Posted on 03/05/2015 7:09:29 AM PST by WhiskeyX
NEW YORK – A fragment of jaw bone dating back 2.8 million years is evidence that the first humans evolved more than 400,000 years earlier than previously thought, scientists reported Wednesday.
The fossil, which was uncovered in the Afar region in northern Ethiopia, is dated very close to the time that the human, or "Homo" genus, or group, split away from more ape-like ancestors like Australopithecus afarensis, best known for the fossil skeleton Lucy discovered in 1974.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
“#1 I haven’t argued creationism.”
I’m going to have to dispute that comment. For example you say below: “The proper rebuttal is there are two main methods for dating fossils:...#1 Index fossils...#2 Radiometric dating....” In the first place, you are dead wrong using a common and erroneous creationist argument, because there are dozens of dating methods aside from those involving “Index fossils...Radiometric dating.” In the second place, your use of the same argument is the same creationist or Young Earth Creation (YEC) argument promoted in: Morris, H. M. Creation and the Modern Christian. El Cajon (CA): Master Book Publishers; (c1985).
“#2 I’m not the poster in the prior thread.”
I didn’t say or imply you were the same poster.
“#3 I said “simple description”. That’s a proper rebuttal to a simplistic claim.”
You have made it clear that you think the subject is simplistic, but your thinking is simply contrary to the reality where there are dozens of methods in use for dating which makes their descriptions complex and not simple.
“#4 If “no kind of response is going to be acceptable to the folks” you are trying to oppose, then you are wasting your time and energy and should put it to better use. Unless of course you’re hunting witches (see my first post in thread).”
True as far as it goes, but I had not given up yet on your ability to find such responses to be acceptable. Are you perhaps telling me I should not hope for you to accept any of my responses?
“’For what it is worth, there is no “simple description of the process’,”
“Sure there is, when you’re not being intentionally thick.”
I’m being straightforward and not “intentionally thick” in accurately observing there is no single or few processes to the dating methods, despite your assertions to the contrary. I could perhaps summarize the dating methods into two categories as Taphonomy and Diagenesis, but doing so would be a great oversimplification of the categories of dating methods that perhaps also omits important methods. So, I must reiterate there is not one or a few processes used as dating methods. There are dozens of dating methods making them by definition of many methods not a simple and singular process.
“The proper rebuttal is there are two main methods for dating fossils:”
“#1 Index fossils, which has the circular argument problem.
#2 Radiometric dating, which is better but comes with other sets of problems.”
As stated above, those are simply false statements divorced from reality.
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