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A simple Example of Evolutionism's fiction

Discussion in 'Free-For-All Archives' started by BobRyan, Nov 25, 2004.

  1. BobRyan

    BobRyan Well-Known Member

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    By way of context. It is fully expected that the junk-science methods and bias of evolutionists will result in imaginative “Stories” and lots of arm waiving – but little by way of actual “fact”. That is why each time they claim to find “actual sequences” in the fossil record that SHOW smooth stepwise evolution – they have cause to highlight these as “Shining examples” of their fairytales having substance in “real life” in real empirical science!

    Bible believing – Genesis-believing Christians are always amazed when an evolutionist claims to have found such a compelling sequence IN the fossil record. But as this small sample shows – the “truth is” that evolutionist speculation only survives in a factless void. Once a reasonable amount of data is available on the subject – they must confess their fraudulent practices.

    The Horse series is no exception to the rule.

    The WILD, Classic, Traditional (Darwinian) claim for Horse evolution:
    Sound familiar? It should -- How “LIKE” their efforts with Archaeopteryx and Bird evolution!!

    But are those discredited positions of evolutionism – still part of the faith and practice of some devotees of evolutionism today??

    http://www.baptistboard.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php/topic/28/2900/4.html#000051

    </font>[/QUOTE]No basis for such wild evolutionist SEQUENCES:

    [/quote]

    In time, fact replace evolutionism’s fiction:

    From these quotes we discover that EVEN among evolutionism’s faithful the certainty of grandiose claims for change – becomes LESS true over time as Real science confronts junk-science speculation with “details” replacing guesswork with some “fact”.
    The above statement is a classic confession that data is never the friend of evolutionists – it merely unravels the twisted layers of guesswork and speculation built around skimpy data, wild guesses and evolutionist religious fervor.

    Gould sees the same thing in the discrediting of the horse series sequence published by Simpson.

    Result: Atheist Evolutionists disparage the horse series fraud

    Additional points to keep in mind:
    a) There is no site in the world where the evolutionary succession of the horse can be seen. Rather, the fossil fragments have been gathered from several continents on the assumption of evolutionary progress.

    b) Bones of the supposed earliest horses have been found at or near the surface. Sometimes they are found right next to modern horse fossils.

    In Christ,

    Bob
     
  2. BobRyan

    BobRyan Well-Known Member

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    Summary “problem” for this fraudulent Horse series presentation by Simpson and others.

    Here is the really sad part for objective clear thinkers.

    The erroneous data was foisted onto the public "as through true" from the priestly temples of evolutionism – they did NOT simply argue from some artist's drawings that "HERE is how we THINK fossils will be found some day showing how the horse evolved". (As UTEOTW seems to HOPE they were saying).

    Rather they get real fossils with real feet and “show them lined up” as if found that way - and then they “claim” this is the fossil evidence “showing” horse evolution as it exists IN the fossil record, real animals, real feet, real bones, real sequences. (You can’t get rid of the feet without getting rid the animal and confessing that the sequence was not actually FOUND that way in the fossil record)

    Yet they present those animal fossils AS IF it is a factual find – a sequence observed IN the fossil record. Fact – not simply speculation propping up the myths of evolutionism.

    Yet even Simpson admits that presenting such sequences as fact is intellectually dishonest.

    </font>[/QUOTE]
    Now see UTEOTW use weasel words and misdirection to try and doge the obvious problem.

    Simpson was presenting fossil sequence as FACT - as related - as ancestors WITH FEET.

    There is no change to declare that as FALSE without taking the ANIMALS that the feet come with - with you.

    And then what is the horrible implication about the "faith" of the devotees that initially presented the fraudulent sequence and those that today still try to defend it??

    In Christ,

    Bob
     
  3. BobRyan

    BobRyan Well-Known Member

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    Efforts to recover credibility among Evolutionists

    Gould argues for a jumbled fossil assortment in the geologic column instead of sequences.
    Gould argues that real data – allows some of the junk-science speculations (such as the discredited horse series) to be thrown out the window. (Discarded – as Raup notes)
    Since some would argue for taking larger chunks of Simpson’s position and dissecting them – here is one.

    #1. We have to agree that it IS a classic example of evolutionism promoting its beliefs.
    #2. The uniform transition sequence of animal to animal, species to species, fossil to fossil – never happened as it was presented. It was a contrived sequence using REAL fossils and simply MAKING stuff up as it pleased the priests of evolutionism at the time.

    By contrast – we would have “expected” them to present QUESSWORK as a series of artists drawings and pictures of unknown – mythical models that they HOPED would be found in the fossil record one day. INSTEAD they present actual finds of actual fossils and show an actual sequence. Then later admit that they are simply overstating the case and can not actually prove any of what they have said as a real SEQUENCE in the fossil record.


    </font>[/QUOTE]Hopefully these EXACT quotes will be helpful to those who actually have an interest in the facts of the case.

    In Christ,

    Bob
     
  4. BobRyan

    BobRyan Well-Known Member

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    And to think some of evolutionism's more devout members still hold up the non-facts of the horse series as "The best example" of evolutionism in action - and there I must agree.

    This is "the best".

    In Christ,

    Bob
     
  5. UTEOTW

    UTEOTW New Member

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    Oh boy. More bad quoting. Do you have any other tactic that to tell half truths about what good men have said.

    First you 1944 quote from Simpson. For the billionth time, this is a quote about puncutated equilibrium. The fossil record is much busier and jerky thanwas expects, oh, a hundred years ago. Do you think that this has any bearing on the horse series as you claim? Remember, this is the man who said of the horse "The line from Eohippus to Hypohippus exemplifies a fairly continuous phyletic evolution." and "The evolution of the horse family, Equidae...is still a classic example of evolution in action."

    Then you have Raup. This is a quote about how the simple fossil progression of the horse had to be modified as the details were filled in with an increasing number of specimens and the actual series was found to be jerky and bushy. There is nothing bad about the horse series in here.

    Then you have Gould talking about the bushiness of the horse series and not Gould saying there are any problems with it. See the pattern? As more dat comes in the picture becomes better.

    Rensberger is a journalist. He also said in the same article you quote from that "Recent discoveries have only strengthened Darwin's epochal conclusion that all forms of life evolved from a common ancestor. Genetic analysis, for example, has shown that every organism is governed by the same genetic code controlling the same biochemical processes."

    Then a Gould quote on puncuated equilibrium. What is supposed to be the problem there?

    Then you have a false quote from Berlinski. Unusual fr you is that Berlinski is the one lying in this case. But he is nt an evolutionary biologists either. He has no standing to comment.

    Then you have Eldredge. What he found "lamentable" was that the museum still had the old simple pression of the horse sequence when the full sequence that was known by that time should have been on display in his opinion.

    Then you have your infamous Simpson quote again. Simpson was arguing that you do not generally find simple, steady progressions of A to B to C in nature. You find bushy and jerky series. The rest of the quote, which you predicably edit out to make it say something different, goes on to describe trends in the evolution of the horse and to call the horse " a classic example of evolution in action."

    "There is no site in the world where the evolutionary succession of the horse can be seen. Rather, the fossil fragments have been gathered from several continents on the assumption of evolutionary progress."

    Nope. All found in North America except for some of the side branches.

    " Bones of the supposed earliest horses have been found at or near the surface. Sometimes they are found right next to modern horse fossils. "

    Nope. Really Bob, I have asked you to support this claim, also. Is this going to become a parallel of the "true bird" claims? There is overlap between many of the individual genera. Of which there are something like 50. But you cannot support the assertion that the earlist genera are found alongside the latest.

    "Now see UTEOTW use weasel words and misdirection to try and doge the obvious problem."

    It is "weasel words" to pull out the full quote and show that the author was talking about something different than what you claimed? You have funny definitions!
     
  6. UTEOTW

    UTEOTW New Member

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    How about some examples of YE fiction since the only fiction you presented was, well, what you presented. When looked at fully, we find that you are the one distorting statements and twisting words.

    http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/magazines/docs/v21n3_date-dilemma.asp

    Now the good Dr. Snelling claims that he found a piece of wood in a Triassic era sandstone and had it dated. The Triassic was roughly 200 million years ago. But it C14 dated to about 33000 years old. Obviously this means C14 dating is flawed, right?

    Nope. What it means is that Snelling took an iron concretion and presented it for dating. Sandstones tend to be porous and water can flow through them and deposit minerals in the sandstone. Iron concretions are one type of deposit that can be formed and they are known to geologists to give incorrect dates because they are not organic in nature and due to the flowing water are likely contaminated.

    The head of the C14 dating group at Geochron Labs, where Snelling had the sample sent for analysis, told Snelling that the sample was not wood but likely an iron concretion. Snelling said to date it anyway. He also still reported the sample as wood and claims that this shows that dating is flawed. He will not submit his work to peer review nor will he allow others to inspect the sample.
     
  7. UTEOTW

    UTEOTW New Member

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    http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs/4232cen_s1997.asp

    AIG claims that actual red blood cells were found of a dinosaur. And since a blood cell cannot survive long, this must mean a young earth. But not so fast, my friend.

    Now what was actually found was this. A very well preserved dinosaur was found. So well preserved that the fossils of the individual cells could be observed. (There are other interpretations, even less kind to the YECers.) Within these cells were a few organic molecules. They removed these molecules and had them tested. On the basis of a number of tests, they found that the compounds contained heme (the oxygen carrying group in blood cells) and concluded that the molecules were from the dinosaur tissue. The abstract reference is given below. So, a scientist reports then they found a well preserved fossil that contained fragments of heme and AIG reports that actual blood cells were found. Junk science.

    http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/abstract/94/12/6291
     
  8. UTEOTW

    UTEOTW New Member

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    The RATE group has proposed that C14 dating was inaccurate because they were able to obtain a young date from a diamond in a supposedly hundreds of millions of years old formation.

    A little digging reveals that the age they got was about 57000 years. This is significant. Why? Because this is beyond the range of accurate ages possible for C14 dating. For a perfectly preserved sample, about 50000 years ids the limit. Beyond that, it becomes impossible to separate the C14 signal from the background radiation no matter how well shieled the lab. So a date older than 50000 years only means that it is older than 50000 years. No way to tell how much older.

    The RATE people were clear to point out that the C14 found could not have been from contamination because it was locked inside a diamond. Whay they did not tell you was that background radiation will for small amounts of C14 even in a diamond.

    So if you were to ask a geologists what date to expect if you were to carbon date a diamond (after he picked himself up off the floor from his laughing fit) I would expect him to predict that you would get the meaningless age of about 50000 years. When RATE gets this predicable answer, they turn around and claim that it means that dating does not work. Me thinks they are hiding something.
     
  9. UTEOTW

    UTEOTW New Member

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    Morris, Henry M., 1974. Scientific Creationism, Green Forest, AR: Master Books, pp. 146-147.

    Morris based this on a legitimate paper [Funkhouser, J. G. and J. J. Naughton, 1968. Radiogenic helium and argon in ultramafic inclusions from Hawaii. Journal of Geophysical Research 73(14): 4601-4607. ] thatwas fdoing testing on some rocks from a recent lava flow in Hawaii.

    Now, when rocks are heated to a sufficiently high temperature and are melted, the argon in the rocks escape. When the lava hardens into rock, the potassium-40 begins decaying into Ar-39. By measuring the ratios, a date can be determined. Now if the rocks are not heated sufficiently, the argon does not escape and the rocks will date older than they really are.

    Funkhouser and Naughton were purposely removing xenoliths from the rocks that did not melt to see how much older they would date. Of course they dated as old because they had not been reset by melting. They also tested the bulk rocks and found that the ages were zero, as expected.

    So Morris takes the data that measured too old, ignores the known reason that it dated too old, and then claims that radiometric dating does not work. If he actually read the paper, he should know better. It was easy to see and was even the purpose of the work. Just more YEC "junk."
     
  10. UTEOTW

    UTEOTW New Member

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  11. UTEOTW

    UTEOTW New Member

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    Dr. "Dino" Hovind himself said "Well, now, hold it. If you want to just pick one item and that's supposed to prove relationship, did you know that human Cytochrom [sic] C is closest to a sunflower? So really the sunflowers are our closest relative folks."

    Now since humans and chimps have identical cyctochrome C, how can the sunflower be closer?

    Here are the codes, BTW, for each.

    Human:
    mgdvekgkki fimkcsqcht vekggkhktg pnlhglfgrk tgqapgysyt aanknkgiiw gedtlmeyle npkkyipgtk mifvgikkke eradliaylk katne

    Chimp:
    mgdvekgkki fimkcsqcht vekggkhktg pnlhglfgrk tgqapgysyt aanknkgiiw gedtlmeyle npkkyipgtk mifvgikkke eradliaylk katne

    Sunflower:
    asfaeapagd pttgakifkt kcaqchtvek gaghkqgpnl nglfgrqsgt tagysysaan knmaviween tlydyllnpk kyipgtkmvf pglkkpqera dliaylktst a
     
  12. UTEOTW

    UTEOTW New Member

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    http://www.icr.org/pubs/imp/imp-224.htm

    "The observation that obviously recent lava flows from the north rim of Grand Canyon give ages even older than the deeply buried lava flows, challenges the basic assumptions upon which the isochron dating method is based. The discovery of an "old age" in an obviously "young" series of lava flows has encouraged further research at ICR."

    Basically what Austin is claiming is that isochron dating does not work because it yielded a date for a lava flow older than a lava flow that was underneath it. But there are some things that he is not telling the reader.

    When selecting samples for isochron dating, they must be cogenetic, that is they must have been isotopically homogeneous. Austin selected samples that did not meet this requirement. Instead they came from four different flows and a phenocryst, a grain that was not melted when the lava flowed but that likely solidified in the magma chamber from which the flows came.

    Even better is that geologists will sometimes deliberately choose non-cogenetic samples. Why? Because they can be used to determine the age of the common source material for the different flows. Austin is aware of this possiblity because he cites an article on this very thing. ( http://www.icr.org/pubs/imp/imp-178.htm , C. Brooks, D.E. James, and S.R. Hart, "Ancient Lithosphere: Its Role in Young Continental Volcanism," Science, 193 (17 Sept. 1976): 1086-1094.)

    So what this means is that he was dating the lithosphere under the older flow. This was already known to be older than the other flow (it is underneath for the obvious one).

    Austin incorrectly carried out an isochron dating, knew what his mistakes were, knew what he was actually dating, and still submits this as evidence that isochron dating does not work.
     
  13. UTEOTW

    UTEOTW New Member

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    More stuff from Baumgardner and the RATE group.

    http://www.icr.org/newsletters/impact/impactoct03.html

    "In view of the profound significance of these AMS 14C measurements, the ICR Radioisotopes and the Age of the Earth (RATE) team has undertaken its own AMS 14C analyses of such fossil material.2 The first set of samples consisted of ten coals obtained from the U. S. Department of Energy Coal Sample Bank maintained at the Pennsylvania State University. The ten samples include three coals from the Eocene part of the geological record, three from the Cretaceous, and four from the Pennsylvanian. These samples were analyzed by one of the foremost AMS laboratories in the world. Figure 1 below shows in histogram form the results of these analyses...Applying the uniformitarian approach of extrapolating 14C decay into the indefinite past translates the measured 14C/12C ratios into ages that are on the order of 50,000 years."

    Now, remember what we learned earlier when the RATE group tried to C14 date a diamond. Same thing applies here except that you have to add the coal is much more porous than the diamond and has the additional possibility of contamination. And a trace amount of contamination is sufficient to give ages on the order of the 50,000 years they report. Background radiation will also convert some of the carbon in the coal to C14 on a continuous basis. This may be even more likely for coal than for a diamond because the coal ash itself can contain trace amounts of radiactive oxides. Plus, 50,000 years old is right at the detectable limit for C14 in a sample.

    In other words, once again these guys used C14 in an inappropriate manner, got an age that merely indicates that the sample is at least 50,000 years old (possibly much older, it is impossible to tell), and yet will report this as a problem for C14 dating.
     
  14. UTEOTW

    UTEOTW New Member

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    Here is another good one...

    I will be quoting Walt Brown from this page.

    http://www.creationscience.com/onlinebook/FrozenMammoths8.html

    You can also see Kent Hovind ("Dr. Dino") repeat the claims here.

    http://www.drdino.com/QandA/index.jsp?varFolder=CreationEvolution&varPage=CarbonPotassiumargondating.jsp

    "This probably explains why different parts of the first Vollosovitch mammoth had widely varying radiocarbon ages—29,500 and 44,000 RCY. One part of Dima was 40,000 RCY, another was 26,000 RCY, and “wood found immediately around the carcass” was 9,000 –10,000 RCY. The lower leg of the Fairbanks Creek mammoth had a radiocarbon age of 15,380 RCY, while its skin and flesh were 21,300 RCY.147 The two Colorado Creek mammoths had radiocarbon ages of 22,850 +/- 670 and 16,150 +/- 230 years, respectively."

    Obviously C14 dating cannot work because different parts of the same animals are dating to widely different ages. Not so fast, my friend. Let's check the references.

    The source cited for the first claim is

    Troy L. Pewe: “Quaternary Stratigraphic nomenclature in unglaciated Central Alaska” Geological survey professional paper #862 US GOV printing office 1975, pg. 30.

    Now, no where in this can anyone seem to find any mammoths at all dated to 29500 or 44000 years old, so it is unclear where these dates came from.

    If you will go to the reference material for the Dima mammoth claim

    Ukraintseva, V. V., 1993. Vegetation Cover and Environment of the "Mammoth Epoch" in Siberia. Hot Springs, SD: Mammoth Site of Hot Springs of South Dakota.

    you will find that there really was not two different ages found for the mammoth with a third for the surrounding plant material. In fact, the dates for the mammoth and for the surrounding deposits are all consistent.

    And if you look at the first source, you will soon discove the problem with the claims on the Fairbanks Creek mammoth. The 15380 years old date was from a mammoth found under about 80 ft of silt in 1940 by Osborn. The 21300 year old date was a baby mammoth found in 1948 by Geist in a beaver dam. These are not the same animal nor were they even close.

    It is more YEC "junk" of the lowest caliber to claim that two different mammoths found 8 years apart in completely different circumstances were the same animal. And then to try and use this as evidence against the validity of C14 dating...
     
  15. UTEOTW

    UTEOTW New Member

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    One of the common arguments you run across is that the earth cannot be old based on the rate at which various salts run into the ocean. This line originated with Henry Morris (Morris, Henry M., 1974. Scientific Creationism, Green Forest, AR: Master Books, pp. 153-155.) and is still used by young earthers today. For an example see ICR.

    http://www.icr.org/pubs/imp/imp-017.htm

    The origin is work published in 1965 (Riley, J. P. and G. Skirrow, (editors). 1965. Chemical Oceanography (Volume I) Academic Press, New York.) where the residence times of various metals in the ocean were listed. Now the first mistake is that these are residence times which is how long, on average, the metal stays in the ocean before being removed. But Morris calls it the time "to accumulate in ocean from river inflow." This is a major difference and error.*

    Now the range of residence times is from 100 years for aluminum to 260 million years for sodium. Usually YECers will just quote the few in the middle that come out to be in the 6 - 10 thousand range. (Props to ICR here for at least including all the values even if they did not tell the truth about what is meant by the data.)

    The other thing that they fail to tell you is that these elements are known to be at or very close to equlibrium, that is that the rate in is equal to the rate out. There is no net accumulation. This means that even if the residence time of nickel is 9000 years that this cannot be used to determine an age because you have no way of knowing how long it has been at equilibrium.

    SO now we have exposed two flaws in how ICR presents the data. Flaws that they should have been aware of. So either they are talking about things they do not understand and pretending that they do. Or they are purposefully leaving things out in order to misrepresent the data.

    But, they have been called on this enough times that some YEC organizations ae trying to address the problems. See the following for example.

    http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs/3910.asp

    In this, Sarfati tries to demonstrate that only 27% of the sodium that comes into the oceans each year is removed. He believes that he is showing that the ocean is not at equilibrium with respect to sodium. But he makes two major mistakes. The first is very serious. They miss the amount of sodium removed by the alteration of basalt by hydrothermal activity by a factor of 35. If you go back to the original by Austin and Humphreys, you will find that one of their references is a book (Holland, H. D., 1978. The Chemistry of the Atmophere and the Oceans, New York: John Wiley and Sons.) that gives the correct value. So why did they put in such a bad value? The other bad claim is that there is not any removal of sodium by biological activity. Another reference of theirs (Holland, H.D., 1984. The Chemical Evolution of the Atmosphere and the Oceans, Princeton: Princeton University Press.) tells of biological removal, so there is no excuse for this either. It is a misrepresentation, but it is of much less consequence because of the smaller amounts involved.

    Once the corrections are made, instead of only 27% being removed, you come up with 7% too much being removed. This is well with the range of experimental error and is consistent with the oceans being in equilibrium with reference to sodium.

    And you see these kinds of mistakes made often. Bob will often get stirred up and post for pages on uranium instead of sodium. What he always fails to tell you is that the difference in measured removal rates from the input rates is less than the experimental error in measuring the rates. This means that equilibrium is within the experimental error. So from the data we have, you cannot say that uranium is not at equilibrium.

    ------------------------

    *Let's explain the difference. Say that you have a 100 gallon tank and it has a valve at the bottom that will allow exactly 10 gallons per minute to run out by the force of the head of water when the tank is completely full. Now the residence time would be (100/10=) 10 minutes. The time to accumulate 100 gallons from an empty tank, however, would be much more than 10 minutes because as soon as you started adding water, some would begin to leave through the valve. Less water would leave than was entering until the tank was full and the situation reached equilibrium. That is also the case here. The residence times are listed but the time to accumulate would be much greater. And since they are at equilibrium, you cannot tell how long they have been at equilibrium so you cannot use them to date.
     
  16. UTEOTW

    UTEOTW New Member

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    http://www.icr.org/research/icc03/pdf/Helium_ICC_7-22-03.pdf

    In this Humphreys, Austin, Snelling, and Peczkis... I mean ... and Baumgardner claimed that helium diffusion rates in zircons indicated a young earth. I'll just reproduce the abstract here.

    Now let's begin to look at the claims in detail.

    The first problem is this. The base their claims on the assumption of how much helium would be produced by old earth assumptions of the age of the earth. If the earth really is 6000 years old, just why is there an appreciable amount of helium in the rocks to begin with? Their answer? Accelerated decay. They suppose that billions of years worth of decay happened in a very short time. Now, two problems. There is no known way to explain how the decay would have been accelerated. Second, such accelerated decay causes major problems in removing the accompanying heat release. But reality has never been an obstacle to the RATE group as shown in earlier posts. Not only that, but how was the formation of all these layers times just so making the apparent seem to show formation over long periods of time. Just how did those layers get sorted according to their ratios of radioactive isotopes?

    Here is the next problem, and the biggie. What they are saying is that the zircons should not contain so much helium because it should have leaked out by now through diffusion. So they need to measure the diffusion rates. The temperatures of their samples were 105, 151, 197, 239, 277, and 313 Celcius. But at these low temperatures, the diffusion rate is too low to accurately measure. Diffusion rates increase with temperature. So they had the zircons tested at 300 - 500 C to see what the diffusion rates were there.

    Now look closely what they do. As stated, diffusion rates increase with temperature. The higher the rate, the more easy it is to measure accurately. Now, they decide to only use the diffusion data from 300 - 440 C when extrapolating down to the lower temperatures. This is because if you include the higher temperatures, the ones that should be more accurate, you get ages that are much less favorable to their position.

    But there is a related problem. The more of a substance that you have, the easier it is to measure it. In the case of their zircons, the samples at 239, 277, and 313 C were at or close to the detection limits for the lab and therefore have a very large potential error associated with them. In contrast the samples at 105, 151, and 197 C had high levels of He which would be easily measured and therefore more accurate. In fact, the highest two temperature zircons had only estimated given without even error ranges associated. The RATE group at least dropped the highest of these, the 313 C sample. Is this because they were trying to be honest with the data or was it was because the "age" they would then measure would be so young as to expose the problems of their method?

    So for the remaining 5 samples, if you use their methodology to calculate ages, first with their limited diffusion data set and then with the whole range of the diffusion measurmentsm you get the following table.

    Temp (C)....Age (all temp)......Age (440-300 C)
    105........46,800,000..........3,400,000
    151........1,350,000...........195,000
    197........132,000.............11,000
    239........16,600..............6,750
    277 ........8,700..............4,850

    So, even with their cherrypicking of data favorable to them, the ages range from 4800 years to 3.4 million. Which do you think they choose? With the better diffusion data added back in, the age estimates go up to 47 million years. And notice that the young ages are only with the smaples in which the level of He was the most difficult to measure and which had the largest potential error. The more reliable measurements yield much older ages. And these old ages are for the less deep and therefore younger rocks.

    Besides the problem with their handling of the data, there are other potential pitfalls. One of the most important is that the area in which the samples were taken is known for having high enough levels of helium in the ground that it can be "mined." If these samples had abnormally high levels of helium around them, then the driving force for the diffusion is removed and in fact, the rocks could have helium diffusion into the rocks. In addition, radiocative decay proceeds through a number of intermediate steps. When the decay starts, it takes about 10 half-lives for the longest half-life intermediates to come to equilibrium. If the decay rates had been changed in the past, the isotopes in the rocks should not yet be back in equlibrium. This should be easy to test. Has it been done?

    I used the following as a source for the result of calculations and as a general guide.

    http://groups.google.com/groups?q=%22The+basic+science+involved+is+that+fact+that%22+group:talk.origins&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&group=talk.origins&selm=e4204a90.0404120335.61b0a055%40po sting.google.com&rnum=1
     
  17. UTEOTW

    UTEOTW New Member

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    Let's do an example of quote mining. YECers love to quote scientists out of context. The way they are quoted can always seem so convincing. But once you have seen a few examples of how YECers quote, it becomes apparent why you should never trust one of their quotes without the surrounding sentences for context.

    This is a good one.

    "In any case, no real evolutionist, whether gradualist or punctuationist, uses the fossil record as evidence in favour of the theory of evolution as opposed to special creation." (Ridley, Mark, "Who doubts evolution?" "New Scientist", vol. 90, 25 June 1981, p. 831)

    USed many places including
    http://www.evolutionisdead.com/quotes.php?QID=313&cr=29
    http://www.genesispark.org/genpark/link/link.htm
    http://www.linda.net/creation.html

    You will also find that the presentation of this quote in this form originated with Snelling according to the citations. Good old Snelling.

    Well, lets give a fuller quote.

    So you see that what he is saying is not that the fossil record is not any use for proving evolution. He is saying that he knows of three better methods. And since he is a zoologists, is it surprising that he finds three subjects from his field to be the best at proving evolution is true?

    Such "junk" presented in the name of God. God does not need people to lie for him.
     
  18. UTEOTW

    UTEOTW New Member

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    Let's give one more example.

    http://www.unmaskingevolution.com/pdf_dl/book/resource.PDF

    Thorium-230 is part of the decay series of uranium-238 and will be continuously created as long as U238 is there. And U-238 has a half life of 4.5 billion years, so it will take a while for it to run out.

    "U-236 is rare but is produced by nuclear reactions in some uranium ores where sufficient slow neutrons are available." Dalrymple, G. Brent. 1991. The Age of the Earth Stanford University Press, Stanford, California, 474 pages

    Should they have been aware of these things before they made such a claim?
     
  19. UTEOTW

    UTEOTW New Member

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    And then there is the whole issue of quote mining. Maybe an example is in order.

    From http://www.genesispark.org/genpark/phylo/phylo.htm

    "Undeniably, the fossil record has provided disappointingly few gradual series. The origins of many groups are still not documented at all." (Futuyma, D., Science on Trial: The Case for Evolution, 1983, p. 190-191)

    Sounds bad, doesn't it. But let's give the full quote.

    Changes the meaning a bit, doesn't it?
     
  20. UTEOTW

    UTEOTW New Member

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    How about another?

    http://www.evolutionisdead.com/quotes.php?QID=297&cr=58

    "Species that were once thought to have turned into others have been found to overlap in time with these alleged descendants. In fact, the fossil record does not convincingly document a single transition from one species to another." (Stanley, S.M., The New Evolutionary Timetable: Fossils, Genes, and the Origin of Species, 1981, p. 95)

    Oh no. It sounds like there might not be the plethora of transitionals as we were led to believe. Maybe solace will be found in the full quote.

    Oh, so the author was talking about a specific geographic location, and not the fossil record in general. Not exactly an honest treatment of the original!
     
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