Radiometric Dating: How Rocks Can Look Older Than They Are

CEH ^ | 04/82015

[Hot Tabasco]

I had an uncle who was older than dirt.

Therefore, all dirt is younger than my uncle.

Well, I certainly can't argue against that Larry.......

[muir_redwoods]

All I need is your honest answer that you can’t make a reasonable response to this question. You gave me that. If God needs no explanation logically, then, equally logically, the Big Bang needs no explanation. If God simply “is”, the Big Bang simply “happened”. The logic is equivalent.

[tjd1454]

Feel free to think what you wish, and to inhabit a world of your imagination in which everything that exists somehow spontaneously arose from time + chance + matter. I would suggest that this is the height of irrationality.

There is a reason why poll after poll shows that after a generation of indoctrination in public schools and throughout our culture, viz, that “macro-evolution is true: discussion over,” only a distinct minority of respondents believe that natural processes are sufficient to account for the universe and all there is in it. It is self-evident that some wondrously great Intelligence stands behind the astounding level of design evident throughout creation.

The insistence that, like everything else, God must have a cause betrays a false premise: that God is a contingent being like His creation. You first accept your presupposition as true, then smugly conclude that people of faith are hopelessly in error because they do not accept your conclusion. That is known as circular reasoning. You have rejected the eternality of God in favor of the eternal, unchangeable nature of Father Time.

Similarly, atheist Richard Dawkins argues that an even more sophisticated Being must exist to have created the God who created this universe, and so on ad nauseam throughout eternity. But this argument only stands when one fundamentally redefines the nature of God and then attacks their self-defined caricature.

The Judeo-Christian worldview holds that unlike His creation, God does not exist within, nor is He bound by, the space-time continuum. He stands eternally apart from His creation and all the space-time limitations inherent within the physical universe.

You describe yourself as “agnostic”: I suspect that you use that appellation rather than “atheist” because you realize the untenability of confidently asserting that God does not exist. If true, you would be well advised to be open to the reality of God without first insisting that “God” conforms to your preconceptions.

Long ago the agnostic Herbert Spence dismissed belief in God: “Man has never been known to fly into the heavens to discover God.” Unfortunately, he did not consider the other possibility, that the personal-infinite God has reached down from Heaven to reveal Himself to humankind. That, I would suggest, is precisely what happened, and furthermore that His wonderful acts are recorded in the Bible.

You might try what many others have done, with life-transforming results: set aside your preconceptions and offer the simple, heartfelt prayer: “God, if you exist, please reveal yourself to me.” Why not give it a try?

[muir_redwoods]

I quoted you when you said everything needed a cause. I took you at your word; I promise, I’ll never do that again.

Your supposition that sufficiently complex things require a designer, to paraphrase, means that the Designer, itself a very complex entity, must also require a meta-designer. The logic is inescapable and yet, you call foul when I point out this obvious conclusion.

There is nothing in conflict in accepting both a Big Bang and a Creator but it’s, thankfully, not my job to bring you to this also obvious conclusion. And no, I’m not interested in reading more cut-and-paste apologetics.

[SeekAndFind]

RE: If something is really 100 million years old, instead of 200 million years old, it still invalidates the Creation timeline.

You are half right. It’s true that cutting 100 million years in half wouldn’t fit a Biblical time frame.

The problem for me lies in your last sentence: “If something is really 100 million years old.…”

How would someone ever know that, without trusting in an indirect dating method? No human ever experienced a million years, let alone a hundred million. Over and over, we have seen “unknown unknowns” arise that cast doubt on widely-trusted radiometric dating methods.

This article reported a recent case, where scientists were misled by assuming they knew how much daughter material was present when the clock started. What other unknown unknowns and unknowable unknowns are there?

I would suggest we not put false confidence in things they cannot know about initial conditions and processes.