Feedback for July 2006

I do not know what to think about the RATE paper about radiocarbon dating.(see here: RATE on C-14)Are there major mistakes in ist? Were their results posted to a journal? (see: Poster presented AGU. I read your article about carbon-14 in coal deposits, but that does not help much in refuting that paper I think.

If the strong force is lowered as RATE proposed to accelerate nuclear decay, doesn't that mean, that a lot of more elements would become radioactive? If so, would there be any possibility to detect that some elements were radioactive in the past and now are not? What about other consequences of that?

Thanks for answering my questions.

Lutz

To preface, I just want to mention that while I love science, as a field of study to understanding things, I also do believe in God and that this universe and all we see was created.

Basically my comment is this. Whether or not those of you who write these articles and study these topics truly believe that there isn't a God, I find it amazing that you still promote the idea of evolution/Darwinism. There is an incredible lack of evidence for evolution, added to the fact that there is a plethora of evidence against it. Why then don't you abandon the idea as a failed theory and just come up with a new theory for how life came to exist here in such astounding diversity and uniqueness? I know that a personal conviction in a God-less life is not going to allow room for the idea of creation and I understand that, but for crying out loud look at how flawed and naive evolution is in light of all of the gained knowledge since Darwin's time. Move on, postulate new theories. I'd say that the smartest moment in a person's life, is not when they study an element of a greater thing and postulate an intelligent sounding theory based on that element, but rather when they see the thing as a whole and can drop their pride and say "I don't know how it all works."

I have proof that the Big Flood did occur. The ancient Chinese recorded this catastrophic happening in the ancient form (AF) of the language. The AF of big flood (洪) shows earth, waters, hands held together and 8 persons. The AF of arc (船) shows a boat and 8 persons. The AF of along (沿) shows 8 persons floating on waters.

The Chinese ancestors employed 3 principles in making words, Photographic or word-picture, ideographic and phonetic principles. The word arc (船) has the same phonetic sound as pass on (傳). The word along (沿) has the same phonetic sound as continue (延). With the Noah's family of 8 surviving the big flood on the arc, human history can pass on. And with the Noah's family of 8 floating on waters, human history can continue until today.

Now the word island (島), it is made up of bird (鳥)and mountain (山).Why?

It is recorded in the Bible that 'Noah and his 3 sons Shem. Ham and Japheth, his wife and the 3 wives of his sons entered the arc (Genesis 7:13). The waters prevailed, were increased greatly upon the earth and the arc went upon the face of the waters (G 7:18). And Noah sent forth a dove from him, to see if the waters were abated from off the face of the ground (G 8:8). What more proof do you want. If you could prove me wrong, I am willing to renounce christianity. If not, get baptised immediately.

What shall I say?

In this article Dr. Lisle states that "it has been my aspiration to develop a resource that will do for astronomy what The Genesis Flood did for geology."

This is an excerpt from Dr. Lisle's book 'Taking Back Astronomy'

The moon moves about an inch and a half further away from the earth every year due to this tidal interaction. Thus, the moon would have been closer to the earth in the past. Six thousand years ago, the moon would have been about 800 feet (250 m) closer to the earth (which is not much of a change considering the moon is a quarter of a million miles, or 400,000 km, away). So this “spiraling away” of the moon is not a problem over the biblical timescale of six thousand years. If, however, the earth and moon were over four billion years old (as big bang supporters teach), then we would have big problems. This is because the moon would have been so close, that it would actually have been touching the earth less than 1.5 billion years ago. This suggests that the moon can’t possibly be as old as secular astronomers claim.

Dr. Lisle has made an elementary error in the above excerpt. While he is correct for his (approximate) distance of 250 m after 6,000 year calculation, he seems to have dropped a ‘0’ for the time for the Earth and Moon to touch.

Base Data:

Earth Moon distance = 400,000 km, Actually 384,000 km
Radius of Earth = 6400 km
Radius of Moon = 1700 km
So the Earth and Moon would be touching after the Moon has moved 384,000 – (6400 + 1700) km = 375,900 km
That’s 375,900,000,000 mm
Change = 1.5 in/year (38mm/year)

375,900,000,000/38 = 9,892,000,000 years or approximately 10 billion years for the Earth and Moon to be touching.

After 1.5 billion years the Moon would have been 57,000 km closer but still 318,900 km apart. This doesn’t seem to be quite such a ‘big problem’

I believe Dr Lisle has achieved his objective of doing for astronomy what 'The Genesis Flood' did for geology!

I wonder if we’ll see a follow-up book from Dr. Lisle “Taking Back Arithmetic”?

thanks for the good work

As I know a formet director of that lab, I decided to see if he was also a director and emailed them today. I received this prompt reply a few hours later:

Walter Brown was not a director of Benet Labs. I believe he was a military officer here (during the 60's? 70's?) and might have been designated as acting director for short periods of time (a day here, a day there...) when the director at that time was out of the office. I ran across his website quite a few years ago and oddly enough, our Admin Office was doing a plaque listing our directors at that same time. I contacted Dr. Brown at that time. Dr. Brown is not listed on the plaque.

Susan A. Macksey Technical Information Specialist US Army Benet Laboratories

This may be beyond the scope of this site but here's my question anyway: How does the Theory of Evolution deal with deliberate breeding? Race horses, farm animals and dogs have been extensivly breed and altered over the years by human hands. Can the theory take those kinds of actions into account? Would there anyway of noticing if, say, dinosaurs were specifically bred by a more intelligent speices? Selective breeding isn't really that natural unless humans are counted at the environment (which I suppose they should be). Does the predictive power of the theory break down in such situations?

Again thanks for a very interesting and informative site.

Kind regards,

Tom

But even though you won't be correcting their articles, would you ever consider making a list of rebuttals to their rebuttals of your index to creationist claims?

http://www.creationwiki.net/index.php?title=Index_to_Creationist_Claims

And if they were to make a list of rebuttals to your rebuttals to their rebuttals of your index to creationist claims, would you make a list of rebuttals to that?

More power to your elbow - a brilliant site. Graham

Where he writes:

"But this common picture is misleading. A recent book, co-authored by a world expert on dinosaurs, points out some things about dinosaur bones that are of great interest to creationists. (...) The amount of time that it takes for a bone to become completely permineralized is highly variable. If the groundwater is heavily laden with minerals in solution, the process can happen rapidly. Modern bones that fall into mineral springs can become permineralized within a matter of weeks. 1"

And makes this conclusion:

"The Bible’s account of the true history of the world makes it clear that no fossil can be more than a few thousand years old. Dinosaur bones give evidence strongly consistent with this."

The '1' refers to Currie's and Eva Koppelhus' book.

Link Where Currie point out, that dinosaurs existed in a period from 225 to 65 mill. year from now.

I asked Currie about his comment, and got this answer:

"Hi Jerry

We have been aware of this article for quite some time. They quoted us correctly, but of course offer their own interpretation of the facts. It is very typical that creationists offer half the story, but don't provide the half that contradicts their claims. In this case, they fail to mention all the bones that have turned to stone.

Cheers, Philip J. Currie, MSc, PhD, FRSC Curator of Dinosaurs Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology Drumheller, Alberta"

Furthermore, take a look at this:

Link

Jerry

http://evolution-facts.org/Ev-V1/1evlch06a.htm

This link begins two parts of an address of methods to arrive at a young age for the earth. As a basically amateur scientist (only B.S. in Biology) I can account for some problems, but many of the astrology/cosmology methods go beyond my understanding. An address of at least some of these would be wonderful.

Attempting to honestly and uniasedly weigh the evidence,

Clint

I first encountered the distinction when debating creationists online, and almost every time I heard it since, it was in relation to their ignorant drivel. As a matter of fact, this website is the only non-creationist example I can think of that uses this distinction. (Of course, I could be wrong.)

So my question is; is this a real distinction actual biologists use in the course of their studies? To me it seems like a creationist attempt to deliberately isolate substances that are a problem for them from the bigger picture, thereby making them easier to attack. I do not think there is any point in giving seperate names to what ultimately is merely different extents of the very same process.

I love this website by the way.

Two weeks ago, my friends Andrew and I debated Kent Hovind, a big fan of your website (hah). We got on his creationist talk show and 'talked' with him for 45 minutes.

You can download a copy of the debate here in .mp3 format. Right click and save the link, otherwise the streaming will nuke the server we have it on.

I've also typed up the 20 page transcript of the debate, verbatim, which can be downloaded here.

I highly reccomend the transcript as an aid to the .mp3, since Hovind is very quiet during the debate.

Anyway, just thought everyone at TO might be interested.

-Scott