I wonder if I'll be accused of "moving the goalposts" again
Creation vs. Evolution
- Thread starter MichaelCadry
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I wonder if I'll be accused of "moving the goalposts" again
This is one of those classically silly knee-jerk type responses that creationists sometimes employ. Aside from the fact that Noah and the Ark is a fable, elementary students in schools today know more real science than anyone did a couple thousand years BC. Science wasn’t even recognized as a formal discipline until about the early 1800s. Yup, hundreds of thousands of PhD scientists in Noah’s day. I love it.
What university did they get their PhDs from 4000 years ago?
Jose Fly
New member
Now that's funny!
Whenever you think creationists can't get any more absurd, they crank it up another notch. :rotfl:
God's Word doesn't.
Science overwhelmingly doesn't
You literally cannot comprehend radiometric dating. It's getting depressing
noguru
Well-known member
I am amazed that this person even knows how to breathe.
noguru
Well-known member
And then they wonder why no one takes them seriously.
Dear noguru,
You don't get it? I don't have low self esteem. I am very happy with the way my life is going and I can scarcely contain myself looking forward to the Lord Jesus returning. I am on Cloud 9, literally. Ecstatic. Tons of Joy Fills My Heart and Soul.
May God Save Our Relationship!!
Michael
Michael the Ionic
Michael the Ionic
Michael – just to recap:
Earlier, when expressing your doubts about the reliability of dating things using radioactive decay, you said:
In response, rather than directly admitting your understanding of how half-life is determined was incorrect, you opted to basically ignore that and try and toss some other issues into the fray:
Anyway, let me take a few minutes and share some info on radioactive decay. (Feel free to share this with your angel buddy namesake.)
Semtex is a plastic explosive widely used in both industry and by the military. You definitely don’t want to be close to it when it is detonated. It is primarily composed of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen. Now – a thought experiment. Imagine we attach a little teeny label on every single atom in a block of semtex. Each label has a unique number, along with the symbol for the name of the atom it is attached to (C or O or N or H). Our objective will be to see what happens to the atoms as a result of the detonation.
Now we put in a detonator, get a long ways away, and set it off. A big flash of light, junk flying everywhere, massive destruction, a deafening boom. Now we send some lackeys (grad students) out to document what happened to every one of those labelled semtex atoms. Years later, when the last grad student has successfully reported back, we compile our data, and viola, big surprise (surprise only to a creationist), every single atom of carbon is still just an atom of carbon, every oxygen atom is still around, and nitrogen, and hydrogen. In spite of all of these atoms being part of a horrific explosion, not a one of them was fundamentally changed. They are no longer in the semtex. Some of the hydrogen and oxygen atoms have now gone on to form water molecules, and some of the carbon atoms were taken up by nearby foliage, and nitrogen just joined the nitrogen already in the atmosphere.
Ionic bonding, and covalent bonding (remember those terms from your chem classes?) Ionic and covalent bonding describe the ways the electrons in the atoms attach to other atoms. For reasons I haven’t got time to go into here, suffice it to say that in some chemical compounds the electrons are pretty firmly attached where they are, yet there are changes (rearrangements of the atoms and bonding) that could be made resulting in a much tighter attachment of the electrons to the atoms they are with. That’s what happens when semtex explodes – it is safe to handle because the electrons are firmly attached where they are, yet if given a strong boost, the electrons and atoms can start rearranging into a much lower-energy configuration, releasing a whole lot of the excess energy in the process. The detonator provides the initial boost to start that rearrangement. Once it starts, the energy released by the first atoms and electrons provides plenty of energy for the next layer of atoms and electrons to rearrange, and a split second later, they are all done, with lots of the former H and O atoms now in lower energy H2O molecules, and N atoms in N2 molecules, etc, with the whole hot mass expanding out in the form of an explosion.
Where am I going with this? You mention gases mixing in with the radioactive sample altering the radioactive decay. Just as the impressive energy in plastic explosives comes from nothing more than changing the way the orbital electron energies are distributed, so also any introduction of gases, water, contaminants, etc, will do no more than allow the atoms to perhaps join into new and different molecules. (In fact this was one of the techniques proposed to separate radioactive uranium atoms from stable uranium atoms for the first atomic bomb. The two types of uranium atoms have slightly different atomic weights, so when combined with oxygen they form gas molecules that are of two slightly different weights. Fill a long tube with cotton, then put the gas mixture in one end. The lighter molecules will be bouncing around very slightly faster than their beefier brothers, and will find their way through the maze of cotton fibers more quickly. The first gas atoms to come out the other end of the tube will be more enriched in one of the types of uranium than the other. Finally, chemically strip off the oxygen atoms to recover the enriched radioactive uranium metal.)
I know this is a lot of stuff, but there is one more crucial thing to understand, and everything I have described above is just a prelude. Radioactive decay is a nuclear process. It is not involved with the electrons orbiting the atoms – the ionic or the covalent bonding. It involves forces unique to the nucleus, forces which are vastly more powerful than those seen in the semtex explosion. Screwing around with the electrons in orbit around the atoms has almost no effect on what is happening in the nucleus. That is why you use semtext (or something equivalent) to blow up an enemy building (using changes in ionic and covalent boding energies), but when you release a small fraction of the energy in the nucleus in a weapon, you assure that tears will flow for many decades at the memorial in Peace Park in Hiroshima. (I have been there a number of times. And cried.)
Summary – if you are not materially altering the nuclear energies, and you are speaking of reactions involving only orbital electrons, then you are not going to have much effect on decay rates.
Michael the Ionic
Michael – just to recap:
Earlier, when expressing your doubts about the reliability of dating things using radioactive decay, you said:
In response to your implying that we must live long enough to see half of the sample decay before we can test the half-life method, I explained that it is not at all necessary to wait for half of the sample to decay in order to determine the half-life.
In response, rather than directly admitting your understanding of how half-life is determined was incorrect, you opted to basically ignore that and try and toss some other issues into the fray:
This type of response is one reason why it is a tad embarrassing even trying to have an intelligent conversation with you. If you were some kid approaching your teen-age years, it would be far more understandable. But for someone who repeatedly claims an understanding of science <half-lives obviously an exception>, you even assert:
I had never realized that the archangel Michael was a high-school dropout. Is your sharing the same name as the archangel a subtle hint that you are actually one and the same?
Anyway, let me take a few minutes and share some info on radioactive decay. (Feel free to share this with your angel buddy namesake.)
Semtex is a plastic explosive widely used in both industry and by the military. You definitely don’t want to be close to it when it is detonated. It is primarily composed of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen. Now – a thought experiment. Imagine we attach a little teeny label on every single atom in a block of semtex. Each label has a unique number, along with the symbol for the name of the atom it is attached to (C or O or N or H). Our objective will be to see what happens to the atoms as a result of the detonation.
Now we put in a detonator, get a long ways away, and set it off. A big flash of light, junk flying everywhere, massive destruction, a deafening boom. Now we send some lackeys (grad students) out to document what happened to every one of those labelled semtex atoms. Years later, when the last grad student has successfully reported back, we compile our data, and viola, big surprise (surprise only to a creationist), every single atom of carbon is still just an atom of carbon, every oxygen atom is still around, and nitrogen, and hydrogen. In spite of all of these atoms being part of a horrific explosion, not a one of them was fundamentally changed. They are no longer in the semtex. Some of the hydrogen and oxygen atoms have now gone on to form water molecules, and some of the carbon atoms were taken up by nearby foliage, and nitrogen just joined the nitrogen already in the atmosphere.
Ionic bonding, and covalent bonding (remember those terms from your chem classes?) Ionic and covalent bonding describe the ways the electrons in the atoms attach to other atoms. For reasons I haven’t got time to go into here, suffice it to say that in some chemical compounds the electrons are pretty firmly attached where they are, yet there are changes (rearrangements of the atoms and bonding) that could be made resulting in a much tighter attachment of the electrons to the atoms they are with. That’s what happens when semtex explodes – it is safe to handle because the electrons are firmly attached where they are, yet if given a strong boost, the electrons and atoms can start rearranging into a much lower-energy configuration, releasing a whole lot of the excess energy in the process. The detonator provides the initial boost to start that rearrangement. Once it starts, the energy released by the first atoms and electrons provides plenty of energy for the next layer of atoms and electrons to rearrange, and a split second later, they are all done, with lots of the former H and O atoms now in lower energy H2O molecules, and N atoms in N2 molecules, etc, with the whole hot mass expanding out in the form of an explosion.
Where am I going with this? You mention gases mixing in with the radioactive sample altering the radioactive decay. Just as the impressive energy in plastic explosives comes from nothing more than changing the way the orbital electron energies are distributed, so also any introduction of gases, water, contaminants, etc, will do no more than allow the atoms to perhaps join into new and different molecules. (In fact this was one of the techniques proposed to separate radioactive uranium atoms from stable uranium atoms for the first atomic bomb. The two types of uranium atoms have slightly different atomic weights, so when combined with oxygen they form gas molecules that are of two slightly different weights. Fill a long tube with cotton, then put the gas mixture in one end. The lighter molecules will be bouncing around very slightly faster than their beefier brothers, and will find their way through the maze of cotton fibers more quickly. The first gas atoms to come out the other end of the tube will be more enriched in one of the types of uranium than the other. Finally, chemically strip off the oxygen atoms to recover the enriched radioactive uranium metal.)
I know this is a lot of stuff, but there is one more crucial thing to understand, and everything I have described above is just a prelude. Radioactive decay is a nuclear process. It is not involved with the electrons orbiting the atoms – the ionic or the covalent bonding. It involves forces unique to the nucleus, forces which are vastly more powerful than those seen in the semtex explosion. Screwing around with the electrons in orbit around the atoms has almost no effect on what is happening in the nucleus. That is why you use semtext (or something equivalent) to blow up an enemy building (using changes in ionic and covalent boding energies), but when you release a small fraction of the energy in the nucleus in a weapon, you assure that tears will flow for many decades at the memorial in Peace Park in Hiroshima. (I have been there a number of times. And cried.)
Summary – if you are not materially altering the nuclear energies, and you are speaking of reactions involving only orbital electrons, then you are not going to have much effect on decay rates.
Let's set aside the fact that C-14 dating is not used by paleontologists because the half-life is too short to be of any use to them. ( creationists are always incredulous when they learn this, but it's true ) But it is a testable claim. It turns out that the real variation in C-14 dates is not the half-life (which no one has so far been able to alter even with the huge temperatures and pressures that work for some other elements) but the amount forming in the atmosphere, which does vary.
Hence the calibration done by using lake varves. Varves are a particular kind of lamina that form two per year in some lakes. One light layer, one dark layer. So, it's easy to get a core, and analyze the varves by C-14 to see how accurate a simple decay model would be.
Pretty well, as it turns out. But the calibration, which takes into account small variations in cosmic rays that form C-14, is being used to refine the dates.
Again, none of that has the slightest effect on paleontology.
Show us that. So far, the variations reported for uranium are at most, a few percent, and none that I've seen so far have been reproduced by other studies.
See above. Already detected and adjusted for. And as you just learned, C-14 is not used by paleontologists.
Dear The Barbarian,
I see you conveniently didn't address the part which said scientists think there was a worldwide flood. Isn't that convenient??
Michael
You can't directly calibrate the rate of C-14 in certain instances. It depends how old the sample you are try to date. Also, I don't believe that the light-year measuring is valid either. Using a light spectrum to tell us a galaxy is 1.5 trillion years away from us, etc. Give me a break. All that from a simple spectrum test, eh?
“God’s Word” - AKA, a miscellany of religious stories from a scientifically illiterate nomadic society, stories of which not a single original exists, incorporating elements found in the legends from other prior nomadic societies (but for 6days, hey, that’s enuff)
Not only that. To him it's the ONLY thing that's enough
noguru
Well-known member
How you think you feel about your self is not an objective way to measure your mental clarity/acuity. You are a whacko. In real life I avoid idiots like you.
Dear Kdall,
Nice of you to post. I agree with your first paragraph. Now 65,000,000 is a lot of years and I don't believe that. Just because science says it's been that long doesn't mean that they are right. They've been wrong too many times before.
Michael
Dear The Barbarian,
You know that Jesus did some healing on the Sabbath. Now if Jesus recognized that was the day that God rested, why should we believe that a Sabbath day was 24-hours?? Jesus would have told us different if that were the case. He also would have told us different about Adam being created on the sixth day.
Michael
noguru
Well-known member
How spread out do you think it is possible that the universe is, given all the factors we can measure?
Dear Kdall,
I don't know what you are referring to here, but you could clarify it for me/us. Thanks dude!!
Michael
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