.
http://www.gate.net/~rwms/AgeEarth.html
Radiometric Dating
from The Evolution Evidence Page
Scientists have settled on the age of the earth of about 4.6 billion years as a result of research started almost 50 years ago. This conclusion was based upon carefully designed and conducted experiments that compared the ratios in rock samples of parent elements to daughter elements ( some of which would have been from radioactive decay of the parent, some of which may have been present in the sample at the time of formation). Since radioactive decay is known to occur at a constant rate, the age of a rock can be determined from the ratio of the parent element to the daughter element. The concerns about these dating methods were exactly the same that creationists continue to raise - presence of the daughter element at the time the rock was formed and possible loss / gain of either the parent or daughter element at some point in the history of the rock. For this reason, the tests were designed to account for those possibilities.

Initial daughter element can often be accounted for by either measuring the amount of an isotope of the daughter element (the ratio of isotopes are almost always constant). Another possibility is (as in the case of the potassium - argon - K-Ar method) that because the daughter element is gaseous, it would escape from the rock when the rock was molten. Once the rock cooled, the gaseous daughter would be trapped in the rocks crystal structure and could no longer escape. By experimentation, scientists have determined which rocks are suitable for various dating techniques. For K-Ar, for example, igneous rocks are good candidates for testing because they formed directly from molten magma and have a simple history. Metamorphic rocks do not work well because heating events in their history have allowed the escape of Argon (daughter element) and thus will indicate an age too young for the sample. Sedimentary rocks do not work because they are made up of a mixture of deposits of many other types of rocks, each of which would point to a different age. At any rate, scientists have devoted a great deal of effort to determining exactly which dating methods are appropriate for which types of rocks.

The other problem to avoid when dating rocks is the possibility that changes to the rock have caused loss or gain of either the parent or daughter element - this would lead to a false date (too old if parent element were lost, too young if daughter element were lost). I know of two methods that have been designed that can account for this possibility - isochron dating and the uranium-thorium-lead discordia / concordia method (actually three independent age calculations for one sample). Both of these methods have internal checks for the possible loss / gain of elements to the rock.

Creationists want the world to think that geologists just grab a rock and throw any old radiometric test at it and poof - there’s the age of the rock. Reality is far more complex. If you examine the extensive research in the field of geochronology, you will see that one of the most important criteria in dating a sample lies in choosing an appropriate dating method for the sample. From G. Brent Dalrymple (see below):

One of the principal tasks of the geochronologist is to select the type of the material used for a dating analysis. A great deal of effort goes into the sample selection, and the choices are made before the analysis, not on the basis of the results. Mistakes are sometimes made but are usually caught by the various checks employed in the well-designed experiment.

The most compelling argument for an age of the earth of 4.5 billion years are the large number of independent tests that have been used to confirm this date. These tests have been performed on what are thought to be the earth’s oldest surviving rocks, meteorites, and moon rocks. These tests have consistently given the same ages for each of these objects. Examples include:

The Earths Oldest Rock’s
Description Technique Age (in billions of years)

Amitsoq gneisses (western Greenland) Rb-Sr isochron 3.70 ± 0.12
Amitsoq gneisses (western Greenland) 207Pb-206Pb isochron 3.80 ± 0.12
Amitsoq gneisses (western Greenland) (zircons) U-Pb discordia 3.65 ± 0.05
Amitsoq gneisses (western Greenland) (zircons) Th-Pb discordia 3.65 ± 0.08
Amitsoq gneisses (western Greenland) (zircons) Lu-Hf isochron 3.55 ± 0.22
Sand River gneisses (South Africa) Rb-Sr isochron 3.79 ± 0.06

These are the oldest of the rocks dated on the earth so far (as of 1997). These are metamorphic rocks and thus have had some of their “history” lost - metamorphosis fully or partially resets the radiometric ages of rocks pointing to younger ages than the true age of the original rock. Older rocks may have been lost due to erosion or have not yet been discovered.

For many more examples of the consistancy of dating the same rocks with multiple methods, see Consistent Radiometric Dates by Joe Meert, a Geologist at the University of Florida. Dr. Meert’s examples not only show that multiple radiometric methods come up with consistent dates for samples from the same locations, but that these results are also consistant with the paleomagnetic signature of the rocks, the position where the rocks would be expected to be (due to continental drift) at the time they were formed, and the cooling curves for the rocks. (Cooling curves deal with the fact that the different radiometric isotopes become “frozen” in the rocks at different temperatures. The higher the closure temperature for an isotope, the older the rock will be as dated by that isotope.) All of this consistancy rules out all of the arguments creationists attempt to make against radiometric dating techniques.

Oldest Lunar Rocks
Mission Technique Age (in billions of years)

Apollo 17 Rb-Sr isochron 4.55 ± 0.1
Apollo 17 Rb-Sr isochron 4.60 ± 0.1
Apollo 17 Rb-Sr isochron 4.49
Apollo 17 Rb-Sr isochron 4.43 ± 0.05
Apollo 17 Sm-Nd isochron 4.23 ± 0.05
Apollo 17 Sm-Nd isochron 4.34 ± 0.05
Apollo 16 40Ar/39Ar 4.47
Apollo 16 40Ar/39Ar 4.42

The following, although not among the oldest lunar rocks, show the consistency of ages found for the same sample (note the sample numbers) as determined by different dating techniques.
Description Sample # Technique Age (in billions of years)

Apollo 14 - highlands A1 basalt 14053 Rb-Sr isochron 3.96
Apollo 14 - highlands A1 basalt 14053 40Ar/39Ar 3.95
Apollo 17 - highlands High-T1 basalt 75055 Rb-Sr isochron 3.83
Apollo 17 - highlands High-T1 basalt 75055 40Ar/39Ar 3.76
Luna 16 - highlands B-1 40Ar/39Ar 3.42
Luna 16 - highlands B-1 Rb-Sr isochron 3.45
Apollo 15 - highlands olivine basalt 15555 Rb-Sr isochron 3.32
Apollo 15 - highlands olivine basalt 15555 40Ar/39Ar 3.31
Apollo 12 - mare quartz basalt 12051 40Ar/39Ar 3.27
Apollo 12 - mare quartz basalt 12051 Rb-Sr isochron 3.26
Apollo 12 - mare quartz basalt 12051 40Ar/39Ar 3.24
Apollo 12 - mare quartz basalt 12051 Rb-Sr isochron 3.16

Finally, note this stunning example from a single moon rock sample (from Age of the Earth, Dalrymple, 1991 - a “must read” for anyone who wants the true story on radiometric dating):
Description Sample # Technique Age (in billions of years)

Apollo 11 - High-K basalt 10072 40Ar/39Ar whole rock 3.49 ± 0.05
Apollo 11 - High-K basalt 10072 40Ar/39Ar whole rock 3.52 ± 0.04
Apollo 11 - High-K basalt 10072 40Ar/39Ar plagioclase 3.57 ± 0.05
Apollo 11 - High-K basalt 10072 40Ar/39Ar plagioclase 3.56 ± 0.06
Apollo 11 - High-K basalt 10072 40Ar/39Ar ilmenite 3.58 ± 0.05
Apollo 11 - High-K basalt 10072 40Ar/39Ar pyroxene 3.55 ± 0.05
Apollo 11 - High-K basalt 10072 Rb-Sr isochron 3.57 ± 0.05
Apollo 11 - High-K basalt 10072 Sm-Nd isochron 3.57 ± 0.03

Don’t forget, these ages were all obtained for the same sample!

The Oldest Meteorites
Description Technique Age (in billions of years)

Juvinas (achondrite) Mineral isochron 4.60 ± 0.07
Allende (carbonaceous chondrite) Mixed isochron 4.5 - 4.7
Colomera (silicon inclusion, iron met.) Mineral isochron 4.61 ± 0.04
Enstatite chondrites Whole-rock isochron 4.54 ± 0.13
Enstatite chondrites Mineral isochron 4.56 ± 0.15
Carbonaceous chondrites Whole-rock isochron 4.69 ± 0.14
Amphoterite chondrites Whole-rock isochron 4.56 ± 0.15
Bronzite chondrites Whole-rock isochron 4.69 ± 0.14
Hypersthene chondrites Whole-rock isochron 4.48 ± 0.14
Krahenberg (amphoterite) Mineral isochron 4.70 ± 0.1
Norton County (achondrite) Mineral isochron 4.7 ± .1

See Radiometric Dating A Christian Perspective by Roger C. Wiens for more examples of age of the earth and meteorite dates. The more I learn about radiometric dating, the more I appreciate the quality of this article. It really offers a complete, concise, and understandable explanation of radiometric dating for the non-scientist.

All of the above data are from G. Brent Dalrymple, Radiometric Dating, Geologic Time, and The Age of the Earth: A Reply to “Scientific” Creationism published by the U.S. Department of the Interior (Open-File Report 86-110), 1986. This is an excellent report by a real scientist rebutting the distortions that creation apologists have been putting out for 35 years. It documents several examples of Henry Morris (the “Father of Creation Science”) and H.S. Slusher reaching invalid conclusions and quoting researchers out of context. I strongly recommend that anyone interested in the scientific vs. Genesis (fundamentalist interpretation) age of the earth controversy read this paper. It should be available in most university libraries in the U.S.

Creation “Science” Arguments Against Radiometric Dating
Now, what are the creationist arguments against radiometric dating? (See my previous post on radiometric dating for details on how these techniques work.) First, creationists have no data that determines the age of the earth to be 6 - 10 thousand years old. Instead of trying to develop tests to actually determine the earth’s age (whatever it may be), creationists are only interested in attempting to tear down the well founded results of scientists (after 50 years of geochronological research alone) that the earth is on the order of 4.5 billion years old. What have creationists gotten for all of these years of work?
Well, the first popular technique of creationists is to try to find examples of bad radiometric dates and offer these up as proof that radiometric dating is totally unreliable. Henry Morris, in his 1974 book “Scientific Creationism” made the claim that K/Ar dates for lava from the 1801 Hulalalei volcano lava flow ranged from 160 million years to 3 billion years old. With results like these, radiometric dating must be totally useless - how could scientists possibly be so stupid as to believe that radiometric dating could be of any merit when a simple lava flow gives such a wide range of dates - right in their own research? As usual with such claims, we’ll have to dig a little further to get at the truth. Morris cited a study by Funkhouser and Norton - “Radiogenic Helium and Argon in Ultramafic Inclusions from Hawaii” published in the Journal of Geophysics Research, vol. 73, pgs. 4601 - 4607. What Morris didn’t bother to inform his readers was that the study concerned xenoliths - fragments of foreign rock broken of by the magmas intrusion through the crust. Since they are not completely melted by the magma, they are in fact much older than the lava flow (with K/Ar dating, what you are really dating is how long it has been since the rock solidified from the molten state - at this point the daughter Argon can no longer escape from the rock). That particular study confirmed (as geologists already suspected) that xenoliths could not be properly dated with the K/Ar method. The Funkhouser and Norton study clearly stated that the “ages” determined by K/Ar dating had no geological meaning and also determined that the xenoliths contained excess argon trapped in “air” bubbles inside the rock. Of course there was no mention of these details by Morris or any of the internet postings I have seen that still list this “problem” - despite the fact that Dalrymple answered it over 10 years ago. In the same paper, Dalrymple goes on to describe in detail several other quotes taken out of context by creationists. See Reference to a case where the given method did not work by Chris Stassen and Woodmorappe’s Collection of Bad Dates by for more examples of this popular creationist technique.

The second creationist technique is to provide supposed evidences of a young age for the earth. These usually involve measuring the rate of change of some (any) environmental phenomenon, assuming that the rate has never changed, and calculating an age (always called an upper limit) for the earth. These ages vary from 100 years (accumulation of aluminum in the ocean) to 260 million years (accumulation of sodium in the ocean). Examples include changes in the earth’s magnetic field, accumulation of helium in the atmosphere, and accumulation of metals in the ocean. The problem with all of these methods is that they are too complex - no one knows all of the sources or sinks (method of removal) for all of these currently - and certainly in the past. Most of these techniques have been examined in the scientific literature and found to be useless for determining an age of the earth.

Creationists make the claim that the earth’s magnetic field has been steadily decreasing over time. They claim that this trend indicates the earth could not have supported life more than 20,000 years ago because of the huge strength of the the earth’s magnetic field. Besides making the huge leap of faith that these trends (for which they have no explanation) continued at the same rate into the distant past, they ignore the fact that the decrease in the earth’s dipole has been offset by an increase in the non dipole component of the earth’s magnetic field - leading to a constant strength for the earth’s magnetic field as measured over the past 50 years. Paleomagnetic measurements have also shown that the earth’s dipole has fluctuated over the past 8000 years - not constantly decaying as creationists claim. See the Dalrymple paper mentioned in my previous post for more details. Also, see
Decay of the Earth’s magnetic field.
Creation “Science” and Magnetic Fields
CREATIONISTS AND “MAGNETIC FIELD DECAY”
and Is the Earth’s Magnetic Field Decaying Exponentially?
for more problems with this disproven “theory”.

The next big “proof” for a young earth involves the accumulations of various metal ions (including salt - the sodium of sodium chloride is a metal ion when dissolved in water) dissolved in sea water. This claim ignores the evidence that these ions are not accumulating in sea water - they are at or near equilibrium in sea water. Although creationists want to talk about sources of these ions, they don’t want to talk about ways these ions leave the ocean - precipitation, continental uplift. etc. See the following:
Problems with “Dating” the Earth from Metal Influx Rates in the Ocean.
and How Long Did it Take to Salt the Oceans?.

Another favorite claim of creationists is that the amount of Helium in the earth’s atmosphere indicates a young age for the earth. Once again, they are quick to look at sources of Helium (radioactive decay) and ignore or underestimate ways in which Helium escapes the earth’s atmosphere. See:

Accumulation of Helium in the atmosphere

Finally, creationists like to claim that there has been no success in dating historical volcanic flows. Well, here are a few examples for you - the following eruptions were given zero ages from K/Ar dating. Zero is exactly what you would expect from a radioisotope with a billion year half life. I would suggest that you use an isotope with a shorter half life - but, radioisotopes with a half life of 80 million years (or less) are extremely rare in rocks (unless they are products of a longer lived parent) - could this be because they all decayed to their daughter elements in the earth’s 4.5 billion history? See Dave Matson’s article on this topic for details.

Historical Volcanic Lavas Dated at Zero from K40/Ar40
Location Year of Eruption

Mt. Milhara, Japan 1951
Sakurajima, Japan 1946
Kilauea, Hawaii 1750
Kilauea, Hawaii 1955
Mauna Loa, Hawaii 1907
Mt. Etna, Sicily 252
Mt. Etna, Sicily 1329
Mt. Etna, Sicily 1444
Mt. Etna, Sicily 1536
Mt. Etna, Sicily 1669
Mt. Etna, Sicily 1886
Mt. Vesuvius, Italy 1944
Askja, Iceland ~1500 BCE
Lakagigar, Iceland 1783
Ngauruhoe, New Zealand 1954
Paracutin, Mexico 1944
Augustine, Alaska 1935
Cinder Cone, California 1851

Here are the 3 historic volcanic sites with excess Argon (as of 1969).
Location Year of Eruption Apparent Age (millions of years)

Hualalei, Hawaii 1801 1.1
Sunset Crater, Arizona 1065 0.22
Mt. Etna, Sicely 1792 0.15

Note that all 3 of the above lavas contain xenolyths - foreign stones that aren’t part of the lava. These xenolyths contribute excess Argon to the analysis leading to an older than expected date. Also note that while these dating errors are significant for dating very recent rocks, an error of 1 million years is insignificant in rocks older than say 50 to 100 million years.

All of the above was from Age of the Earth by G. Brent Dalrymple, pg. 132 - 134.

The simple fact is, Creationists have NO evidence that points to a 6 - 10 thousand year age for the earth! This belief is an article of faith for creationists and they have never found any significant scientific data to back it up. The best they can do is to try to find flaws in decades of mainstream research (by thousands of researchers) that indicate the effectiveness of radiometric dating and to try to come up with doubtful scenarios that put an “upper limit” on the age of the earth. As was shown above by multiple sources, these schemes do not work. To see just how bad the ceationist model is , see Creationist Geologic Time Scale: an attack strategy for the sciences by Don Wise.

Finally, I would like to raise the issue of motive in these questions of the age of the earth. Scientists have no reason to claim an age of the earth of 4.5 billion years except for the results of decades of research and thousands of tests by independent researchers indicating the effectiveness of radiometric dating and that 4.5 billion years is the correct age of the earth. They have no stake in this date - other than that the facts support it. As the geochronologist Dalrymple said, “I have no reason whatsoever to want the age of the earth to be any more or less than it happens to be. I would take great delight in proving that the earth is only 10,000 years old if it were possible to do so.”

Creationists, on the other hand , have an extreme interest in proving the age of the earth to be 6 - 10 thousand years - it is required by their fundamentalist (literal) Biblical theology. To them, the earth must have been created in six literal days six thousand years ago. Any other possibility is a violation of their deeply held religious beliefs. In fact, all of the creation “science” organizations require members to adhere to clearly religious “creeds” that require them to accept the authority of the Bible in all matters. While this may be good religion, it is very, very bad science! Can we really trust such people to make a fair and unbiased attempt to determine the true age of the earth? We certainly haven’t seen any evidence of it so far.

For more information, see Tim Thompson’s exhaustive A Radiometric Dating Resource List .

206

More on faulty dating.

"The following material is from Revolution Against Evolution – A Revolution of the Love of God (It looks like C14 dating is the ?bad boy? of radiometric dating.)

Dr. Libby, the discoverer of the C14 method, which won for him a Nobel prize, expressed his shock that human artifacts extended back only 5000 years, a finding totally in conflict with any evolutionary concept. Older dates were found to be very unreliable (CRSQ , 1972, 9:3, p.157). By this time tens of thousands of C14 dates have been published from tests performed by various laboratories around the world. In the annual volumes in which the dates are published, concerns have been expressed about many relatively young dates that violate established geological age notions. One example given was Ice-Age materials that were dated by C14 to fall within the Christian era (CRSQ , 1969, 6:2, p.114). In his book on prehistoric America, Ceram notes a classic case of the difficulties that befall C14 dating. Bones 30,000 years old were found lying above wood dated at 16,000 years (Ceram, 1971, p.257-259).

Another classic C14 problem was noted for Jarmo, a prehistoric village in northern Iraq. Eleven samples were dated from the various strata and showed a 6000-year spread from oldest to most recent. Analysis of all the archaeological evidence, however, showed that the village was occupied no more than 500 years before it was finally abandoned (Custance, 1968, Mortar samples can be given normal C14 tests since mortar absorbs carbon dioxide from the air. Mortar, however, from Oxford Castle in England gave an age of 7,270 years. The castle was built about 800 years ago. The kind of contamination is unclear. Living trees near an airport were dated with C14 as l0,000 years old, because the wood contained contamination from plane exhaust (CRSQ , 1970, 7:2, p.126; 1965, 2:4, p.31). p.19)."

207

Hi Haney:
I wrote ?I don?t understand your insistance that one needs to find an explaination for every story in this book. With enough research, time and technology, then I think every story in the bible will end up with a plausable explanation. The turin shroud is a top example.?

The following indicates that the shroud can no longer be used as an evidence pointing to the ?Christ Risen?.
At the moment, apart from biblical accounts, and a piece of wood called ?part of the one true cross? no-one can say the reserection did or did not happen. The shroud has been used as a lynchpin ? a proof that it indeed happened. However this piece of evidence is no longer any good for that purpose.
From : Radiocarbon Dating of the Shroud of Turin

“The results of radiocarbon measurements at Arizona, Oxford and Zurich yield a calibrated calendar age range with at least 95% confidence for the linen of the Shroud of Turin of AD 1260 - 1390 (rounded down/up to nearest 10 yr). These results therefore provide conclusive evidence that the linen of the Shroud of Turin is mediaeval.”
And by the way any sort of contamination, as in your post above will skew any scientific tests. Hence the use of double blind studies, multiple tests, providing samples to various testing facilities who do not collaborate to find an accurate result.

From THE HOLY SHROUD
According to tradition the Holy Shroud is the burial shroud in which Jesus was wrapped after he was taken down from the cross. This corresponds to the accounts written in the Gospels, which describe how Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus arranged the body of Jesus in the tomb after wrapping it in a “shroud”.

Then you said ?Because the Bible is the inerrant word of God. If you can prove part of it wrong, then there is a chance all of it could be wrong. It is like building a house on a foundation that is cracked! It wouldn’t stand very long.?

I think a lot of scientific disciplines have shown that several biblical accounts could not have happened (the great flood ? there just isn?t any scientific record of an all-covering flood in the Australian geological record between 2000 and 6000ys ago ? an ice age is there with glaciers treversing the continent - but an ice age indicates the available water was bound in ice - the sea level actually drops ? but perhaps the flood was confined to the norther hemisphere), and have shown plausable theories to explain various miracles.
Beaudry?s excellent and informative posts have quashed any doubt regarding the age of the earth. If the Bible is the literal truth, and you go for genesis as the literal truth, then I think I just heard a resounding CRACK.

By the way, how does someone work out which parts of the bible are to be taken literally, and which parts as allegory and poetry ? Who makes these sorts of decisions?
Just out of interest, have you heard of / read the Gospels of St. Thomas discovered at Nag Hammedi? If so, what do you think about this part of recently discovered christianity / gnostisism being lablelled as ?heresay?.

The historical and theological value of the Nag Hammadi library and its invaluable Gospel of St Thomas cannot even begin to be evaluated. It should be realised that the contents of the texts are likely to challenge the very basis of Christianity.
from:
http://www.nag-hammadi.com/gospel.html

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[quote]beaudry wrote:
Read the articles.

First thing about helium.
your paper states that there has to be changes to account for it. Yet it does not say they happened for sure. Instead it says if these things happen then that explains it. Secondly it doesn’t explain the helium in the "ROCKS ". As I stated there is too much in the rocks.

It also doesn’t deal with the previous article I posted on radiometric dating about it having a shelf life of 50k on many things. Which you seemed to be ok with radiometric dating only being able to go that far back on somethings which have been dated older than 50k. So I ask which one are you going to stand by? you seem to talk out both sides of your mouth at this point.

Also it does not deal with the cosmological problems for dating our solar system. Which I posted links on.

Cosmological

You should also read the previous post I right below your last post. It is a long read but a very good one never the less.

and one more link on radio metric dating

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[quote]ShaunW wrote:
Hi Haney:
The following indicates that the shroud can no longer be used as an evidence pointing to the ?Christ Risen?.
At the moment, apart from biblical accounts, and a piece of wood called ?part of the one true cross? no-one can say the reserection did or did not happen. The shroud has been used as a lynchpin ? a proof that it indeed happened. However this piece of evidence is no longer any good for that purpose.
From : Radiocarbon Dating of the Shroud of Turin

“The results of radiocarbon measurements at Arizona, Oxford and Zurich yield a calibrated calendar age range with at least 95% confidence for the linen of the Shroud of Turin of AD 1260 - 1390 (rounded down/up to nearest 10 yr). These results therefore provide conclusive evidence that the linen of the Shroud of Turin is mediaeval.”
And by the way any sort of contamination, as in your post above will skew any scientific tests. Hence the use of double blind studies, multiple tests, providing samples to various testing facilities who do not collaborate to find an accurate result.

From THE HOLY SHROUD
According to tradition the Holy Shroud is the burial shroud in which Jesus was wrapped after he was taken down from the cross. This corresponds to the accounts written in the Gospels, which describe how Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus arranged the body of Jesus in the tomb after wrapping it in a “shroud”.
[/quote]

I never claimed the shroud as evidence. That is why I said what is your point. That is what some believe. No where is it written in the Bible that it is a surviving artifact.

obviosuly you didn’t read my post against the dating that is below his.
I especially like the part about them telling the guy who invented radio carbon dating that no human specimen found has been dated over 6k years. He was shocked too. I digress though. He didn’t answer any cosmological questions. Also his artcile didn’t tackle the questions that I even posed about Radiometric dating. Merely answered ones I did not even pose.
It also dance around the finding of the helium in the rocks. Which is where we also date the radio carbon. So one piece of evidence says it is millions of years old, but the helium(which he only dealt with from an atmosphere perspective which it was based off of if these certain things happen then it is possible. Science of the gaps is what this argument is called) was unanswered.

There are plenty of evidences that proof a flood happened. Also the article I posted concerning problems with radiometric dating which was underneath his “earth chattering evidence” clearly talks about fossils in the So called ice age that date no latter than 7,000 years.

Well to understand which parts are poetry and which are not one would have to read the Bible! the psalms are poetry, allegory would be parables. I would not expect someone who has never tried to even learn Bibllical interpretation to understand these things. I find it interesting though that you can instantly throw it all out as wrong with out even understanding one part of it.

[quote]
The historical and theological value of the Nag Hammadi library and its invaluable Gospel of St Thomas cannot even begin to be evaluated. It should be realised that the contents of the texts are likely to challenge the very basis of Christianity.
from:
http://www.nag-hammadi.com/gospel.html
http://www.gnosis.org/naghamm/bookt.html[/quote]

gnostic gospels have long been discredited. Why because they more than two centuries after Christ was here. For a gospel to be taken serious it would of had to have had apolostic authority which the Gospel of Thomas would not have been. Also there was a well understood cannon by 115 ce. that was fully in acted by 430 ce.

It is no different then the gospel of Barnabus. which is highly discredited. The Early church did not except the gnostics because they were perverting the message. I could talk about this part for hours.

You still never explained to me your take on Chist rising from the dead. You have only had ad hominem towards my beliefs.

As you can see from this board it is not required for our faith in God, and the Bible to have evoltion proven or disproven. I am willing to accept an old earth, but there is just too much pulling the wool over our eyes from the science community for me to just except it.

210

Here is a response from that same article from trueorigins.org to a skeptic who also sites the source of the article that is so “shattering to my belief”.

He comments on darylimple

one more really long read.

211

[quote]haney wrote:
Well glad to see you are finally open minded, Then you would be willing to admit that all science regarding evo. is based off of guesses.[/quote]
All good science always starts with a guess. I will assume that you know what a hypothesis is, so I will spare you the condescension of explaining what the scientific method is.

No, we’re not back at square one, we’re in this forum presenting the obvious reasons why your bible is not literal truth, and you are fighting as hard as you can to maintain your suspension of disbelief.

The only one with the ultra-fashionable presupposition glasses around here is you, buddy. Science didn’t set out to disprove the bible. It just wanted to try to find the truth. When we discovered that the bible was wrong, that’s when your christian scientists started trying to find ways to prove the bible right. That’s a presupposition: “try to find some way to show that the earth is young”.

The quote you put forth in our last discussion, the last couple of sentences, and I don’t think that this is taken out of context:

“Of course, all such calculations depend on assumptions about the past, like the starting conditions and constant rates of processes. They can never prove the age of something.”

Doesn’t sound like they’re trying to age-date with helium to me. I’m not failing to understand anything, am I? You just don’t like what is being shown to you. And let’s talk a bit real quick about the fundamental creationist idea of the age of the earth for a second.

Here we have the argument: the earth is young, because the bible is a faithful record of history, and we used the various “begats” to back-calculate how many years have elapsed since adam and eve.

This reason is completely crazy. This is very similar to having faith that we will develop faster-than-light space travel sometime in the next hundred years because that’s what happened in Star Trek.

[quote]I am going to post a few links even though I know you will not read them. I pose one question if there was no global flood then why do so many cultures speak of a massive flood? Guess what they were not all local mesopotamaia cultures either.

Flood link

Geology
http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v21/i4/geology.asp

Problems with a comet killing the dinosaurs by secular scientist.
http://www.answersingenesis.org/tj/v12/i2/dinosaur.asp
[/quote]

I did read your links, and what I found in them was astounding. Here’s one particular gem I want to share:

“Many people find it difficult to accept that scientific investigation should start with the Bible. They think we can answer the question about the age of the earth by coming to the evidence with an ?open mind?. In fact, no one has an open mind. Evidence does not interpret itself; rather, everyone views the world through a belief framework. Unfortunately, as humans we never have all the information. So, when we start from the evidence, we can never be sure our conclusions are right ? like in a classic ?whodunnit?, just one piece of information can change the whole picture. By contrast, when we start from the Word of God, we can be sure that what it says is true.”

Okay. So let me get this straight. This passage above basically boils down to: “Just because I said so, if it’s not what’s in the bible, it’s false. The bible can never be wrong.” This is called brainwashing. Those web pages were nothing but a bunch of refutations of the results from scientific experiments or investigations. Other scientists do the same thing. What we have here is analysis, and nothing more. There is nothing in the links you posted which show anything in the bible to be true, except the passage I quoted from the geology link, and it is just a mind-control tactic. I was waiting for old Obi-Wan Kenobi to pop up, wave his hand and say: “you don’t need to see my identification…”

I do not degrade the bible. I degrade those who think it is absolute truth. Because it isn’t. And don’t feel sorry for me… I am free of the bonds of fear which you so proudly wear and show to all of us in this thread. You have taken the bait – the illusion that you don’t have to die – and now it rules your mind. What is so bad about doing what you can right now, and living your life to the fullest with the understanding that, like all things, it will eventually end? This is the way of the universe, and it will not change no matter how hard you pretend otherwise. Oh, and our lives aren’t meaningless. The others that we have helped and touched someway will carry on, helping others as they go, who go on to love other people, etc. So you can say that the more people you care about and show it to in this world, the more immortal you will be after you die. In a metaphorical sense. And yes, that is poetic and sappy. So what.

212

Haney ?
You will note in my first post in this discussion, I stated I attended an anglican christian private school. From my subsequesnt education there, I?ve rejected as fallacy the Literal bible.
I referenced the Shroud: I stated ?I don?t understand your insistance that one needs to find an explaination for every story in this book. With enough research, time and technology, then I think every story in the bible will end up with a plausable explanation. The turin shroud is a top example.

The resurection is a story in the bible, and the shroud has been used as evidence of the truth of this story. Otherwise, why would it be called a ?Holy Relic? and owned by the Holy See?
The research I?ve linked in a previous post shows the impossibility of using the shroud as eveidence of the resurection, considering it?s 1300yrs too old. Thus I state the resurection has one less piece of credible evidence, religatting it to more story/myth than truth.

You said ?gnostic gospels have long been discredited?: - ?The Early church did not except the gnostics because they were perverting the message?.

From my reading, the Gnostic Gospels were classed as Hersey:
Heresy: all the religious trends running parallel to Catholicism, but condemned by the Church as corrupting the dogma.
To put that into terms I can readily understand ? If I was a HIIT jedi, I might justify that both the Tabata method and EDT were heresy.
On the whole though, they all propound the same damn thing.

?There is a growing consensus among scholars that the Gospel of Thomas ? discovered over a half century ago in the Egyptian desert ? dates to the very beginnings of the Christian era and may well have taken first form before any of the four traditional canonical Gospels. During the first few decades after its discovery several voices representing established orthodox biases argued that the Gospel of Thomas (abbreviated, GTh) was a late-second or third century Gnostic forgery. Scholars currently involved in Thomas studies now largely reject that view, though such arguments will still be heard from orthodox apologists and are encountered in some of the earlier publications about Thomas. ?

This is the bit I like ? and discredited by you and the catholic church!!!
Here is a document written by an eye witness ?a recorder ? which may well be all the true evidence a religious type needs to sustain his faith, and still it?s called Heresy!!!

?The secret words that the savior spoke to Judas Thomas which I, even I, Mathaias, wrote down, while I was walking, listening to them speak with one another.?

From: The Gospel of Thomas Collection - The Gnostic Society Library

In answer to your question ? my take on Christ risen ? just a story. A good one, it certainly attracts people.

You said you?re willing to accept an ?old earth? argument ? but the scientific community is ?pulling the wool over our eyes?. As Beaudry states above ? what motivation is there, what gratification does a scientist receive for publishing poor/wrong information? ? he/she gets ripped to shreds in the scientific community. You see, scientific papers which propose new hypothesis and theories are peer reviewed. Meaning other scientists have a look at the work and then test it. If the tests return a different answer or are un-repeatable then the proposing scientist loses all standing within that community. Job loss (what University/laboratory/business can afford to retain a researcher/scientist who?s publishing incorrect or misleading work), ridicule, loss of face ? this is what a scientist receives for trying to ?pull the wool?.

In fact I?d go so far as to say the website you?ve referenced often : “answering genesis” is really trying hard to take a small skerick of science and then twist it to fit their own agenda ? that of proving the world is 4500yrs old, etc. Whos’ pulling who’s wool?

In fact I?ve just searched the ?answering genisis? site regarding the Noah flood and Australia. It?s quite entertaining. And wrong.
You said ?There are plenty of evidences that proof a flood happened?

http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v25/i2/sisters.asp
The author just doen?t know their geology. If all articles are as poorly argued as this (and this author pops up in a lot of articles), well , I?ll put it this way; the sedimentary profiles of the Hawksbury Sandstone totally negate the assumptions within this article.

The Three Sisters ? a land mark in the Blue Mountains, and described in the above AnsGen. link as a clue to the Noah Flood, are composed of Hawksbury Sandstone.

From amonline.net.au
?Hawkesbury Sandstone: quartz-rich sandstone (with abundant cross-bedding) with interbedded shale.?

The Shale is the kicker. This, along with the quartz-rich sandstone means the sediments are of deep / placid water origin. Any turbulent flood as a source of sediments would not allow the finer sediments (which will be metamorphosed into a shale) to be laid down. In addition the interbedded shale indicates the water level rose and fell several times, providing several layers of sandstones and shales ? alternating deeper and shallower water. There is no one-off flood indicated from that geological strata.
In addition the article takes pains to show that cross-bedding is a result of fast water flows ? True ? but generally found in shoreline coastal sands. The fast water coming from wave action, esturine river outlets, etc. Additionally crossbedding goes in all directions. So water will flow from a river into the sea at low tide, but then flow from the sea into the river/estury at high tide.

And all this from the deconstruction of one small paragraph. Theres lots more to shoot down on this website!

Regards
ShaunW

213

Haney,

Carbon-14 dating is accurate to about 40-50k years. Many of the other radiometric dating techniques are precise to 1% and are accurate to billions of years. These radiometric techniques don’t date the carbon, but date the radioactive elements.

214

[quote]beaudry wrote:
Haney,

Carbon-14 dating is accurate to about 40-50k years. Many of the other radiometric dating techniques are precise to 1% and are accurate to billions of years. These radiometric techniques don’t date the carbon, but date the radioactive elements. [/quote]
Shhh, quiet beaudry. You’re making sense again.

215

Haney,

regarding ‘too much’ helium in rocks.

from More Faulty Creation Science from The Insitutute for Creation Research

"What about Humphreys excess helium arguments

The premise of the RATE work is this:

“Acquisition of data on which to base a claim that the amount of helium in rocks today should not be so high if it was produced by nuclear decay over millions of years.? If helium was produced within the most recent thousands of years, it would be expected to still remain in the rocks as observed”

Mumbo-jumbo.? The claim here appears to be that there is too much helium in the rocks today.? The RATE Group does not provide an explanation of what is too much.? It states rather matter-of-factly that it is too high.? The rate of helium diffusion from minerals is not a simple linear process1,5,6. ? Once again, the RATE Group begins with a false premise that it intends to prove by misinterpretation of the data and an incomplete reading of the literature.? Remember: Misinterpreting Science is not the same thing as disproving science.? Humphreys takes issue with me on this at http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs2002/1030meert.asp

?? Humphreys claims that helium is not retained for any great time in zircons.? He proposes that zircons close and 'then re-open" to helium diffusion shortly after their closure temperature.?? Dodson describes the concept of closure temperature as follows:

?? " It is assumed that, while the system is near to the temperature of crystallization, the daughter nuclide diffuses out as fast as it is produced by radioactive decay.? As the system cools, it enters a transitional temperature within which some of the daughter product accumulates in the mineral and some is lost.? Eventually, at temperatures near ambient, the losses are negligible, and the daughter product accumulates without any loss whatsoever…Closure temperature can be given a precise definition namely the temperature of the system at the time given by its apparent age"

?Humphreys work describes a number Q which he states is the ‘re-opening’.? This re-opening is defined as marking a point where helium loss is balanced by helium production resulting in a steady state level of helium within the zircon.? Unfortunately, Humphreys does not provide the critical analysis for defining what Q really is (he refers to equation 16, but did not bother to post it).? Therefore, it is difficult to analyze exactly what Humphreys is talking about without providing the relevant equations.?? There certainly is a point in the cooling history of zircons where loss=gain, and this may even occur at temperatures below the ‘closure temperature’, but Humphreys assertion that the zircons would maintain this steady-state situation is not grounded in good science.?
’

Haney, Is there an official position on the age of the Earth from the Catholic church? I’m curious.

216

(Gen2:7)Then the LORD God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being (emphasis mine)
If this were true, we would be made out of the same elements as the Earth. The most common elements on the outermost layers of Earth are oxygen, silicon, magnesium and iron. Oxygen is the only one that’s right. The rest of our chemicals are far more common in space than on Earth. The Bible does’t say dust from space, it says dust from the ground, which we are not.

(Gen 4:22)Zillah bore Tubal-cain; he was the forger of all instruments of bronze and iron

Using the Bible to calculate how long Tubal-cain lived after Adam, we get seven generations, approximately 1020 years after creation. This would put the beginning of the Iron Age at 4980 years ago, instead of 3500 years at the earliest. So we have 1500 years of missing iron work.

Mt. Everest was defintely below the sea at some time. Assuming it was at sea level during the Flood, to get all the sea creatures buried to make fossils, it have to have grown 6.5 feet a year to get as tall as it is today. I wonder why no one noticed…

217

[quote]lothario1132 wrote:
beaudry wrote:
Haney,

Carbon-14 dating is accurate to about 40-50k years. Many of the other radiometric dating techniques are precise to 1% and are accurate to billions of years. These radiometric techniques don’t date the carbon, but date the radioactive elements.
Shhh, quiet beaudry. You’re making sense again.

[/quote]

Are you still around? I thought you had given up when it was shown that you were
1.) spewing lies about my posts.
2.) Didn’t know what you were talking about.
3.) Didn’t know what the word pantheon meant.

218

He does not refute it his claim, he only adds questions about what his math is.

I am not catholic so I would not know the official position is of that denomination is.

219

[quote]ToShinDo wrote:
The most common elements on the outermost layers of Earth are oxygen, silicon, magnesium and iron. Oxygen is the only one that’s right. [/quote]

So nitrogen and carbon can’t be found in the ground? What exactly in our bodies can not be found in dirt?

[quote]
(Gen 4:22)Zillah bore Tubal-cain; he was the forger of all instruments of bronze and iron

Using the Bible to calculate how long Tubal-cain lived after Adam, we get seven generations, approximately 1020 years after creation. This would put the beginning of the Iron Age at 4980 years ago, instead of 3500 years at the earliest. So we have 1500 years of missing iron work.[/quote]

Except for the fact that many believed that life expectancy was longer during this period. Noah, I believe, was well over 100 years old when he was still working on the Arc.

How do you know at what level Everest was during the flood?

220

[quote]lothario1132 wrote:
haney wrote:
Well glad to see you are finally open minded, Then you would be willing to admit that all science regarding evo. is based off of guesses.
All good science always starts with a guess. I will assume that you know what a hypothesis is, so I will spare you the condescension of explaining what the scientific method is.

So we are back at square one. It could be really old, it could be really young.
No, we’re not back at square one, we’re in this forum presenting the obvious reasons why your bible is not literal truth, and you are fighting as hard as you can to maintain your suspension of disbelief.

Take of the Presupposition glasses and see that the people you trust are biased, and interpretating the evidence the way they want it to be. I have already provided links for problems with Carbon dating.
The only one with the ultra-fashionable presupposition glasses around here is you, buddy. Science didn’t set out to disprove the bible. It just wanted to try to find the truth. When we discovered that the bible was wrong, that’s when your christian scientists started trying to find ways to prove the bible right. That’s a presupposition: “try to find some way to show that the earth is young”.

Once again you fail to understand that if this was so open and shut like you put it geologist would say it doesn’t matter. It obviously must matter if they are trying to use it as some way determine the age of the earth. The Last time I checked scientist said the Ice age was long before the estimated time it would of taken for the continents to have erroded. I will stop at this statement. If it is so open and shut like you say, then why would they even bother trying to prove the age of the earth by it?
The quote you put forth in our last discussion, the last couple of sentences, and I don’t think that this is taken out of context:

“Of course, all such calculations depend on assumptions about the past, like the starting conditions and constant rates of processes. They can never prove the age of something.”

Doesn’t sound like they’re trying to age-date with helium to me. I’m not failing to understand anything, am I? You just don’t like what is being shown to you. And let’s talk a bit real quick about the fundamental creationist idea of the age of the earth for a second.
[/quote]
They are only using the same assumption that scientist use to prove how old the Universe is. SO what is good for scientist to use is good for us to use.
I also posted a link with many scientist who say this is the problem with the big bang which basically states that the scientist want to see it that way so they interpret it that way.

Well I am assuming you missed the article that I posted on us being able to manipulate the speed of light. So I will let you do a little search for it.

No we have many good reasons to believe the Bible is the word of God, and then believe it is inerrent. Throwing out claims that it is mind control are meaning less and certainly does nothing to add to the debate. If you want to debate on why the Bible is true then start another thread!

Well I hope you are right. If not you will have hell to pay(pun intended).

I really do hope we end up nothing. I would hate to see so many of my friends end up in a place like that if I am right. Same goes to you. I would hate for you to be wrong.