CARBON DATING UNDERCUTS EVOLUTION'S LONG AGES

ICR ^ | October, 2003 | John Baumgardner

[HalfFull]

Evolutionists generally feel secure even in the face of compelling creationist arguments today because of their utter confidence in the geological time scale. Even if they cannot provide a naturalistic mechanism, they appeal to the "fact of evolution," by which they mean an interpretation of earth history with a succession of different types of plants and animals in a drama spanning hundreds of millions of years.

The Bible, by contrast, paints a radically different picture of our planet's history. In particular, it describes a time when God catastrophically destroyed the earth and essentially all its life. The only consistent way to interpret the geological record in light of this event is to understand that fossil-bearing rocks are the result of a massive global Flood that occurred only a few thousand years ago and lasted but a year. This Biblical interpretation of the rock record implies that the animals and plants preserved as fossils were all contemporaries. This means trilobites, dinosaurs, and mammals all dwelled on the planet simultaneously, and they perished together in this world-destroying cataclysm.

Although creationists have long pointed out the rock formations themselves testify unmistakably to water catastrophism on a global scale, evolutionists generally have ignored this testimony. This is partly due to the legacy of the doctrine of uniformitarianism passed down from one generation of geologists to the next since the time of Charles Lyell in the early nineteenth century. Uniformitarianism assumes that the vast amount of geological change recorded in the rocks is the product of slow and uniform processes operating over an immense span of time, as opposed to a global cataclysm of the type described in the Bible and other ancient texts.

With the discovery of radioactivity about a hundred years ago, evolutionists deeply committed to the uniformitarian outlook believed they finally had proof of the immense antiquity of the earth. In particular, they discovered the very slow nuclear decay rates of elements like Uranium while observing considerable amounts of the daughter products from such decay. They interpreted these discoveries as vindicating both uniformitarianism and evolution, which led to the domination of these beliefs in academic circles around the world throughout the twentieth century.

However, modern technology has produced a major fly in that uniformitarian ointment. A key technical advance, which occurred about 25 years ago, involved the ability to measure the ratio of ¹⁴C atoms to ¹²C atoms with extreme precision in very small samples of carbon, using an ion beam accelerator and a mass spectrometer. Prior to the advent of this accelerator mass spectrometer (AMS) method, the ¹⁴C/¹²C ratio was measured by counting the number of ¹⁴C decays. This earlier method was subject to considerable "noise" from cosmic rays.

The AMS method improved the sensitivity of the raw measurement of the ¹⁴C/¹²C ratio from approximately 1% of the modern value to about 0.001%, extending the theoretical range of sensitivity from about 40,000 years to about 90,000 years. The expectation was that this improvement in precision would make it possible to use this technique to date dramatically older fossil material.¹ The big surprise, however, was that no fossil material could be found anywhere that had as little as 0.001% of the modern value!² Since most of the scientists involved assumed the standard geological time scale was correct, the obvious explanation for the ¹⁴C they were detecting in their samples was contamination from some source of modern carbon with its high level of ¹⁴C. Therefore they mounted a major campaign to discover and eliminate the sources of such contamination. Although they identified and corrected a few relatively minor sources of ¹⁴C contamination, there still remained a significant level of ¹⁴C—typically about 100 times the ultimate sensitivity of the instrument—in samples that should have been utterly "¹⁴C-dead," including many from the deeper levels of the fossil-bearing part of the geological record.²

Let us consider what the AMS measurements imply from a quantitative standpoint. The ratio of ¹⁴C atoms to ¹²C atoms decreases by a factor of 2 every 5730 years. After 20 half-lives or 114,700 years (assuming hypothetically that earth history goes back that far), the ¹⁴C/¹²C ratio is decreased by a factor of 2²⁰, or about 1,000,000. After 1.5 million years, the ratio is diminished by a factor of 2^1500000/5730, or about 10⁷⁹. This means that if one started with an amount of pure ¹⁴C equal to the mass of the entire observable universe, after 1.5 million years there should not be a single atom of ¹⁴C remaining! Routinely finding ¹⁴C/¹²C ratios on the order of 0.1-0.5% of the modern value—a hundred times or more above the AMS detection threshold—in samples supposedly tens to hundreds of millions of years old is therefore a huge anomaly for the uniformitarian framework.

This earnest effort to understand this "contamination problem" therefore generated scores of peer-reviewed papers in the standard radiocarbon literature during the last 20 years.² Most of these papers acknowledge that most of the ¹⁴C in the samples studied appear to be intrinsic to the samples themselves, and they usually offer no explanation for its origin. The reality of significant levels of ¹⁴C in a wide variety of fossil sources from throughout the geological record has thus been established in the secular scientific literature by scientists who assume the standard geological time scale is valid and have no special desire for this result!

In view of the profound significance of these AMS ¹⁴C measurements, the ICR Radioisotopes and the Age of the Earth (RATE) team has undertaken its own AMS ¹⁴C analyses of such fossil material.² The first set of samples consisted of ten coals obtained from the U. S. Department of Energy Coal Sample Bank maintained at the Pennsylvania State University. The ten samples include three coals from the Eocene part of the geological record, three from the Cretaceous, and four from the Pennsylvanian. These samples were analyzed by one of the foremost AMS laboratories in the world. Figure 1 below shows in histogram form the results of these analyses.

These values fall squarely within the range already established in the peer-reviewed radiocarbon literature. When we average our results over each geological interval, we obtain remarkably similar values of 0.26 percent modern carbon (pmc) for Eocene, 0.21 pmc for Cretaceous, and 0.27 pmc for Pennsylvanian. Although the number of samples is small, we observe little difference in ¹⁴C level as a function of position in the geological record. This is consistent with the young-earth view that the entire macrofossil record up to the upper Cenozoic is the product of the Genesis Flood and therefore such fossils should share a common ¹⁴C age.

Percent Modern Carbon

Applying the uniformitarian approach of extrapolating ¹⁴C decay into the indefinite past translates the measured ¹⁴C/¹²C ratios into ages that are on the order of 50,000 years (2^-50000/5730 = 0.0024 = 0.24 pmc). However, uniformitarian assumptions are inappropriate when one considers that the Genesis Flood removed vast amounts of living biomass from exchange with the atmosphere—organic material that now forms the earth's vast coal, oil, and oil shale deposits. A conservative estimate for the pre-Flood biomass is 100 times that of today. If one takes as a rough estimate for the total ¹⁴C in the biosphere before the cataclysm as 40% of what exists today and assumes a relatively uniform ¹⁴C level throughout the pre-Flood atmosphere and biomass, then we might expect a ¹⁴C/¹²C ratio of about 0.4% of today's value in the plants and animals at the onset of the Flood. With this more realistic pre-Flood ¹⁴C/¹²C ratio, we find that a value of 0.24 pmc corresponds to an age of only 4200 years (0.004 x 2^-4200/5730 = 0.0024 = 0.24 pmc). Even though these estimates are rough, they illustrate the crucial importance of accounting for effects of the Flood cataclysm when translating a ¹⁴C/¹²C ratio into an actual age.

Percent Modern Carbon

Some readers at this point may be asking, how does one then account for the tens of millions and hundreds of millions of years that other radioisotope methods yield for the fossil record? Most of the other RATE projects address this important issue. Equally as persuasive as the ¹⁴C data is evidence from RATE measurements of the diffusion rate of Helium in zircon crystals that demonstrates the rate of nuclear decay of Uranium into Lead and Helium has been dramatically higher in the past and the uniformitarian assumption of a constant rate of decay is wrong.³ Another RATE project documents the existence of abundant Polonium radiohalos in granitic rocks that crystallized during the Flood and further demonstrates that the uniformitarian assumption of constant decay rates is incorrect.⁴ Another RATE project provides clues for why the ¹⁴C decay rate apparently was minimally affected during episodes of rapid decay of isotopes with long half-lives.⁵

The bottom line of this research is that the case is now extremely compelling that the fossil record was produced just a few thousand years ago by the global Flood cataclysm. The evidence that reveals that macroevolution as an explanation for the origin of life on earth can therefore no longer be rationally defended.

[Last Visible Dog]

You mean you're too stupid to understand the analogy with your hypocritical statements? Somehow that doesn't surprise me.

How can a question be an analogy, Mr. Einstein?

What statement of mine are you claiming is "hypocritical"?

Are you here just to insult people or are you planning on supporting your as of yet unsupported claims?

Your intellectual laziness is amazing - second only to your childish propensity of spewing silly insults.

[walford]

 

Did Hyracotherium and Equus Live at the Same Time?

by Jon Barber

Copyright © 2001-2002

[Last Modified: January 3, 2002]

n their attacks on evolution, creationists sometimes claim that the evolutionary family tree of the horse is flawed. And while this statement is hardly surprising given the source, some creationists also claim that the remains of Hyracotherium, the animal at the base of the horse sequence and more popularly known as eohippus, have been found along side the remains of modern horses. This is hardly a problem for any modern theory of evolution, which allow ancestor and descendant species to exist side by side, but I have never heard the assertion from other than creationist or new age sources.

The Search for the Original Claim

Several websites make this claim, the majority of them referring to the book The Neck of the Giraffe (Hitching 1982). On page 30 (page 17 in the New American Library version) of the book is this statement:

...Eohippus fossils have been found in surface strata, along side two modern horses, Equus nevadensis and Equus occidentalis.

Hitching gives no source for this. But at least one of the websites that make this allegation refer to "The Creation-Evolution Controversy" (Wysong 1976). Hitching cites this book elsewhere in "The Neck of the Giraffe", but not in reference to this particular assertion. But this must have been Hitching's source, because near the bottom of page 301 we find this:

Two modern type horses, Equus nevadensis and Equus occidentalis, have been found in the same geological strata as Eohippus. Thus we have modern day type horses grazing side by side with their precursors.

But where did Wysong get this idea? After looking up several of the references that he uses in that particular section, I discovered that it's from "The Theory of Evolution and the Facts of Science" (Rimmer 1935).

Even though this book was first published in 1935, it had a long publishing life, since the copy I read was from the 14^th printing in 1966. And while on the title page of his book Rimmer claims to have a Doctorate in Science (as well as a Doctorate in Divinity), I wasn't exactly optimistic about his level of scientific knowledge when he revealed on page 80 that "Coral is the body of a small insect..." a statement that's simply not true.

But I was more interested in Rimmer's views on horse evolution. He outlines what he believes is the evolutionists' point of view, but his attempt reveals several misunderstandings. He complains that evolutionists only have twelve species in the horse family tree, and feels that "billions" would be required to adequately demonstrate an evolutionary relationship, yet never explains why. He points out that Europeans imported horses into North America, and criticizes evolutionists for relying on fossils from the Americas to demonstrate the descent of a European animal. But he never seems to realize that there was a land bridge between Alaska and Asia several times in the past, which allowed elephants and camels as well as horses to travel between the Old and New Worlds. Rimmer also states that when there is a gap in the American fossil record, European fossils are slipped in, citing Hyracotherium as an example. Unfortunately, he seems blissfully unaware that Hyracotherium and Eohippus are the same creature. And on page 103 we find this:

The horse today is a variegated genus. From the diminutive Shetland pony to the giant Clydesdale is indeed a tremendous gap; but it is bridged by intermediate forms. Above the Shetland pony is the small grey burro of the western deserts, after him the African zebra, the ass, the western bronc, the smaller saddle stock, the Arabian racer, the Percheron, and a variety of others in size and shape. They are all alive now, and are thus recognized as contemporaries. But if they were all dead, and all we had was their fossil remains, what a case we could make for evolution. We would start our "demonstration" with the skeleton of the pony or the jackass (or even the jack rabbit) and allowing a few million years for each increase in size, show hose the gigantic draft stallion evolved from the tiny beginning. But we can't do that now, these specimens are all alive, and ready to give us the horse laugh if we attempt any such chicanery with their bones. The fossil forms, which were probably equally contemporaneous, cannot rise up in protest, however; they have been dead too long. We can examine the case made with their bones, we are alive. And this "demonstration" was evidently not planned for those who were very much alive, mentally at least!

Here we see that Rimmer feels that the fossils used by evolutionists to construct the horse family tree all lived at the same time. And starting on page 111 we find the claim itself:

We feel that the case against the horse demonstration would not be complete without a mention of the paleontological fact, that all the evolutionary writers and text books seem so eager to suppress, and that is that there are true fossil horses known to science today! Do we ever hear about them? Indeed, we do not, and for the simple reason that they spoil the "demonstration." How can you show the evolution of a four-toed, rodent-like animal, the size of a cat, into the horse, that weighs a ton, if there was a true horse eating grass side by side with the Eohippus that was just starting in to evolve into a horse thirty million years later? That simply can't be done: so they just suppress any mention of the true horse of fossil ages in North America.

There are at least two of them, the Equus nevadensis, and the Equus occidentalis. Did the reader ever hear of them? Not if his reading has been confined to evolutionary authors. We desire to stress the Equus occidentalis especially, as we are personally familiar with that variety. This horse (and it was a true horse) roamed the western slope of what is now known as the United States, especially the Pacific Southwest. It was the contemporary of the elephant, the camel and the so-called Saber-tooth Tiger, with all of whose bones the remains of this fossil horse are found in profusion. Long before man appeared on this continent the great creatures that were the companions of the horse disappeared, and the horse likewise vanished with them. But today in profusion we are recovering his fossil remains, and his bones rise up to confront the dogma of science whose basis is prejudice, and to refute the supposed demonstration of his evolution from a creature with whom he was on grazing terms! It is apparent to the most unlearned that the case collapses: If the creature that evolved out of a tiny ancestor millions of years after that ancestor died out, really lived with that ancestor side by side, the supposed demonstration becomes a joke. [emphasis in original]

Could this be the essence of Rimmer's claim? Not that fossils of Hyracotherium had been found in the same geological layers as Equus, but simply that there were fossils of Equus? It seemed hard to believe, but recall that Rimmer believed that all fossils were probably the remains of creatures that lived at the same time. But such an idea flies in the face of geology.

The only source that Rimmer mentions is on pages 98 and 110, where herefers to something he calls "Guide Book Leaflet No. 36, June, 1927", published by The American Museum of Natural History. I managed totrack this down (Matthew & Chubb, 1927), but even though it seems to be the basis for Rimmer's outline of horse evolution, it makes no reference to either Equus nevadensis and Equus occidentalis.

Could it be that Rimmer used another source that he failed to mention? It seemed unlikely, but I felt that I should investigate this possibility.

The Search for Equus nevadensis

The claim that Equus nevadensis and Equus occidentalis have been found in the same geological strata as Hyracotherium is fairly general, as no specific location is ever mentioned. As well, Hyracotherium is the 'generic' name for several species, just as Equus is the generic name for horses, zebras, and asses. All of this made it difficult to know where to start.

The enormity of the task convinced me to put it off for a few months, but finally I began, searching through "Fossil Horses" (MacFadden, 1992). MacFadden mentions several species of Hyracotherium, which convinced me to concentrate on Equus nevadensis and Equus occidentalis. I felt that if I could find references to one of these relatively obscure species, I could narrow my search to the fossil sites where it had been found. Unfortunately, MacFadden doesn't mention Equus nevadensis at all, but does refer to Equus occidentalis on page 75, explaining that the name has been superceded by Equus laurentius, and supplies a reference.

That reference (Winans, 1989) mentions on page 262 that

From 1842 to the present, 59 species and 5 subspecies of Equus have been named from North American fossil material. Of this number, 13 have subsequently been demonstrated to belong to genera other than Equus, and 3 are invalid because they were preoccupied names.

And a reference is given. This would be the source to track down Equus nevadensis, seemingly the less common of the two.

And I was right. This new reference (Winans, 1985) lead the way to the initial description of Equus nevadensis (Hay, 1927). This species was based on just five teeth (the upper premolars and first and second molars) and a single metatarsal found in Manhattan Gulch, which is about a mile east of Manhattan, in Nye County, Nevada. Along with the lower jaw of a bison, they were found beneath 100 feet of gravel, and sent to the U.S. National Museum in 1921 by H. G. Clinton.

Hay also refers to two earlier geological surveys of the gulch and the surrounding area. In the first (Ferguson, 1917), fragments of bone were found and submitted to J. W. Gidley of the National Museum (who figured prominently in early research into horse evolution) for identification. Gidley reported that the fragments belonged to animals of the genera Equus, Elephas (Elephant) and Rangifer (Reindeer).

In the second survey (Ferguson, 1924), Gidley is again called upon to identify fragments found in the area, this time reporting that they belong to members of Equus, Elephas (Elephant), Rangifer (Reindeer), and Bison (Buffalo). In addition, a fragment of tusk was found that Gidley said belonged to either a mastodon or a mammoth. He also mentions the specimens submitted by Clinton and later used by Hay as the basis for Equus nevadensis, but writes that they "indicate a species closely related to or perhaps identical with E. occidentalis..." Could this be at least part of the source of Rimmer's claim? If this is the case, he confused two different descriptions of the same fossils for descriptions of two different animals.

In the same publication in which he describes Equus nevadensis, Hay also reports the find of a fossil horse near Osceola in White Pine County, Nevada. C. W. Gaby, who was associated with the Hogum Placer mines, donated the lower jaw and teeth of a horse to the U. S. National Museum in 1907. They were found at a depth of 100 feet, but no mention is made of any other fossils found with them. Hay identifies this animal as being a member of Equus nevadensis as well.

Hay also writes about what may he thought might be a third example of Equus nevadensis, consisting of two upper left molars, and part of an lower right second molar, but refused to commit himself, only venturing that there was a resemblance to the teeth of the horse from Manhattan. These teeth, along with three-fourths of a distal left median metacarpal and two phalanges, were found in 1924 in the east side of the canyon of Walker River, eight miles north of Schurz, Nevada. No mention is made of other fossils associated with this find.

And this would seem to be all the examples of Equus nevadensis that are available. I looked in the "Second Bibliography and Catalogue of the Fossil Vertebrata of North America" (Hay, 1930), coincidentally complied by the same gentleman who described Equus nevadensis, and found a single entry, the one I've already reviewed. Hay died a few months after the catalogue was published at the ripe old age of 83 (Science, 1930), and a later paper that briefly discusses this species makes no mention of any other finds (Savage, 1951). This same paper also suggests that because Hay only compared the teeth of the type specimen to one other species, there may be nothing about the teeth that warrants them being placed in a separate species, and recommends that Equus nevadensis be regarded as a nomem vanum. (basically, an invalid name). Winans (1985) does not dispute this, and makes no reference to anyone identifying a horse fossil as Equus nevadensis since Hay.

No where is there found a fossil of Hyracotherium found along side Equus nevadensis, and so it would seem that my first guess about Rimmer's claim was correct. Because fossil Equus had been found, he felt that they had to have lived along side Hyracotherium. But Rimmer was unaware that this shows nothing of the kind, and instead here veals a profound misunderstanding of geology. Later writers who used him as a source assumed that Hyracotherium and Equus had been found in the same strata.

Just after making this claim, and on the same page, Rimmer wrote the following:

The chain of evidence that purports to support the theory of evolution is a chain indeed, but its links are formed of sand and mist. Analyze the evidence and it melts away; turn the light of true investigation upon its demonstrations and they fade like fog before the freshening breeze. The theory stands today positively disproved, and we will venture the prophecy that in another two decades, when younger men, free from the blind prejudices of a passing generation are allowed to investigate the new evidence, examine the facts, and form their own conclusions, the theory will take its place in the limbo of disproved tidings. In that day the world of science will be forced to come back to the unshakable foundation of fact that is the basis of the true philosophy of the origin of life.

But it is now over 65 years since Rimmer wrote these words, and in that time the techniques of scientific investigation have grown in ways unimagined in Rimmer's day. Yet the facts would all seem to confirm an evolutionary explanation for life's diversity, and it is the chains of Rimmer's reasoning that have melted away.

[Back to Fossil Horses FAQs]

Bibliography

Ferguson, H. G., 1917. Placer Deposits of the Manhattan District Nevada. Bulletin of the United States Geological Survey 640:163-193.

Ferguson, H. G., 1924. Geology and Ore Deposits of the Manhattan District Nevada. Bulletin of the United States Geological Survey 723.

Hay, O. P., 1927. The Pleistocene of the western region of North America and its vertebrated animals. Washington: The Carnegie Institution of Washington.

Hay, O. P., 1930, Second Bibliography and Catalogue of the Fossil Vertebrata of North America, Volume 2. Washington: The Carnegie Institution of Washington.

Hitching, F., 1982. The Neck of the Giraffe. London: Pan Books Ltd.

MacFadden, B. J., 1992. Fossil Horses: Systematics, Paleobiology, and Evolution of the Family Equidae. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Matthew, W. D., & Chubb, S. H, 1927. Evolution of the Horse. 5^th ed. New York: American Museum of Natural History.

Rimmer, H., 1935. The Theory of Evolution and the Facts of Science. Grand Rapids Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company.

Savage, D. E., 1951. Late Cenozoic Vertebrates of the San Francisco Bay Region. University of California Publications. Bulletin of the Department of Geological Sciences. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Science, 1930. Recent Deaths. Science 72:495

Winans, M. C., 1985. Revision of North American fossil species of the genus Equus (Mammalia: Perissodactyla: Equidae). Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Texas, Austin.

Winans, M. C., 1989. A quantitative study of the North American fossil species of the genus Equus. In The Evolution of Perissodactyls, ed. D.R. Prothero & R. M. Schoch, pp. 262-297. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Wysong, R. L., 1976. The Creation-Evolution Controversy. Midland, Michigan: Inquiry Press. (This book is sometimes entitled "Creation-Evolution: The Controversy")

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[bondserv]

Harden not your heart against the Word of God or the gospel, for it is the power unto salvation.

Luke 12:5-9
5 I'll show you the one you should be afraid of. Be afraid of the one who has the authority to throw you into hell after killing you. Yes, I tell you, be afraid of him!
6 “Five sparrows are sold for two pennies, aren't they? Yet not one of them is forgotten in God's sight.
7 Why, even all the hairs on your head have been counted! Stop being afraid. You are worth more than a bunch of sparrows.”
8 “But I tell you, the Son of Man will acknowledge before God's angels everyone who acknowledges me before people.
9 But whoever denies me before people will be denied before God's angels.
10 Everyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but the person who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven.

Why not blaspheme the Holy Spirit?

26“When the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of Truth who comes from the Father, he will testify on my (Jesus') behalf. (emphasis added)

I pray that you recieve and respond to the testimony of the Holy Spirit during this week, for He is the Spirit of Truth. Keep your eye's open and your heart receptive.

Remember a Just and Perfect God must guard His Holyness. Who wants to spend eternity with people who unrepentantly do things like Bill Clinton did? Heaven is perfect because God is perfect, and you can be perfect in what Jesus Christ did for you.

[js1138]

Well said? They were quesitons not statments or positions. I wish you evolutionists would spend more time actually debating and less time doing victory dances...

I'm reviewing my post, but I don't see any question marks. At the time I wrote them I considered them statements of position. What I intended to say is that I consider people who think they have the one true definition of God are either fools or dangerous charlatans. No questions asked or implied.

[Last Visible Dog]

I'm reviewing my post, but I don't see any question marks. At the time I wrote them I considered them statements of position. What I intended to say is that I consider people who think they have the one true definition of God are either fools or dangerous charlatans. No questions asked or implied.

Let's review:

js1138:[347] Does that mean my skepticism regarding the Greek and Norse gods is based on faith? Is my disbelief in the teachings of Jim Jones based on faith?

(notice your message contains two questions)

balrog666[361] Does that mean my skepticism regarding the Greek and Norse gods is based on faith? Is my disbelief in the teachings of Jim Jones based on faith?

Well said. Too bad getting them to understand anything rational is like nailing Jello to a wall.

balrog666 did the silly Evolutionist victory dance. balrog666 later tried to claim your questions were "analogy with [my] hypocritical statements". We are still trying to figure out what the heck balrog666 is rambling about. Beyond his silly victory dance, I have no idea what he is trying to talk about.

[walford]

We must all remember where Christianity came from. The Middle East. In that culture, it is my way or the highway. If you are an unbeliever, you are by definition damned. You have no rights. You are dogmeat. It has been ignored when it has been repeatedly said that C14 is not the entire basis for whether or not life has developed from one form to another over time. It has been ignored when it has been repeatedly said that holding the conviction that life has developed over time is not mutally exclusive to believing in Divinity. Divinity is in the works of the Almighty, not words on a page written by men. Condemning people because they do not believe that your conception of the Divine is the only possible one is blasphemy, because you are appointing yourself the spokesman of the Almighty. We already have plenty of those as is illustreded below:

Chapter 49
Making Judgment of people keeping in view their evident actions and leaving their hidden Actions to Allah (swt)

Allah, the Exalted, says:

"But if they repent and perform As-Salat (Iqamat-As-Salat), and give Zakat, then leave their way free. Verily, Allah is Oft-Forgiving, Most Merciful.'' (9:5)

390. `Abdullah bin `Umar (May Allah be pleased with them) reported: Messenger of Allah (PBUH) said, "I have been commanded (by Allah) to fight people until they testify that there is no true god except Allah, and that Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah, and perform Salat and pay Zakat. If they do so, they will have protection of their blood and property from me except when justified by Islam, and then account is left to Allah".
[Al-Bukhari and Muslim].

Commentary: This Hadith brings out the following three points:

1. The objective of Jihad. This objective warrants that one must struggle against Kufr (disbelief) and Shirk (polytheism) and the worship of falsehood in all its forms. Jihad has to continue until this objective is achieved. This contention is supported by a Hadith, to the effect that Jihad will continue till the Day of Resurrection. In this Hadith the word (An-Nas) translated above as "people" stands for the polytheists and idolaters. The reason being that other Nasus (pl. of Nass, meaning `text') confirm the exemption of Ahl-ul-Kitab (people of the Scriptures) from it subject to the condition that they agree to pay Jizyah (dues imposed by Islam on the people of the Book living under the protection of an Islamic state) and submit to the Muslim rule. The Arab pagans have only the choice to either embrace Islam or face war. In the latter case, it is incumbent on the Mulsims to wage Jihad against them to wipe out Kufr and Shirk and raise the banner of Tauhid everywhere.

This Hadith strongly refutes the people who distort the Islamic concept of Jihad and hold that Islam preaches defensive war only. It is an apologetic approach because defensive war has to be fought in any case by every nation and country. Thus, it is a compulsion and needs no justification. The real distinction of Islam lies in its enjoining Muslims to wage war for upholding the truth beside fighting for their own defense. The domination of Kufr, Shirk and falsehood is darkness, heresy and tyranny, and the objective of Islam is to purge the world of all these evils. It aims at liberating man from the worship of man, set them on the path of worship of Allah, and to provide a just and equitable society to mankind. Wherever in the world there is tyranny, ignorance and heresy, Muslims are bound to fight such evils and finish them by means of Jihad.

There is also a third form of Jihad which is waged against countries where Muslims are victims of aggression, suppression and cruelties of the non-Muslims. It is incumbent upon Muslims to liberate their brethren in Faith from the clutches of the non-Muslims by means of Jihad. So long Muslims performed this obligation with a sense of duty, Islam and its followers were dominant in the world and ever since they have ignored this obligation, both are in subjugation and disgrace. In other words, the secret of power and stability of Muslims lies in Jihad. Muslims need to understand this secret like their ancestors.

2. Life and property of every person is secured after his joining the fold of Islam. He will, however, be subject to the law of Islam, one of which is payment of Zakat. If he murders any Muslim, he will also be killed in return, unless the heirs of the victim pardon the murderer or accept blood-money (Diyah) for it.

3. When a person embraces Islam, the laws of Shari`ah apply to him according to his apparent condition only. His heart will not be probed for this purpose. In case, he is not sincere or he has some design in joining the fold of Islam, no action will be taken against him until guilt is fully proved. What he has in his heart will be left to Allah Who will pass judgement on his intention on the Day of Resurrection. This Hadith is related to this chapter for its third point. In their debate on this point, some `Ulama' have contended that such people who believe in Tauhid and obey the injunctions of Shari`ah are not to be declared as infidels.

391. Abu Abdullah bin Tariq bin Ashyam (May Allah be pleased with him) reported: Messenger of Allah (PBUH) said, "He who professes La ilaha illallah (There is no true god except Allah), and denies of everything which the people worship besides Allah, his property and blood become inviolable, and it is for Allah to call him to account".
[Muslim].

392. Al-Miqdad bin Al-Aswad (May Allah be pleased with him) reported: I said, "Tell me, O Messenger of Allah, if I meet an infidel, and we fight together, and he cuts off my hands with his sword, then hides from me behind a tree and (then) says he has submitted himself to Allah. Shall I kill him after he has said it?'' He (PBUH) replied, "Do not kill him.'' I submitted, "But O Messenger of Allah, he cut off one of my hands and only then he said it.'' Messenger of Allah (PBUH) then replied, "Do not kill him, for if you do so, he will be in the position in which you were before you killed him (i.e., he will be considered a Muslim and thus his life will be inviolable), and you will be in the position in which he was before he made his testimony (i.e., your life will not be inviolable, for his heirs can ask for Qisas)".
[Al-Bukhari and Muslim].

Commentary: This Hadith tells us that injunctions of Islam will be enforced on a person according to his apparent condition not his insight. The reason being that nobody is capable of knowing the insight of others. When a person professes Islam, we have to accept him a Muslim; and it will be our duty to protect his life and property. If, in spite of knowing that his life and property are sacred, a Muslim murders him, then it will be quite fair for the heirs of the victim to have Qisas for the murder. If the murderer poses ignorance or takes shelter of some reason, then he will be liable for Diyah only. The Prophet (PBUH) arranged payment of Diyah to the heirs of the victim in the case mentioned in this Hadith because some of the Companions of the Prophet (PBUH) had advanced the argument that the murderer had slain the victim on the presumption that he had professed Islam just to save his life.

393. Usamah bin Zaid (May Allah be pleased with them) reported: Messenger of Allah (PBUH) sent us to Huraqat, a tribe of Juhainah. We attacked that tribe early in the morning and defeated them, (then) a man from the Ansar and I caught hold of a man (of the defeated tribe). When we overcame him, he said: `La ilaha illallah (There is no true god except Allah).' At that moment, the Ansari spared him, but I attacked him with my spear and killed him. By the time we went back to Al-Madinah, news had already reached Messenger of Allah (PBUH). He said to me, "O Usamah, did you kill him after he professed La ilaha illallah (There is no true god except Allah)?'' I said, "O Messenger of Allah! He professed it only to save his life.'' Messenger of Allah (PBUH) repeated, "Did you kill him after he had professed La ilaha illallah?'' He went on repeating this to me until I wished I had not embraced Islam before that day (so that I would have not committed this sin).
[Al-Bukhari and Muslim].

Another narration is: Messenger of Allah (PBUH) said, "Did you kill him in spite of his professing La ilaha illallah?'' I said, "O Messenger of Allah! He said out of fear of our arms.'' He (PBUH) said, "Why did you not cut his heart open to find out whether he had done so sincerely or not?'' He continued repeating it until I wished that I had embraced Islam only that day.

Commentary: The relevance of this Hadith with the present chapter is evident from the fact that it stresses that injunctions of Islam will be enforced on every Muslim according to his apparent condition. It is a very wise course indeed for the reason that it has closed the door of retaliation; otherwise, everyone could kill his enemy on the pretext that the victim was not sincere in his profession of Islam. In order to rule out the possibility of any such mischief, probing into the true condition of the heart is ruled out. A Muslim has to be treated according to his apparent condition only.

394. Jundub bin `Abdullah (May Allah be pleased with him) reported: Messenger of Allah (PBUH) dispatched a contingent of the Muslims to a tribe of the polytheists. The two sides met (in combat) at one place. A man among the polytheists was so dashing that, whenever he intended to kill a man from Muslims, he killed him. Amongst the Muslims, too, was a man looking forward to (an opportunity of) his (polytheist's) unmindfulness. He (the narrator) said: We talked that he was Usamah bin Zaid (May Allah be pleased with him). When he raised his sword, he (the soldier of the polytheists) uttered: "La ilaha illallah (There is no true god except Allah).'' But he (Usamah bin Zaid) killed him. When the good news of victory reached Messenger of Allah (PBUH) he asked him (about the events of the battle), and he informed him about the man (Usamah) and what he had done. He (Messenger of Allah (PBUH)) sent for him and asked him why he had killed him. He (Usamah) said, "O Messenger of Allah, he struck the Muslims and killed such and such of them.'' And he named some of them. (He continued): "I attacked him and when he saw the sword he said: `La ilaha illallah.''' Messenger of Allah (PBUH) said, "Did you kill him?'' He (Usamah) replied in the affirmative. The Messenger of Allah then remarked, "What would you do with regard to (the utterance): La ilaha illallah, when it comes (before you) on the Day of Resurrection?'' He (Usamah) said, "O Messenger of Allah! Beg forgiveness for me". He (the Prophet (PBUH)) said, "What would you do with regard to (the utterance): La ilaha illallah, when it comes (before you) on the Day of Resurrection?'' He (Messenger of Allah (PBUH)) added nothing to it but kept repeating, "What would you do with regard to (the utterance): La ilaha illallah, when it comes (before you) on the Day of Resurrection?".
[Muslim].

Commentary: This Hadith mentions the incident which has been quoted in the preceding one. There is only a slight variation in the wording of the two. This Hadith is reported by Muslim under the chapter "The prohibition of killing a Kafir (disbeliever) after having testified that none has the right to be worshipped but Allah".

395. `Abdullah bin `Utbah bin Mas`ud reported: I heard `Umar bin Al-Khattab (May Allah be pleased with him) reported saying: "In the lifetime of Messenger of Allah (PBUH) some people were called to account through Revelation. Now Revelation has discontinued and we shall judge you by your apparent acts. Whoever displays to us good, we shall grant him peace and security, and treat him as a near one. We have nothing to do with his insight. Allah will call him to account for that. But whosoever shows evil to us, we shall not grant him security nor shall we believe him, even if he professed that his intention is good.''
[Al-Bukhari].

Commentary:  This Hadith also proves that the injunctions go with the apparent acts of a person and not with will and intention. It also indicates that a good intention does not waive the Qisas and establishing the justice.  

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[ThinkPlease]

The scientific arena has definitely become a hotbed for modern debate (approaching watershed proportions). These studies are coming out like gangbusters, and it seems the secular papers are beginning to agree more often with the other side.

Huh. You must read different journals than I do. I've never seen anything like that in the 3-4 journals I skim through online. Certainly nothing approaching a creationist paper (unless you want to call Arp a creationist, in which case he'd yell at you).

[balrog666]

Doin' the Victory Dance!

[Stultis]

CLUE: I have not taken issue with your silly position so please stop directing this crap at me.

Whatever, and fine then. I will, however, respond to any post I chose, but without playing the game you're (so transparently and ineptly) trying to draw me into.

Troll elsewhere.

[Last Visible Dog]

Doin' the Victory Dance!

At least you are trying to be clever. That is worth something.

From my side of the Internet, this is what your victory dances look like:

[ThinkPlease]

Your side, however, just takes what they think is bad, automatically begin calling respected researchers names because they cannot refute the this study. We have caught on to your game.

Do you read ANY scientific journals? I mean REALLY read them? Just curious.

[f.Christian]

believe that the Theory of Evolution is as solid a scientific theory (and in fact more solid) than the Theory of Gravity.

Mental hypothermia (( overheating )) ... off go the cloths --- madness !

Drinking sea water (( poison )) !

[js1138]

I lost track of which post was being discussed. My internet connection is unreliable today and I can't easily track conversations backwards.

[HalfFull]

Do you read ANY scientific journals? I mean REALLY read them?

Certainly not cover to cover...but I have taken various college level science courses and do REALLY read various science articles from time to time that interest me. Am I disqualified from having an opinion?

[walford]

Your tagline: "As long as people believe in absurdities, they will continue to commit atrocities."

None of the dogmatists in this thread have responded to my agruments. Therefore, I will press the point home. I wanted to avoid that. I was hoping that we could agree that it is more important to understand that reality and truth are objective, rather than subjective as the hard Left and radical Muslims believe.

It is with deep regret that I must now tell the children there is no tooth fairy. Furthermore, it is harmful to do so, especially if one believes that others must lose all their teeth if they don't believe.

http://mason.gmu.edu/~walford/extext.html

"...Finite beings quarreling over the nature and form of the infinite is absurd at best. At worst, it serves evil. Even within certain religions disagreements over practices between sects can degenerate into an orgy of malevolence:
A couple of years ago, some Conservative Jews from the U. S. went to the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem to practice a ritual as a part of an annual observance. This particular sect allows men and women to participate in ritual together including women reading from Torah. Orthodox Judaism does not permit this. Some young Orthodox men decided to express their disapproval by viciously heckling their co-religionists while ritual was in progress. Not satisfied with that, they went further and began pelting the gathered men, women and children with plastic bottles. Some of these still had water in them and served as missiles, causing some minor injuries. The fact that there were infants in strollers present did not deter these men.

What makes this sort of behavior particularly outrageous is that it is done with a sense of righteousness; punishing those who practice their own religion, but merely in a different way, is done so with the notion that there is a Divine endorsement. I submit that, when a person or group purports the will of the finite to be the will of the infinite, this is blasphemy. Yahweh was not cheering these men on as they were flinging missiles in the direction of little babies. Similarly, it is doubtful that Allah approved when, confronted with a taboo against killing virgins, the Iranian Shi’a of the newly-formed Islamic Republic solved the problem of the proper way to kill female Bahai infidels by making sure to rape them first..."

[f.Christian]

It certainly looks like evolution (( sucker bet )) is weeding out the ' weak (( strong on lies )) ' - empty minded !

[Last Visible Dog]

Whatever, and fine then. I will, however, respond to any post I chose, but without playing the game you're (so transparently and ineptly) trying to draw me into.

You are delusional.

[bondserv]

We must all remember where Christianity came from. The Middle East. In that culture, it is my way or the highway. If you are an unbeliever, you are by definition damned. You have no rights. You are dogmeat. It has been ignored when it has been repeatedly said that C14 is not the entire basis for whether or not life has developed from one form to another over time. It has been ignored when it has been repeatedly said that holding the conviction that life has developed over time is not mutally exclusive to believing in Divinity. Divinity is in the works of the Almighty, not words on a page written by men. Condemning people because they do not believe that your conception of the Divine is the only possible one is blasphemy, because you are appointing yourself the spokesman of the Almighty. We already have plenty of those as is illustreded below:

The God of the Old and New Testament is unlike the Gods of other religions as is oil to water.

Any rational modern thinking person clearly can differentiate the God of Christianity from which western civilization, with its freedoms and personal responsibility has produced, from the Gods of other religions.

The reason the other religions are rejected by western civilizations is because they do not have the integrity to hold up to evidentiary scrutiny. Contradictions are rife in other so-called Holy Books. The most brilliant thinkers in history have tested Christianity and found it sound.

Pull up a list of true civilized thinkers that have followed another God and you will see how fleeting they are in comparison. It is like the Liberals comparing Israel to Arabs. Israel has freedom for woman to go to school, drive, serve in their military, vote, choose their husband, and be doctors, lawyers, scientists... personal responsibility for knowing and doing right from wrong. Freedom!

The God of the Bible is not the same as the Gods of anywhere, especially capricious Allah. The Rock of our Salvation is demonstrably unchanging and perfect.

[ThinkPlease]

Certainly not cover to cover...but I have taken various college level science courses and do REALLY read various science articles from time to time that interest me.

No, I mean journal articles. The places where the real discussion takes place. Where you get to read all of the nitty gritty. If you had, you'd know the difference between this article, and a journal article. There's a sense to me of casualness, which is just wrong if you are trying to be rigorous and actually convince someone of your position. Vade had a good line from the paper:

"This earnest effort to understand this "contamination problem" therefore generated scores of peer-reviewed papers in the standard radiocarbon literature during the last 20 years.2 Most of these papers acknowledge that most of the 14C in the samples studied appear to be intrinsic to the samples themselves, and they usually offer no explanation for its origin. The reality of significant levels of 14C in a wide variety of fossil sources from throughout the geological record has thus been established in the secular scientific literature by scientists who assume the standard geological time scale is valid and have no special desire for this result!"

"Most?" "Scores"? The problem is that I'm not a freaking psychic, nor do I have access to obscure pieces of literature. Give me the references to the scores, and I'll look em up myself.

Also, what the heck is that graph supposed to mean, anyway? What is the unlabeled y axis? I'm assuming that it means number of samples, but I'm not a freaking psychic, TELL ME! Also, a critical number they leave out is just how many samples they measured. Is it a small percentage? All? A small fraction? What are their errors? They don't list a single error in the whole paper.

Lastly is the question of background, which Vade and Stultis mentioned. What is the background C14/C12 for the various rocks that are measured? Even underground, things are not locked in a perfect stasis, at some point, there is seepage, heating, effects that over time can affect a sample. They don't cover ANY of this. Every experiment I've every read discusses error analysis and background conditions. This doesn't. Bad, bad science.

Unless there is an actual paper somewhere that this is a mere summary of (which is possible), this is bad, bad science.

Am I disqualified from having an opinion?

As someone wrote to me on this august forum when I arrived here almost 3 years ago:

Liberals have opinions.

Conservatives have informed opinions.

[walford]

"Any rational modern thinking person clearly can differentiate the God of Christianity from which western civilization, with its freedoms and personal responsibility has produced, from the Gods of other religions."

It is commonly stated that Christians, Jews and Muslims all worship the God of Abraham [some even refer to this triad as Abrahamist].

It is the Westernization that distinguishes Christianity [and Westernized Judaism] from Islam, not the basic tenets. Those have been softened by incorporating Western principles.

http://mason.gmu.edu/~walford/talibanfrance.htm

"Western inquiry and experimentation with limited representative government traces its roots as far back as ancient Greece. The Protestant Reformation then provided the impetus for true democracy to be made real. Martin Luther’s 95 Theses had unintentionally led to a fundamental reconsideration of all authority structures, religious and political. Once the genie was out of the bottle, it was only a matter of time before kings found themselves confronted with subjects demanding their God-given rights. Landed aristocracy soon gave way to market economies.

There is simply no equivalent of this in any other culture. Even in the West, those nations that did not embrace the Reformation were left politically and economically behind..."