I’ve been spending (wa-ay too much) time today reading various news reports about the new Answers In Genesis Museum. In the blog responses to some of these reports I see mostly relief that someone has finally created this museum to tell the truth about Young Earth Creationism. As opposed to all those partisan Atheistic evolutionists who have infiltrated all the sciences. Did you know that the current estimate of the age of the Earth is an evolutionist assumption, not the continuously refined end result result of centuries of study in geology, astronomy, selenology, isotopes, meteorology, archeology, and (more recently) genetics?
They quote the AIG website as a prime source for rebuttals to thousand-time-tested scientific “theories”, and treat such a reputable source as Gospel.
They cite the mythical Colorado study that showed that a single flood could have deposited all the different, clearly defined, interlaced geologic layers. I say mythical because I have never found any source for this presumed experiment. No write-up. No description of the procedure. Nothing. If anyone can cite the actual study, the people involved, and the peer group that verified it, please educate me.
Anyway, my question to them is: Even if we assume this unlikely proof that multiple layers, repeatedly alternating between heavy and light materials, could have been deposited by a single flood event, what about the Iridium layer?
It is called the Iridium Layer because it is unusually rich in iridium, a very heavy element that is common in meteorites but rare in the crust of the Earth. This narrow band of sediment is found everywhere on Earth at the boundary between the Cretaceous and Triassic formations. This is pretty high up on the column of layers for such a heavy element. Every dating method (dozens of independent technologies) shows that this layer was deposited worldwide, simultaneously at a time between 60,000,000 and 70,000,000 years ago. But that’s not the point, here.
My point is, if all these layers were put down by a flood event, how could such a unique and narrow band exist? It falls between two other layers that are common types among the strata. A band like this does not show up in any of the other juxtapositions of these 2 types of layers, also presumably precipitated from the same flood. Just once, and made of material not usually found in erosion sediment.
Sure, if “a magic man done it” is your answer, that can’t be argued scientifically. But the new museum claims to use the process of science to prove its case. No observers who have seen the museum so far have noted any evidence of the scientific process there. Just scientific nomenclature and truly expert and convincing displays of conclusions drawn from … the Bible.
Aside: Observers have noted that, unlike all other museums outside of D.C, the guards at the AIG museum on opening weekend were armed and had bomb-sniffing attack dogs. It’s as though the fundamentalists were afraid that rationalists would use fundamentalist tactics (like clinic bombings) on this new type of religious venue. AIG has petitioned the county to give their security force complete police authority.
The previous commenter may be near-sighted about Dawkins and PZ (and Harris). In reality, we ALL need to be more accepting of others' viewpoints, even the seemingly hell-bound.
"For sure, atheists for a long time have been unfairly stereotyped in the mainstream media and in popular culture. But we also have a lot of lousy self-proclaimed spokespeople who do damage to our public image. They're usually angry, grumpy, uncharismatic male loners with a passion for attacking and ridiculing religious believers. Any fellow atheist who disagrees with their Don Imus rhetoric, they label as appeasers."
Said like a true Appeaser.
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/08/oh_the… http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window
"The need to appeal to out sources means the proof is not sufficiently present in the evidence one claims is overwhelming."
Let me explain this better.
The original question posted in this section dealt with how Noah's flood could explain the iridium layer(s). There are actually places on earth with unusual iridium. Some are thicker and some are multiple layers sandwiched between flood basalt layers.
I was stating that why must you appeal to the considerations for deep time elsewhere to try and respond to the matters under consideration.
The question was not if anyone was trying to convince you of a young earth. Discuss that else where. I was dealing with the question under consideration.
That what I meant by an out source.
“As for Karl’s #5: Deep Time was discovered by astronomy and cosmology, and then extended by geology and later through quantum physics and genetics. Remove the whole science of sedimentation, and we still have all the other indicators of deep time. The oldest rock dates come from careful examination of isotope distributions in each layer found within individual fluorite crystals, that are found in most igneous and many sedimentary rocks. Where they are found in the strata (”the geological column”) is irrelevant to determining their age.”
The entire process of dating sediments is full of good technique, but not objective to say the least. More data is rejected than is accepted because the assumptions that are used to extrapolate are not first placed intot he crucible of needing to conform to the expected outcomes.
Molten lava known to have hardened in the twentieth century can be dated to billions of years if the proper portion of the sample is "selected" for study. Does this mean the rock materials existed for a long time or that the ratios of molten isotopes were altered by the affects of heat, pressure and gravity upon the magma?
Anyone who claims to be able to use a physical science scientific measuring tool to extrapolate is not measuring, they are calculating a theoretical number based upon an assumed error free methodolgy.
The theoretical number of an extrapolation is arrived at based upon the philosophical pre-disposition to extend data in known real time backward or forward into perhaps non-existent time. Mathematics is marvelous for describing existing relationships in data, but I will not place undue confidence in data that must be screened to fit the desired outcome.
More radioistopic data is rejected than accepted because the calculated ages don't fit with the desired outcome.
"Flood Basalt"? Basalt is an igneous intrusion. It can be found in any layer and traced back to a particular magma upwelling (volcano, caldera) that is younger than the layers on which it intrudes. Please cite where basalt was found inserted within the iridium layer.
There is only one anomalous iridium stratum from the last 300,000,000 years that spans the whole planet. It is found at every sedimentary location that was forming at that time in the world. The thickness of the layer (any layer) depends on the local formation conditions at the time. As tree rings differ for the same year at different locations.
There are other iridium layers, but they are thinner and less widespread. Most of those have been traced to smaller impacts. None to volcanoes or flooding events.
Like all heavy elements, iridium is normally found in widely scattered local concentrations, usually associated with a major igneous upthrust through the crust. It is generally rare in the crust itself.
Geological strata do line up for several hundred million years much like tree rings do for 12,000 years and Antarctic ice core layers for about 900,000 years. Here is a comparison of some of the dating methods used in various locations.
Deep time is an inescapable conclusion, not an a priori assumption. Archaeologists have shown that even human arts (writing, weaving, painting, sculpture) go back several times father than James Ussher deemed possible.
But since deep time isn't the issue, the question still is, how can a single flood leave a thin, heavy layer surrounded by lighter layers? Evey flood ever examined or detected leaves a single layer of sediment. At most it might leave a wide graduated-by-density layer with the heavy stuff at the bottom.
I still don't get "out source". This particular iridium layer question still applies if the impact was only 6,500 years ago instead of the 65,000,000 to which every piece of evidence points.
I'm not sure what this is supposed to mean, but I think the general idea of Karl's comment is that geologists willfully ignore or suppress data that doesn't fit their "desired outcome." Any evidence for this? Also, project much?
Going back to poor William of Ockham (or Occam, in Latin), what is the need for an elaborate Rube Goldberg theory of a one-time event, instead of a theory that relies on easily observable processes? And which also relies on asserting, without evidence, that geologists are involved in a massive conspiracy to suppress evidence?
Fresh lava can be dated as recent only by those who ignore the standard techniques developed to accurately date it. If you read Creation Science reports, if they mention their dating methods at all, they say they use the (long discredited) "Whole Rock" dating technique. If one uses unreliable techniques, one can get very interesting data that has little to do with accurate science. There are pieces of old rocks mixed in with lava, and these can be identified in several ways to eliminate the dating error. There are also often older rocks in sediment layers, that have to be properly dealt with.
No one has ever found any effect of temperature gravity or pressure on radioactivity. Yes, they have looked hard for it. Outside of comic books and Creationist literature, it is accepted that there is no change in nuclear behavior because of chemical-level characteristics. Well, until you get to pressures not available in normal matter, as in the core of a star where gravity overcomes electrical repulsion.
That individual scientists downplay evidence that seems to disagree with previous measurements is a known difficulty in the methodology. But the "bad" evidence is still supposed to be reported and explained. Anyone finding a significant amount of disagreeing evidence may be on his way to a Nobel prize, if he can explain why the evidence is "off". Especially if it topples an existing idea.
Deep time was gradually developed as the old accepted ideas were gradually pushed back. Before the American Revolution, the world and universe were accepted as only as old as Bible scholars said. By the time Darwin was born, it was approaching a million. By the start of the 20th century, it was hundreds of millions. It stopped aging in the 1970's, at the current estimate. The oldest dates given for our planet are assumed to be when part of the crust started to congeal. Pangaea came later, probably after the moon splashed off.
Here is a discussion of some of Hovind's favorite Young Earth talking points.
Check out the Deccan "flood basalts" perhaps misnamed but the igneous material has iridium sandwiched in thin layers. These layers spread widely with no volcano being buiit. The presumed opening down to the core is little understood.
See:
http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=…
and:
http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=…
and:
http://gsa.confex.com/gsa/2003AM/finalprogram/abs…
and:
http://filebox.vt.edu/artsci/geology/mclean/Dinos…
From the above
In the early 1980s, the K-T boundary iridium enrichment provided the sole basis for the Alvarez impact theory. At the January 1981 national meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting held in Toronto, Canada, I proposed that the Deccan Traps mantle plume volcanism likely released the K-T boundary iridium onto earth's surface. I did so later at the May 1981 Ottawa K-TEC II meeting, and at the October 1981 Snowbird I Conference (See References). Earth's core is rich in iridium and the Deccan Traps mantle plume, originating at earth's core-mantle interface, likely served as a conduit to transport iridium from the core to earth's surface. In fact, the hotspot volcano that produced the Deccan Traps (Piton de la Fournaise on Reunion) is still releasing iridium today (Toutain and Meyer, 1989).
Analytical science has the null hypothesis to contend with, does it not?
No relationships can be verified until their is statistical support for the null hypothesis to be even considered wrong. Long time frames have dismantled the interest in looking for geologic connections, it has stymied searching for invalid null hypotheses.
By presuming millions of years between events that are historic, the frustrations of not understanding what actually happened in any catastrophic event are pushed aside and therefore any attempt to reconsider connectedness between elements of the geologic data is rendered impotent and in fact not even a possibility until the evidence can't be ignored.
Of course any data that points to connections between geologic data can be easily discounted because the null hypothesis is much easier and comfortable to believe.
This means that when relationships and connections between events can not easily be verified or even scientifically modeled the easiest way to remove the possibility of ever finding relationships is to put long time frames between the events. This is what the geologic column has done. When ever evidence from a clear catastrophic event shows up it is wrangled nearly to death because of the basic challenge catastrophies bring to the assumptions of the long geologic ages.
This is both why there is no clear hard unquestioned evidence for evolution but also why it is not considered scientific to question the assumed millions of years between unrelated geologic records.
For individuals wanting to believe in nothing but chance and randomness bringing life into being, it was easy to go from nearly a million, to an erroneous estimate of 4 to 5 billion because that is the easiest way to guarantee the null hypothesis can never be used to disprove the geologic records.
The inability to disprove the null hypothesis regarding connections between the cascading catastrophic events of The Biblical global flood renders any evidence however questionable that points to deep time as acceptable, but any evidence that points to interconnected catastrophies as needing more proof than is normally required because the model is beyond attempts to falsify it.
So I did a little reading about the Deccan basalts:
That eruption might well even have been caused by a lesser strike or a subsequent upwelling from the same event that left the impact crater at Chicxulub. Or just an independent penetration that created a moving hot spot, such as Hawaii or the Bermuda hot spot.
Iridium is about as common in the core as it is in space. But although the mechanisms of precipitation from space to the surface are well known, there is no known mechanism to transport material from the core, through the thick mantle and the crust to the surface that wouldn't also melt most of the crust.
Even MantlePlumes.org discussion of the Deccan Traps don't claim that any significant amount of core material is transported upward by these surface events. They claim that the plumes may reach down as far as the core-mantle boundary, but not cross it.
Again, the dating of these events is not based on the assumption of deep time, but rather contributes to the evidence for it.
Vicki Baker stated:
"Going back to poor William of Ockham (or Occam, in Latin), what is the need for an elaborate Rube Goldberg theory of a one-time event, instead of a theory that relies on easily observable processes? And which also relies on asserting, without evidence, that geologists are involved in a massive conspiracy to suppress evidence?"
I do not believe this is a conspiracy, it is the expected outworking of naturalistic science that assumes the null hypothesis until the data shows otherwise. Once a disconnect with recorded history was assumed proper because of the complexities of cascading catastrophes, it became more and more difficult to reconnect even simple obvious events. I'm all for observable processes, its just that the observable processes in a cascading catastrophe have to be pieced together by someone willing to attempt to do so.
If there is no will to connect the geologic data so it might have to condense down a few million years here and there, there is certainly no way to ever make the null hypothesis work in favor of finding scientific truth regarding historical geology.
Take for example how an impact like Chicxulub vaporized organic life forms in its immediate environment and burned tremendous amount of forests at a distance from the impact
Limestone left behind from the original flash and impact of Chicxulub in the vicinity would have produced sediments that looked extremely old because they would have contained mostly CaCO3 shell forming organism and little if any non-mineral rich life forms. If the organism was more water than minerals, the salts, the minerals, salts and carbon would have just become part of the limestone. There are ways for extreme heat to produce what we would call the oldest layers of the geologic record.
This is not a Rube-Goldberg with seemingly no rational for the connections being formed. The connections are waiting to be made, are there any serious students of science willing to connect the pieces?
Here is evidence that connects the geologic long ages.
http://www.youtube.com/v/lXDBX99qePA
This WILL BE discounted as meaningless in the scheme of things because of the inability to accept that the connection of the null hypothesis with long ages have become part and parcel of the way naturalistic science operates.
The nested loops with circular reasoning have been so entrenched in modern academia that an ocean or a land dwelling dinosaur found alive today would be claimed to be an anomaly or a clone created on purpose to make the establishment appear to be in error when actually there is nothing to be concerned about the fact of long ages of geological history on planet earth.
Karl said—"Of course any data that points to connections between geologic data can be easily discounted because the null hypothesis is much easier and comfortable to believe."
Bear in mind that when Lyell first proposed an older earth hypothesis, this was fought tooth and nail because it was "easier and more comfortable" to believe in Biblical time scales. The acceptance of a more accurate measure of the age of the Earth was a difficult battle that required mountains of evidence to break down the resistance to it. You seem to be trying to refight that battle by retrofitting data onto theoretical structures that no longer support reasonable conclusions.
Why is it so damn difficult for otherwise intelligent people to accept that those old stories are no more than exaggerations of what were local events or fairytales constructed to support a worldview that at the time had little to gainsay it? Do you honestly think you're going to go to hell for believing things happened differently than depicted in the Pentateuch?
Mark asked:
"Why is it so damn difficult for otherwise intelligent people to accept that those old stories are no more than exaggerations of what were local events or fairytales constructed to support a worldview that at the time had little to gainsay it? Do you honestly think you’re going to go to hell for believing things happened differently than depicted in the Pentateuch?"
I didn't say anything about anyone's character or intelligence. "Recorded history verses stories" is the issue you seem to question. I certainly can't vouch for every thing written in the past or Present being fact or fiction. I chose to agree with what to me is more reasonable concerning philosphical matters of great concern to me.
The Delk Track has nothing to do with the iridium layer, but we did discuss it here.
One piece of evidence of questionable provenance and examined only with questionable methods is unlikely to change any minds. The video is very persuasive, unless you already have some understanding of materials science, geology, and/or anatomy.
There is a difference between "circular reasoning" and reinforced understanding. Circular reasoning involves a set of conclusions, each dependent only on the other conclusions, with no hint of independent data.
No part of isotopic dating methods depend on time being any particular length. They depend on the weak nuclear force being consistent (not necessarily constant, although all observations so far (accurate to parts per billion per decade) indicate that it is as constant as the gravitational constant and the speed of light). Ages produced by multiple isotopic methods agree with numbers produced by other methods of dating, like tree rings, ice layers, sedimentation ("geological column" studies), magnetic orientation, thermoluminescence, amino acid racimization, tectonic travel rates, gene drift, etc).
The Delk footprint video that Karl presented says that there is no way of knowing where the footprint came from. But any geologist could check the isotopic signature of the rock, and locate the formation that it came from. Oddly, those in possession of the rock seem reluctant to consult actual geologists or paleontologists to verify this potentially Nobel prize-winning piece of evidence.
Just the type of response I expected.
No one using the university isolated time scale of geologic history would dare say that even a few stray dinsoaurs could have escaped the extinction events that occurred millions of years prior to the appearance of man. Dinosaurs are just too big, awkward and dumb to have managed that one.
This is how every single piece of contary evidence is treated. The interpretations in the geologic records can't possibly be wrong and deep time (an unfalsifable concept) is the answer for anything that doesn't fit the model.
A "single piece of evidence" (NOT) means nothing in regards to the voluminous work of countless scientists who had no philosophical or theological bias in how they did their work.
No part of isotopic dating methods depend on time being any particular length. They depend on the weak nuclear force being consistent (not necessarily constant, although all observations so far (accurate to parts per billion per decade) indicate that it is as constant as the gravitational constant and the speed of light). Ages produced by multiple isotopic methods agree with numbers produced by other methods of dating, like tree rings, ice layers, sedimentation (”geological column” studies), magnetic orientation, thermoluminescence, amino acid racimization, tectonic travel rates, gene drift, etc).
Place your sample of any radioactive material under or in the the flood waters which themselves would have acted like a neutron moderator and this would have affected their half-lives by causing accelerated half-lives if nothing else.
Are half-lives constant under hundreds of feet of water. I doubt it very seriously.
Have someone willing to take it on the chin investigate that one and let me know what they come up with.
Karl said–"I didn’t say anything about anyone’s character or intelligence. "
Perhaps not intentionally, but by suggesting people believe—how did you put it?—oh yes "data can be easily discounted because the null hypothesis is much easier and comfortable to believe.”
Ease and comfort of belief pertains to commitment to reason, intelligence, and, I would assume, character. This tends to paint people a certain way and suggests—strongly—that their beliefs can be discounted as the result somehow of sloppy thinking or a lack of integrity, hence the point of my response. My apologies if I misinterpretted the underpinnings of your disputations.
Karl – experiments on the effects of pressure and temperature on nuclear forces were extensively done in the early 20th century. Nothing in the world of electro-magnetic or chemical effects affect the weak or strong nuclear forces. Pressure and temperature are measurements of the interactions between the fields of the electron shells of atoms and molecules, i.e: electrical energy. Chemical interactions also ignore the isotopic pedigree of atoms, caring only about the electron shells. After those experiments, scientists came up with the idea of using decay rates to tell time.
Once you know how fermions and bosons interact, the roles of the weak and strong nuclear forces, and get a clue about what a nuclear moderator actually does, then you will understand that flood water of any depth or composition could not change any nuclear decay rate any more than the position and speed of other planets changes cellular mitosis rates on Earth.
A couple of hundred feet depth is moderately dangerous to scuba divers, but not noticeable to molecules or atoms, much less to the nuclei deep within them.
"University isolated time scale"? Many competing institutions from competing countries (like the USSR vs. US) all trying to prove the others wrong came up with the current time scale. Researchers are always trying to refine or even overturn it. That's how science works.
Some dinosaurs have been shown to have survived beyond the C-T boundary event. Those smaller scavenger species who already were living in frigid environments lasted for years, possibly generations, until the massive extinction of most other plants and animals caught up with them.
"Once you know how fermions and bosons interact, the roles of the weak and strong nuclear forces, and get a clue about what a nuclear moderator actually does, then you will understand that flood water of any depth or composition could not change any nuclear decay rate any more than the position and speed of other planets changes cellular mitosis rates on Earth.
A couple of hundred feet depth is moderately dangerous to scuba divers, but not noticeable to molecules or atoms, much less to the nuclei deep within them."
I understand that the theory explains nothing. it is a statistical mathematical random flip of the coin that has no interest in looking for any types of interactions which might actually make the weak force become stronger and lead to the decay of the nucleus.
Has anyone placed a radioactive substance with a measureable amount of radioactivity down into a thousand or more feet of water and seen what happens to the emission rate? Until you do such, again you are assuming the null hyopothesis is correct and not worth anyones time of day.
If it proves the constancy of half-lives wrong this would be worth of a noble prize now wouldn't it.
Karl says:
Dan says that extensive experiments were made in the last century regarding the effects of temperature and pressure on nuclear forces. Have you made an extensive review of the scientific literature to see if any experiments relevant to your scenario have been done? Do you have a theory as to why immersion in a thousand or more feet of water would have an effect?
Sounds like an incredibly cheap experiment to conduct, unless I'm missing something. Send some isotopes and a geiger counter down in a lead container and rig up a way to transmit the data. If there's really a nobel prize in it, and if it would topple the theory of Deep Time, what is the Discovery Institute waiting for?
Karl ignores history. Back in the late 1800's and early 1900's, they did those tests that you seem to think original. Read about the Curies and Geiger. More recently, most nuclear reactors ARE in deep water. So we have a 60 year history of continuously studying all aspects of radioisotope behavior under water. Various isotopes have also been extensively measured in a vacuum, and in orbit, and out beyond Pluto, and on the floor of the oceans, and heated to a plasma, and chilled to absolute zero. The decay rate of unstable isotopes is not measurably affected by these piddling supra-nuclear conditions.
Neutrino detectors are huge, deep caverns full of water. In order to detect something as elusive as neutrinos, they have to be very, VERY sure of how isotopes behave in deep water. And of the constant value of the weak interaction, that affects neutrinos and quarks.
As I said before, no one even considered using isotopes for dating until it was certain how they behaved under all possible conditions of temperature, pressure, and mixtures of substances. They have now been using and calibrating them for half a century.
Your question emanates deep ignorance of what an isotope is, what the nuclear forces are, and what are the thousands of sources of extensive data that support atomic theory from Bohr forward. You say
You basically don't even understand what "theory" means, much less what the theory of weak nuclear interaction is about. Nor (I suspect) do you understand the use of statistics in the validation of theories, nor what is meant by randomness in quantum theory.
btw: If the weak force were stronger then half lives would be longer, not shorter.
You also suffer from that odd idea that science is based on what some authority once said. It isn't. It is based on how they proved a theory, and how it can be proved further.
"Theory" in science means falsifiable and repeatedly proven. Deep time is a philosophical phrase, not a theory. But any selected short time can be falsified. Pick an age, and you can test if something is older.
No one has yet proven that anything in the universe is older than about 15,000,000,000 years. On Earth, the upper limit is less then 5,000,000,000.
I say, "Stop picking on Karl. That kind of schoolyard bullying has to stop immediately!"
I am asking about hundreds or thousands of feet of water. Show me the references in the literature where this has been experimented with.
Be careful when you say all factors were examined. Some factors weren't even considered I'm sure.
Reactors are in water because of the effect the water has upon the known presence of neutrons. It slows them down to better enable interaction with nuclei. How do you think stable nuclei placed in a reactor are rendered unstable, they interact with the known abundance of neutrons.
Again show me the work of the Curies and Geiger that studied half-lives while the material was still in the environment of very deep waters.
Proj: They've got Karl down and they stop kicking him but then he keeps trying to get up!
A model for a non-spontaneous half-life model is simply this.
Existing atoms do have a built in tendency to decay more readily under the conditions that cause them to decay.
The primary conditions that causes them to decay is for the nucleus to interact with either increased levels of energy in the high energy end of the electromagnetic spectrum, i.e. high energy x-rays or gamma radiation, or the nucleus needs to have it's internal arrangments and motions interferred with by particles themselves.
Obviously when a neutron gets absorbed into a nucleus this greatly increases the likelihood a nuclear change occuring.
However, a non-absorbing impact or an oblique impact by a neutron (possibly even a neitrino) with the proper alignment and momentum wouldn't show up as a change to atomic mass or atomic number at the impact, but it could cascade into an internal changes to the nucleus which could be responsible for tipping the nucleus into its various decay possibilities.
The deeper the water gets (whether its heavy water or not) the more likely neutrons are going to be slowed, which would bring about a greater likelihood of an interaction be it an absorption of the particle or the impact of the particle in an obliqe fashion.
Radioactivity (and changes to half-live) should therefore show a direct relationship to depth of water.
The deeper the sample goes it should give off radiation at an increased rate. Materials having been placed under great depths of water should therefore have experienced accelerated decay rates.