Thanks JimSEA.
Posted on 10/06/2014 1:10:19 PM PDT by JimSEA
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.
(Excerpt) Read more at asa3.org ...
Thank you.
Observation: Radiometric dating has an accuracy of something like thousands of years, so trying to date anything within that range from now is pretty much pointless.
Observation: light does not experience time. When we observe light from “the farthest objects in the universe, peering back in time close to the Big Bang”, that light has experienced travel across that vast distance in zero time (regardless of whether we perceive it as 6,000 or 6,000,000,000 years). I’ve been trying to wrap my head around the “photonic model of the universe”, with slow but interesting results.
Flip-side observation (tangent): light isn’t as fast as we intuitively believe. In the time it takes the light from these letters on your screen to reach your eyeballs, your computer has carried out a dozen or so instructions.
Please clarify a few things for me: are you agreeing or disagreeing with my thesis with the "does not experience time" statement? And do you believe the Big Bang as fact?
I’m generally agreeing. And, as a consequence, the Big Bang fits pretty well into “Let there be light” etc.
From light’s perspective, distance means nothing as zero time passes from emergence of a photon to its terminus. Imagine a 2D universe on a rubber sheet: draw a light vector from one point to another (light starts at some point, travels some distance, then ends somewhere else) ... now gather every point on that line to a single point (because that light “perceives” its entire path happening all at once in one point), warping the space around it ... now do that with _all_ light emerging & terminating at the same time ... then extrapolate a third dimension for photons occurring at different times and overlapping their existence (I’m having some trouble visualizing this step). Result is a very different view of the universe, not inconsistent with Genesis as “time” loses a meaningful distinction between thousands and billions of years.
I agree with some of your points, but since all Big Bang theorists use it to disprove God, I’m not sure it fits all that well into “Let there be light’ - or more precise perhaps, “let light be.”
I’m still not sure what you mean by your light, time, space statements....then again, I’m multi tasking.
What happened, happened - regardless of what anyone construes it as to bolster their opinion & attack another’s.
My blathering about light & distance boils down to: space-time looks a LOT different from God’s perspective.
Yes, and whatever happened did happen. But when you say Big Bang, that phrase means a few things specifically, and a godless origins is chief among them. The Big Bang theory does not exist separate from that.
Now if you want to say “let there be light” was a big bang of sorts, that is correct I suppose, but that’s not at all what’s meant by the official Big Bang theories (and there are several iterations).
As for Space / Time - it is in some ways a concept beyond any human comprehension for sure. However I do think some Christian quantum physics scholars have a pretty good handle on it, but it is surely not understood or accepted by most people.
Amen. Ridiculous to pretend that the study of God’s world is at odds with God’s world. AMDG indeed.
Thanks JimSEA.
A very good 49 min lecture on half-lives and radioactive dating is this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozm1o2tzg2I
You don’t mention what you have your PhD in.
Is it in something related to the topic at hand?
For a phd, one would think you’d avoid suggesting someone is gay simply because they’ve taken a different position on this topic. Hopefully you are not in a teaching position.
The poster instigated by moving to edit in #35 my commentary in #6 “The fact is there is no proof that Adam and Eve...” with “You could have stopped right there”.
Anyone that moves to abridge my speech or beliefs will face the back of my hand. It is clear the person is an atheist who was emboldened on a day when the SCOTUS refused to hear the appeals of States representing tens upon tens of millions of Americans against normalization of perversion.
And it’s not ‘gay’, it’s ‘homosexual’.
Your adoption of this word and your threat to my teaching role reveal your support of deceit and your fascist inclinations.
Get lost Creep. You have no influence and will have none over my teaching role or any of my roles.
Thanks. That’s interesting.
Anyone that moves to abridge my speech or beliefs will face the back of my hand. It is clear the person is an atheist who was emboldened on a day when the SCOTUS refused to hear the appeals of States representing tens upon tens of millions of Americans against normalization of perversion.
And it’s not ‘gay’, it’s ‘homosexual’.
Your adoption of this word and your threat to my teaching role reveal your support of deceit and your fascist inclinations.
Get lost Creep. You have no influence and will have none over my teaching role or any of my roles.
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LOL. The more you write, the less you appear to be what you say you are. A creep? Are you 12?
The back of your hand? Hilarious. Perhaps you should become more familiar with the nature of anonymous internet forums.
A threat to your teaching role? Quite the drama queen you are. And apparently quite insecure about your role if you perceive threats coming from anonymous internet forums.
You should read some of John Walton’s books on Genesis. He is a professor at Wheaton. He is coming up with some real mind blowing interpretations that if correct, absolutely destroy the perception that science and Christianity are at odds.
I may just do that. Most of my education in this area has come from the teachings of Chuck Missler, who also has some mind blowing information that indicate that science is slowly catching up to the Bible in this area.
The big bang was a quantum event. Every quantum event needs an observer. Who was the observer for the Big Bang? Ask the atheist that question and let them think about it...
Thank you very much for posting this.
I love Chuck and his ministry.
Your lack of seriousness is not surprising but you will be surprised in due time.
The poster in #35 can make his own views known but he will not alter my narrative, he will not encroach into my views.
You can declare that certain types of people not to your liking be disallowed from teaching but you will not threaten my livelihood, or you will have a fight on your hands that you really don’t want to see.
The ways of the fascist and the homosexual are to treat people as if they were puppets they control or to remove people at their whim. Knowing their boundaries and due process is concepts they do not recognize except for their own kind.
My original post was there is nothing in Genesis that contradicts science. It certainly contradicts contemporary experience but offers no basis for a scientific argument to disprove it.
That is not to say that certain groups of people calling or thinking themselves ‘Christian’ are in error to their approach. The 6,000 year old Earth is one such path of error. But these errors stem from misinterpretation or incorrect extrapolation of scriptures to conclusions that are outside of scripture.
Even the concept of ‘Day’ in scriptural Genesis is indeterminate as there was no Earth in the exposition of creation. So there can be no reference to Earth days. Epoch may be a better word and indeed specialists in ancient languages debate precision or imprecision of words and phrases of original texts.
All of the arguments add up to one conclusion about biblical scripture especially the King James canon, that there are no clear contradictions with science. There are suspected points and claims but nothing that can be definitely proven to be false, which is remarkable in itself. If I as a scientist saw one biblical passage that could be ‘proven’ to be false, I would be all over it.
Even the concept of a virgin birth cannot be scientifically proven or disproven. There is evidence of parthogenesis but there is no way to affirmatively prove that the Virgin Mary’s birth was from a parthogenesis event.
Miracles in scripture cannot be proven according to the scientific method of replicating scientific results nor can they be disproven by scientific method. All that can be said is it does not appear with the realm of experience and nothing more. There simply isn’t a procedure to prove or disprove events of biblical scripture.
The poster in #35 deserved everything I piled on and more. Fascists do not stand and state their opinion. They encroach on the positions of others and tell them to change it. There’s a huge difference between civil behavior and fascist behavior. Your post threatened to change the view or else. It conforms with fascist behavior.
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