Halpo:
Hypothetically, if it was the case that the 'Young Earth' idea was
incorrect, what kind of evidence would we find that we do not find now?

Or to put it another way: What evidence of age would an old Earth
produce that this young Earth does not?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=--OWKYNm66s


Beside that and what Letum said, why to assume young world "theory" in the first? There is no hint and not evidence for ther world being that young, and there is no other need to assume that "theory" (it is no theory, but a claim) that would be different from creationism simply claiming that the world is young.

Also, get your scientific knowledge straight. The "timetable" of evolution and the earth's age you just outlined is so much out of scale and so extremely, unbelievably simplified that I would not even know where to begin. That is no model you described there - it simply is utmost confusion. A confusion you claim to be real scinece in the next step, and accusing this science then to be of flaws and errors. But actually you just point out the flaws and errors in your own inadequate understanding of the matter. And that is not science's problem - but yours.

For German readers, to introduce yourself in a very entertaining, yet competent way to the timetable of the earth's developement, and the emerging of life and the forming of species in the oceans, I recommend the wonderful and very entertaining, exciting (thick) book by Frank Schätzing, "Nachrichten aus einem unbekannten Universum". Books like this that are entertaining and educating at the same time are a true gift for readers interested in a popular and general understanding of science.

You talk a lot about openmindedness, Haplo. What you mean by that is just this: you want hear-say and unproven, unreasonable fantasies being taken as serious science, that qualifies as that by criterias of academic and scientific standards. I think that demand is - sorry to be so blunt - impertinent, not only when it is being raised by you, but by religions in general. That's what makes projects and attempts like this thread so very annoying. You demand recoignition and merit for something that does not qualify for receiving it. As if we do not already have to deal with a Pope who tries to reverse enlightenment and wants to claim science for the church by trying to force it under a preamisse of that science may all be nice and well but must necessarily base in all working and concluding on assuming God to be real in the first. How very much absurd, anti-scientific and a true assassination of reasonability that is.

Did God in his infinite wisdom guided the asteriod that led to the extinction of the dinosaurs and therefore to the humans as the dominant species on this planet ?
What do you say CaptainHaplo ? Chance or Destiny ?

CaptainHaplo wrote :

Meteor Crater in Arizona is estimated to be 50 000 years old.
How does that compute with your young earth "theory" ? :hmmm:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi.../cf/Meteor.jpg

Is the crater a hoax done by the evil evolutionists ? :haha:

Too funny.
Creationism, especially young earth creationism, requires a complete lack of openmindness.
That is demonstrated perfectly by your approach to the subject and by the sites you posted, the whole pattern of which is best summised as simply attempting to make things fit to a preconcieved position and flatly rejecting anything that doesn't fit.
Creationism is by its very nature a closeminded concept.

Dman, one wants to avoid this thread, but one cannot! :haha: If this craving is a symptom for an addiction, I maybe need a therapy?!

If world is only 6-10 thousand years old, why does light reach us from stars hundreds of thousands of lightyears away, and why does light reach us from galaxies millions of lightyears away?

Why are there fossils of much greater age - has some excentric deity walked around in his creation, placed some faked artefacts in the earth to fool parts of his creation, and giggles in the background for man being so stupid to take them as evidence for timeframes beyond 10000 years? Is this deity doing this a jester, a pervert - or just senile? Obviously he/she/it must be older than just 10000 years. At least 10000 years and 7 days old.

However, even wikipedia has usable material on Haplo's claim that the Young Earth "Theory" is true.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young_Earth_creationism

Google delivers you plenty of more ripping apart of creationist claims.

The main problems are that creationism takes the Bible literally, and unerring. By doing so, it already seals it's fate as being no science at all.

I'm only going to make one comment on this thread, and a minor one

Not exactly correct, evolution is not a fact, it is a theory. Natural selection is a hypothesis based on the theory of evolution. Evolution is also not directly observable, where as orbiting the sun is.

I'm not going to waste my time on the rest of the thread.

First of all, this has nothing to do with evolution. Evolution does not deal with celestial bodies, the beginning of life, the beginning of space and time etc. It deals with the change in the genetic material of a population of organisms from one generation to the next. That is all. I should ignore this, but will not.

Anyway, here is a response to why you are wrong.

1. The moon is receding at about 3.8 cm per year. Since the moon is 3.85 × 10 to the 10th power cm from the earth, this is already consistent, within an order of magnitude, with an earth-moon system billions of years old.

2. The magnitude of tidal friction depends on the arrangement of the continents. In the past, the continents were arranged such that tidal friction, and thus the rates of earth's slowing and the moon's recession, would have been less. The earth's rotation has slowed at a rate of two seconds every 100,000 years (Eicher 1976).

3. The rate of earth's rotation in the distant past can be measured. Corals produce skeletons with both daily layers and yearly patterns, so we can count the number of days per year when the coral grew. Measurements of fossil corals from 180 to 400 million years ago show year lengths from 381 to 410 days, with older corals showing more days per year (Eicher 1976; Scrutton 1970; Wells 1963; 1970). Similarly, days per year can also be computed from growth patterns in mollusks (Pannella 1976; Scrutton 1978) and stromatolites (Mohr 1975; Pannella et al. 1968) and from sediment deposition patterns (Williams 1997). All such measurements are consistent with a gradual rate of earth's slowing for the last 650 million years.

4. The clocks based on the slowing of earth's rotation described above provide an independent method of dating geological layers over most of the fossil record. The data is inconsistent with a young earth.

References:
1. Eicher, D. L., 1976. Geologic Time. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall.
2. Mohr, R. E., 1975. Measured periodicities of the Biwabik (Precambrian) stromatolites and their geophysical significance. In: Rosenberg and Runcorn, pp. 43-56.
3. Pannella, G., 1976. Tidal growth patterns in Recent and fossil mollusc bivalve shells: A tool for the reconstruction of paleotides. Naturwissenschaften 63: 539-543.
4. Pannella, G., C. MacClintock and M. Thompson, 1968. Paleontological evidence of variation in length of synodic month since Late Cambrian. Science 162: 792-796.
5. Rosenberg, G. D. and S. K. Runcorn (eds.), 1975. Growth Rhythms and the History of the Earth's Rotation. New York: Wiley.
Scrutton, C. T., 1970. Evidence for a monthly periodicity in the growth of some corals. In: Palaeogeophysics, S. K. Runcorn, ed., London: Academic Press, pp. 11-16.
6. Scrutton, C. T., 1978. Periodic growth features in fossil organisms and the length of the day and month. In: Tidal Friction and the Earth's Rotation. P. 7. Brosche and J. Sundermann, eds., Berlin: Springer-Verlag, pp. 154-196.
8. Wells, J. W., 1963. Coral growth and geochronometry. Nature 197: 948-950.
9. Wells, J. W., 1970. Problems of annual and daily growth-rings in corals. In: Palaeogeophysics, S. K. Runcorn, ed., London: Academic Press, pp. 3-9.
10. Williams, G. E., 1997. Precambrian length of day and the validity of tidal rhythmite paleotidal values. Geophysical Research Letters 24(4): 421-424.
This has nothing to do with evolution, I get a feeling this thread should be named science vs young earth to be more accurate.
Anyway this is because every known substance is porous to a degree, but if it is dense enough it can still form a seal. Though my knowledge of the physics involved here is very limited.1. This assumes that the rate of shrinkage is constant. That assumption is baseless. (In fact, it is the uniformitarian assumption that creationists themselves sometimes complain about.) Other stars expand and contract cyclically. Our own sun might do the same on a small scale.

2. There is not even any good evidence of shrinkage. The claim is based on a single report from 1980. Other measurements, from 1980 and later, do not show any significant shrinkage. It is likely that the original report showing shrinkage contained systematic errors due to different measuring techniquies over the decades.
This is the first time I hear this argument, but alas, this has nothing to do with evolution, again.
Anyway this argument is flawed because it assumes a constant conversion rate of N14 into C14, while it is everything but. (Strahler, Arthur N. 1987. Science and Earth History, p.158)
Tree-ring dating gives us a wonderful check on the radiocarbon dating method for the last 8000 years. That is, we can use carbon-14 dating on a given tree-ring (the 8000-year sequence having been assembled from the overlapping tree-ring patterns of living and dead trees) and compare the resulting age with the tree-ring date. A study of the deviations from the accurate tree-ring dating sequence shows that the earth's magnetic field has an important effect on carbon-14 production. When the dipole moment is strong, carbon-14 production is suppressed below normal; when it is weak, carbon-14 production is boosted above normal. What the magnetic field does is to partially shield the earth from cosmic rays which produce carbon-14 high in the atmosphere. Finally an argument that actualy has something to do with evolution, yay. Anyway the "mitochondrial Eve," to which this claim refers, is the most recent common female ancestor, not the original female ancestor. There would have been other humans living earlier and at the same time. The mtDNA lineages of other women contemporary with her eventually died out. Mitochondrial Eve was merely the youngest common ancestor of all today's mtDNA. She may not even have been human.

As of the mutation rate:
1. The claim is founded primarily on the work of Parsons et al. (1997), who found that the substitution rate was about 25 times higher in the mitochondria control region, which is less than 7% of the mitochondrial genome (mtDNA). Revised studies of all of the mtDNA find that the control region varies greatly in substitution rates in different populations, but that the rest of the mtDNA shows no such variation (Ingman et al. 2000). Using mtDNA excluding the control region, they placed the age of the most recent common mitochondrial ancestor at 171,500 +/- 50,000 years ago.

Gibbons (1998) refers to mutations that cause heteroplasmy (inheritance of two or more mtDNA sequences). This does not apply to mitochondrial Eve research, which is based only on substitution mutation rates.

2. A study similar to the mtEve research was done on a region of the X chromosome which does not recombine with the smaller Y chromosome; it placed the most recent common ancestor 535,000 +/- 119,000 years ago (Kaessmann et al. 1999). Since the population size of X chromosomes is effectively three times larger than mitochondria (two X chromosomes from women and one from men can get inherited), the most recent common ancestor should be about three times older than that of the Mitochondrial Eve, and it is.

Refrences:
1. Gibbons, A. 1998. Calibrating the mitochondrial clock. Science 279: 28-29.
2. Ingman, M., H. Kaessmann, S. Pääbo and U. Gyllensten. 2000. Mitochondrial genome variation and the origin of modern humans. Nature 408: 708-713.
3. Kaessmann, H., F. Heissig, A. von Haeseler and S. Pääbo. 1999. DNA sequence variation in a non-coding region of low recombination on the human X chromosome. Nature Genetics 22: 78-81.
4. Loewe, L. and S. Scherer. 1997. Mitochondrial Eve: the plot thickens. Trends in Ecology and Evolution 12(11): 422-423
5. Parsons, T. J. et al. 1997. A high observed substitution rate in the human mitochondrial control region. Nature Genetics 15: 363-368. Back to stuff that has nothing to do with with evolution.
And this argument is plainly silly. Wars and plagues would have caused populations to drop from time to time. In particular, population sizes before agriculture would have been severely limited and would have had an average population growth of zero for any number of years. Then there is sanitation which affects attrition of humans. The kind of exponential population growth we see was impossible in the past due to the limitation of technology. A comparison between the chemical composition of the water of the Dead Sea and its tributaries and that of other lakes and the ocean shows the average salinity of the Dead Sea water (31.50%) to be exceptionally high, concentration of the SO 4 ''-ion to be very low and that of Br (5920mg/1) to be probably the highest on record for any surface water. Most of the cationic calcium in the Dead Sea and its tributaries is balanced by chloride. A short summary of the geological history of the area shows that the Dead Sea is not a relict body of sea water; its salt assemblage is the result of accumulation in a closed inland basin under arid conditions. The salts originate from two main sources, about one third from the Jordan River and about two thirds from highly saline springs discharging into the Dead Sea. On this fact a method can be based for calculating the age of the Dead Sea leading to a maximum figure of about 70,000 and a minimum of 12,000 years, the latter being more probable. The annual amount of chemical precipitation in the Southern Dead Sea basin is calculated to 0.306 gr/cm 2 and it is shown that NaCl and CaSO 4 are the major and that CaCO 3 is a minor component. This result is in good agreement with observations on the present rate of chemical sedimentation in the Dead Sea. Volcanic and organic origins for the vast bromine reserve in the Dead Sea are rejected and the derivation of the bromine from fossil residual brines, formed during the Tertiary, is tentatively accepted.

Refrences:
Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta, vol. 25, Issue 4, pp.239-240Any aditional information available at www.Talkorigins.org

This is wrong. For several reasons. One of those things is that evolution is directly observable, instances of speciation for instance.
Here is a list of some:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-speciation.html

Evolution is not directly observable any more then gravity is. You can observe the effects of gravity, but not gravity itself. That is why gravity is a theory not a fact, same goes for evolution.

That paper is observing differences, they are not observing actual speciation, but the effects of it assuming the hypothesis is correct.

Oh c'mon now Skybird, its too funny to debunk "alternative pseudo scientific" theories. I proclaim that after debunking Creationism, we should have a debate on wether the americans really landed on the moon in 1969, followed obviously by a debate on "did 9/11 really happened, or was it just a consipracy from the US government to green light its imperialistic view on the world". It should make a very interesting and funny debate. :rotfl2:

Now now, be carefull we wouldn't want alternative astrophysicists telling us that the cosmological redshift is nonsense. :rotfl2:

Don't try to introduce scientific arguments, it will lead you to nowhere. :O:





How do you debunk something thats no even a scientific theory ? :dead:
Treating Creationism on the same level of any other kind of scientific theory only legitimizes their view.

Evolution is both fact and theory, same for gravity. In science theory is basically a model with explains observations, a description of a process if you will. We understand far less of gravity than we do of evolution.

And those are observed instances of speciation since the two or more species are no longer capable of interbreeding. Definitions, these are important in science.

Is it a "gigantic" problem in the US? I don't see how it is really slowing us down. Come on, say it. You want to say we're all stupid ;)
You only believe the earth orbits the sun because that's what you were taught. Did you ever try to prove it for yourself?


I can imagine, 3000 years or so ago, one man saying how unreasonable and anti-scientific it was to consider the earth as anything other than a flat form--how do you think everything stays down!?! :)

Yeah, you are right when you said science is a growing, changing process. It has been wrong as many times as religion. You believe what makes sense to you, and just like a man from 3000 years ago, he believed what made sense to him. He took the science of his time, it made sense to him, he believed it. When science is proven wrong and corrects itself, people adjust their beliefs.

I'm a big fan of science and I do not take the Bible literally. But no matter how you spin it, even with our best science, nothing can explain the human soul, where it comes from, or where it goes when the vessel dies. Until science can explain that, we will have religous beliefs.

antikristuseke,

A rather well written response. Good citations and a logical chain of thought without personal attacks.

Has it been demonstrated that we even have one? I would think that before anything can be proved as to where it came from and where it goes, it must first be established that it even exists in the first place.

Thank you. I have to admit that i did punch my walls a few time and seriously considered smoking again, because I have been over all this several times on other forums and find it a little frustrating, but if even one person learns something or finds and interest in science it has been time worth spending.

Ok, then let me explain, by "soul", I am referring to consciousness.

I think that would be a much better measurable area to focus on.

If you mean something distinct from the body, then you still need to give
reason for thinking it has existence.

Souls are things that exist, consciousness is a process that happens, but
does not have existence.

No it isn't, you do not properly understand the differences between scientific fact, theory, and hypothesis.

Scientific facts are direct observations of repeatable, reliable, verifiable events. The key thing is directly observable. You cannot directly observe gravity, or evolution, etc. only the effects which we assign gravity, evolution, etc as being responsible for.

Theory and hypothesis try to explain those facts (there are some differences between the two, usually hypothesis is an extension of an established theory).

You cannot directly observe gravity, evolution, or speciation (try reading that paper closer, even they refer to it as hypothesis). They are not scientific fact they are theories which are used to explain observed scientific fact. In all cases what you observe are effects which the theory attempts to explain why they happened.

Maybe this will make it more clear. You have a ball, you drop it, it falls to the ground and stays there. Now what did you observe? Did you see gravity? The only observable fact is the ball fell down from your hand and hit the ground. The theory as to why that happened is called the theory of gravity. Gravity is not a fact, the ball hitting the ground is the fact.