Young Earth 'Evidences' + ID radio program

[Magnetic]

Here are a few 'evidences' from a link I came across in the other forum. It said

There are approximately 5 times the Natural Chronometers indicating a Young Earth than those indicating an Old Earth. Today's student is not aware of ANY Natural Chronometers indicating a Young Earth, and is therefore ignorant of 80% of the total data.

1. Our oceans contain concentrations of Aluminum, Antinomy, Barium, Bicarbonate, Bismuth, Calcium, Carbonates, Chlorine, Chromium, Cobalt, Copper, Gold, Iron, Lead, Lithium, Manganese, Magnesium, Mercury, Molybdenum, Nickel, Potassium, Rubidium, Silicon, Silver, Sodium, Strontium, Sulfate, Thorium, Tin, Titanium, Tungsten, Uranium, and Zinc. The river systems add to these concentrations at fixed apparent rates. Comparing the amounts already in the oceans with the rates at which more are being dumped, indicates the earth, as well as its river systems and oceans, are fairly young.

2. Sediments are being eroded into our oceans at a fixed rate. There are only a few thousand years worth of sediments on the ocean floor.

3. The Earth's magnetic field has been accurately measured since 1829. Since 1829, it has decayed 7%. It is decaying exponentially at a fixed rate. By graphing the curve, we see that approximately 22,000 years ago the Earth's field would have been as strong as the Sun's. Life would have been impossible.

4. Comets are constantly losing matter. They are losing and losing and never gaining. "Short Period Comets" (like Haley's comet), which have predictable orbits, should deteriorate to nothing within 10,000 years. Why are there still Short Period Comets?

5. Jupiter is losing heat twice as fast as it gains it from the Sun (it is five times further from the Sun than Earth). Yet Jupiter is still hot. If it is billions of years old, shouldn't it have cooled off by now?
Jupiter's moon, Ganymede, which is roughly the size of Mercury, has a strong magnetic field, a possible indication that it is still hot. Why hasn't it cooled down?

6. Saturn's rings are not stable. They are drifting away from Saturn. If Saturn is billions of years old, why does it still have rings?

7. The Moon is slowly drifting away from the Earth. If it is getting further, at one time it was much closer. The Inverse Square Law dictates that if the Moon were half the distance from the Earth, its gravitational pull on our tides would be quadrupled. 1/3 the distance, 9 times the pull. Everything would drown twice a day. Approximately 1.2 billion years ago, the Moon would have been touching the Earth. Drowning would be the least of our concerns!

8. Earth's rotation is slowing down. We experience a leap second every year and a half. If the Earth is slowing down, at one time it was going much faster. Besides the problem of extremely short days and nights, the increased "Coriolis Effect" would cause impossible living conditions.

9. In 1999, the human population passed six billion. In 1985, it passed five billion. In 1962, it passed three billion. In 1800, it passed one billion. In 1 AD, the world's population, according to the censuses taken by the governments of that time, was only 250 million. At the current human population growth rate, considering wars and famines and all such variables, it would take approximately 5,000 years to get the current population from two original people.


The actual link, if you're at all interested is:

++http://www.allaboutcreation.org/age-of-earth.htm

Now the ID part of this thread.

Also, on the way home, the last few days, I've been listening to a Christian radio station with a prominent Intelligent Design person. Each day he kept going back to the same thing, which is some form of bacteria that has a 'propeller', as a means of moving around, that spins at some 60,000 rpm, and that "it had to have started that way, thus an intelligent designer".

He did, however agree that micro evolution can occur, but not macro evolution.

[Vendetta]

Each day he kept going back to the same thing, which is some form of bacteria that has a 'propeller', as a means of moving around, that spins at some 60,000 rpm, and that "it had to have started that way, thus an intelligent designer".

Bacterial Flagella.

It's a repeat of the old eyeball mistake, tarted up with fancy words and on a bacterial scale. The concept is that removing any single protien from a Flagellum makes it not work as a mechanism for propelling the becterium around. Which, the ingenuous ID proponent will say "Ah Ha! The flagellum is an irreducibly complex system, therefore gradual mutation and evolution can't account for it!"

Of course, they're right, if you take protiens components away from a flagellum it doesn't work as a flagellum any more, flagella are 'irreducably complex'. But if you take away a particular set of protiens, you get something called a "Type III Secretory system", a mechanism bacteria use to secrete chemicals to attack other bacteria.

Meaning that, of course, there is an evolutionary path based on gradual mutation to the flagellum, even though the flagellum is irreducably complex, because the path comes from a totally different system with a similar principle.

[Vendetta]

Ghetto edit:

This all comes from Michael Behe, who first coined 'irreducible complexity'.

Irreducible complexity is, though the ID crowd love to bleat about it, a total crock of shit. As demonstrated aptly by the path from Type III secretory systems to flagella.

[Guardsman Bass]

Here are a few 'evidences' from a link I came across in the other forum. It said

There are approximately 5 times the Natural Chronometers indicating a Young Earth than those indicating an Old Earth. Today's student is not aware of ANY Natural Chronometers indicating a Young Earth, and is therefore ignorant of 80% of the total data.

1. Our oceans contain concentrations of Aluminum, Antinomy, Barium, Bicarbonate, Bismuth, Calcium, Carbonates, Chlorine, Chromium, Cobalt, Copper, Gold, Iron, Lead, Lithium, Manganese, Magnesium, Mercury, Molybdenum, Nickel, Potassium, Rubidium, Silicon, Silver, Sodium, Strontium, Sulfate, Thorium, Tin, Titanium, Tungsten, Uranium, and Zinc. The river systems add to these concentrations at fixed apparent rates. Comparing the amounts already in the oceans with the rates at which more are being dumped, indicates the earth, as well as its river systems and oceans, are fairly young.

This is patently idiotic, since it assumes that there has been no change in either the flow of the world's major river systems or even in the number of major rivers. Of course, that is a YEC assumption.

2. Sediments are being eroded into our oceans at a fixed rate. There are only a few thousand years worth of sediments on the ocean floor.

This one I'm not sure about, but doesn't any particular piece of oceanic crust get recycled into the mantle every few million years or so?

3. The Earth's magnetic field has been accurately measured since 1829. Since 1829, it has decayed 7%. It is decaying exponentially at a fixed rate. By graphing the curve, we see that approximately 22,000 years ago the Earth's field would have been as strong as the Sun's. Life would have been impossible.

Pretty typical generalization, especially considering that the Earth has lost its magnetic field many times in the past, along with switching its magnetic poles; it's a cycle of decline and rise.

5. Jupiter is losing heat twice as fast as it gains it from the Sun (it is five times further from the Sun than Earth). Yet Jupiter is still hot. If it is billions of years old, shouldn't it have cooled off by now?
Jupiter's moon, Ganymede, which is roughly the size of Mercury, has a strong magnetic field, a possible indication that it is still hot. Why hasn't it cooled down?

Jupiter had a considerable amount of internal heat to begin with, and an enormous volume-to-surface area ratio, meaning its heat is lost very slowly.
It is the same thing with Ganymede, plus the effects of Jupiter's gravity and magnetic field on Ganymede's core.

6. Saturn's rings are not stable. They are drifting away from Saturn. If Saturn is billions of years old, why does it still have rings?

Aren't the rings supposed to be fairly recent?

7. The Moon is slowly drifting away from the Earth. If it is getting further, at one time it was much closer. The Inverse Square Law dictates that if the Moon were half the distance from the Earth, its gravitational pull on our tides would be quadrupled. 1/3 the distance, 9 times the pull. Everything would drown twice a day. Approximately 1.2 billion years ago, the Moon would have been touching the Earth. Drowning would be the least of our concerns!

Again, another over-generalization, and I am betting some lying too, on the rate of retreat.

8. Earth's rotation is slowing down. We experience a leap second every year and a half. If the Earth is slowing down, at one time it was going much faster. Besides the problem of extremely short days and nights, the increased "Coriolis Effect" would cause impossible living conditions.

The third overgeneralization in the so-called evidences, not to mention some selective evidence; aka, no mention of the rate of slowing down.

9. In 1999, the human population passed six billion. In 1985, it passed five billion. In 1962, it passed three billion. In 1800, it passed one billion. In 1 AD, the world's population, according to the censuses taken by the governments of that time, was only 250 million. At the current human population growth rate, considering wars and famines and all such variables, it would take approximately 5,000 years to get the current population from two original people.

.

The guy has no understanding of the human population growth patterns in history. The reason the population exploded recently is because of industrialization, better medicine, and better agriculture. For a long period of time, it fluxuated up and down.

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

One link: The talk.origins archive/FAQ

More specifically: The Age of Earth FAQ which provides evidence for an old Earth, as well as refutations for those incredibly common Creationist arguments for a young Earth.

Short answers follow

1) Creationists ignore the well-known mechanisms that remove metals from the oceans. They also ignore that we know that the rate metals enter the ocean are the same as the rate that metals are removed from the ocean. This makes this a useless argument for dating the Earth.

2) You can see where sediments are deposited. They usually wind up in these places called deltas. Furthermore, oceanic crust is recycled as continental plates move about, either lifting oceanic crust up into mountain ranges, or subducting it into the mantle. As these are active processes, you can't date the Earth by this method either.

3) There is overwhelming evidence that the Earth's magnetic field periodically weakens, reverses itself, then rebuilds. This is the quickest way to refute this particular Creationist argument.

4) Because they are being replenished from the Oort cloud. Peturbations in this cloud cause comets to fall towards the inner reaches of the solar system, where chance gravitational interactions with the planets (namely Jupiter) alter their orbits. There are trillions of potential cometary bodies out in the Oort cloud and inwards towards the Kuiper Belt.

5) Jupiter is immensely large and massive. A number of heat generation mechanisms (continuing gravitational attraction, and helium raining out of the upper atmosphere, for instance) can account for the planet's surplus heat generation.

6) Because Saturn's rings are fairly young. Younger than Saturn. Rings are formed when a body drifts inside a planet's Roche Limit and is ripped apart by tidal forces. We can see examples of older ring systems in our Solar System. Jupiter's, Uranus' and Neptune's ring systems are all older than Saturns, and are darker, thinner, and much less impressive as a result. Incidentally, in fifty million years, Neptune may well end up with a ring system as impressive as Saturn's is now. Neptune's moon Triton is spiraling into Neptune and is expected to impact in fifty million years. Mars may pick up a small ring system in several tens of millions of years, as Phobos is also spiralling into it.

7) The Creationist is assuming that the Moon's current rate of recession is the same as it was four billion years ago. It would actually have started off receding slower, and the rate would've increased as Earth's gravitational influence dropped off.

8) The slowing of Earth's rotation is tied to the Moon's orbit. Likewise, the rate at which Earth's rotation is slowing is also not the same now as it used to be. Furthermore, when Earth first formed, it likely only had a ten to eighteen hour day.

9) This argument assumes a good deal of ignorance on the part of the person reading it. The rate of population growth we've seen in the twentieth century is due to industrialization, vaccination programs, antibiotics, proper sterilization and sanitation, and other such things that didn't exist on a global scale even one or two centuries ago. Before that, the growth rate of the human population was significantly slower, as humans experienced staggering infant and child mortality rates. This is part of the reason primitive agrarian societies encouraged lots of childbearing, since many children could be expected to succumb to illness, and women weren't expected to live much past their thirties.

The Creationist in a Clown Suit employed the typical 100 meter leap of faith. Which is to say he pointed at a life-form at point Z while ignoring the possibility of points A, B, C, D, E, F, G . . . X, and Y.

[Adrian Laguna]

Okay, without reading anybody's response, here is mine (I want to see how well I do against bullshit):

1. Our oceans contain concentrations of Aluminum, Antinomy, Barium, Bicarbonate, Bismuth, Calcium, Carbonates, Chlorine, Chromium, Cobalt, Copper, Gold, Iron, Lead, Lithium, Manganese, Magnesium, Mercury, Molybdenum, Nickel, Potassium, Rubidium, Silicon, Silver, Sodium, Strontium, Sulfate, Thorium, Tin, Titanium, Tungsten, Uranium, and Zinc. The river systems add to these concentrations at fixed apparent rates. Comparing the amounts already in the oceans with the rates at which more are being dumped, indicates the earth, as well as its river systems and oceans, are fairly young.

While conviniently ignoring the rate of deposition in the ocean floors.

2. Sediments are being eroded into our oceans at a fixed rate. There are only a few thousand years worth of sediments on the ocean floor.

Everyone knows that sediments always stay there forever, it's not like earthquakes volcanoes, and ocean currents don't move them around. Besides everyone knows that there are no subduction zones near continetal shelves, you know, the place where sediments would be moved into the mantle. Furthermore, I suspect that the claim above is an outright lie. Finally, the oldest sea floor has been date as being about 200 million years old.

3. The Earth's magnetic field has been accurately measured since 1829. Since 1829, it has decayed 7%. It is decaying exponentially at a fixed rate. By graphing the curve, we see that approximately 22,000 years ago the Earth's field would have been as strong as the Sun's. Life would have been impossible.

Wrong. Earth's magnetic field decays until it reaches a point where it dissapears for a while and then flips, appearing a full strength again and starting the cycle over.

4. Comets are constantly losing matter. They are losing and losing and never gaining. "Short Period Comets" (like Haley's comet), which have predictable orbits, should deteriorate to nothing within 10,000 years. Why are there still Short Period Comets?

Because new ones are knocked towards the inner parts of the solar system from the Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud.

5. Jupiter is losing heat twice as fast as it gains it from the Sun (it is five times further from the Sun than Earth). Yet Jupiter is still hot. If it is billions of years old, shouldn't it have cooled off by now?
Jupiter's moon, Ganymede, which is roughly the size of Mercury, has a strong magnetic field, a possible indication that it is still hot. Why hasn't it cooled down?

For the same reason the Earth hasn't cooled down. Or did you think the sun keeps the core hot? Of course, this leads to the inevitable reply that this further proves a young universe. Well no, a body the size of a planet takes a very, very, long time to cool down. Jupiter, having many more times more volume than Earth, would take even longer.

6. Saturn's rings are not stable. They are drifting away from Saturn. If Saturn is billions of years old, why does it still have rings?

I had to look this one up. The rings are fairly new, relative to the age of the planet. Theories about their formation include a large commet being destroyed by Saturn's gravity, or a moon being struck by a large asteroid.

7. The Moon is slowly drifting away from the Earth. If it is getting further, at one time it was much closer. The Inverse Square Law dictates that if the Moon were half the distance from the Earth, its gravitational pull on our tides would be quadrupled. 1/3 the distance, 9 times the pull. Everything would drown twice a day. Approximately 1.2 billion years ago, the Moon would have been touching the Earth. Drowning would be the least of our concerns!

More research... Shit, I ran out of patience before coming up with an answer. Too bad. (Cue horde of fundies claiming victory). What I can say is that the moon is theorized to have formed 4.5 billion years ago, with the leading theory involving a Mars-sized object colliding with Earth (ouch!).

8. Earth's rotation is slowing down. We experience a leap second every year and a half. If the Earth is slowing down, at one time it was going much faster. Besides the problem of extremely short days and nights, the increased "Coriolis Effect" would cause impossible living conditions.

After the moon formed the Earth had a 5 hour rotational day. However, life did not appear 4.5 billion years ago, it did so about 3.85 billion years ago. That gives about 650 million years for the Earth to slow down to acceptable levels.

9. In 1999, the human population passed six billion. In 1985, it passed five billion. In 1962, it passed three billion. In 1800, it passed one billion. In 1 AD, the world's population, according to the censuses taken by the governments of that time, was only 250 million. At the current human population growth rate, considering wars and famines and all such variables, it would take approximately 5,000 years to get the current population from two original people.

"At the current population growth rate?" I this guy an idiot? Stupid question, of course he is. The population began to rise dramatically during the industrial age due to massive improvements in agriculture. Furthermore absolutely all human population growth is related to improvements in agriculture. (BTW - Wars don't make noticable dents in the human population).

[Adrian Laguna]

*Slaps self various times

Shit, how could I forget sanitation and medicine as important factors in population growth? They are important because all the food in the world will just rot in the silos and warehouses if the people who are supposed to eat it are dying from desease.

[Rahvin]

*Slaps self various times

Shit, how could I forget sanitation and medicine as important factors in population growth? They are important because all the food in the world will just rot in the silos and warehouses if the people who are supposed to eat it are dying from desease.

Don't forget transportation. That food will rot in warehouses even if people aren't sick if you can't move it from where it's grown to where it's needed.

[wilfulton]

I noticed that the rivers leach silicon into the ocean sediment. I wonder if they leach oxygen too, and hydrogen at the same time .

I wouldn't exactly be surprised this, however, considering that the Earth is comprised largely of silicate rock.

And where does all this shit come from to keep leeching into the ocean? Well I'd surmise that the ocean floors are eventually pushed up above the ocean level and form mountains themselves, thus providing more fuel to being the cycle anew. I couldn't be sure but I do believe plate techtonics might have something to do with it...

[DPDarkPrimus]

One should always point out that Behe, the very man who came up with irreducible complexity, admits that the flagellum and other supposedly irreducibly complex organs could have formed naturally if the parts were formed seperately, and then grew into a symbiosis. Or however you properly say it. I'd have to check my books for the exact quote, and I don't have my books with me at the moment.

[SirNitram]

For the whole ridiculous 'BUT THE RIVERS ARE MOVING THE METAL TO THE OCEANS!' bit.

Has everyone remembered that ocean floors push back up?

[Dooey Jo]

Seems like they are assuming that when the solar system formed, it must have immediately formed the way it is now. In other words, they are assuming that is was created, but billions of years ago, and then trying to prove that, if it was created, it had to have happened a few thousand years ago. Seems to be a strawman and circular reasoning at the same time... The simple answer to most of those arguments is to say that the solar system is not fixed, it's dynamic.


Of course, the population argument is just stupid. "At the current human population growth"? Yeah, that's nice, but they're forgetting that the current population growth is current, and the population growth during the ancient times was much smaller. During the stone age it was even smaller than that.

[El Moose Monstero]

For the whole ridiculous 'BUT THE RIVERS ARE MOVING THE METAL TO THE OCEANS!' bit.

Has everyone remembered that ocean floors push back up?

Not to mention the cheerful ignoring of the destruction of ocean crust over 160Ma, not to mention the fact that half of those elements listed are all biologically important, not to mention the remobilisation of metalliferous sediments under different conditions of oxygenation, oh, and not to mention the fact that we've got ocean sediment core samples from the Deep Sea Drilling Project that go at least as far back as 120Ma (they go further, but that's all the one's I've been working on).

Christ, there's some apalling distortions and willing ignorance in there, and that's coming from me, who usually doesn't pay too much attention to this sort of thing.

[Guardsman Bass]

One should always point out that Behe, the very man who came up with irreducible complexity, admits that the flagellum and other supposedly irreducibly complex organs could have formed naturally if the parts were formed seperately, and then grew into a symbiosis. Or however you properly say it. I'd have to check my books for the exact quote, and I don't have my books with me at the moment.

So instead of arrogant, he's merely hypocritical and a liar, admitting they could have evolved, but then going on to say, "No, they didn't! Because I said so!"

[RedImperator]

The point about ocean sediments forms half of a stealth circular arguments: the mechanisms evolutionists claim recycle the ocean floor don't exist because the Earth is young, which is proven by the fact that there aren't billions of years of sediment on the ocean floor.

[Darth Wong]

One should always point out that Behe, the very man who came up with irreducible complexity, admits that the flagellum and other supposedly irreducibly complex organs could have formed naturally if the parts were formed seperately, and then grew into a symbiosis. Or however you properly say it. I'd have to check my books for the exact quote, and I don't have my books with me at the moment.

That's "irreducible complexity" in a nutshell; disregard the possibility that structures evolved in earlier form with simpler functions, and assume that their earlier forms must have fulfilled their present functions or they don't work. Then crow that you have found "irreducible complexity".

[wilfulton]

Hmmm...allow me to throw a wrench in the gears. Let's say we are a product of intelligent design. How does that explain the irreducible stupidy displayed by many people (like your average everyday fundie)?



Oh yeah, and why do women have to shave their legs, Mr. ID?
I'm dying to hear that answer

[Jawawithagun]

Hmmm...allow me to throw a wrench in the gears. Let's say we are a product of intelligent design. How does that explain the irreducible stupidy displayed by many people (like your average everyday fundie)?

Budget cuts during development made it necessary to ship the product with a few minor software bugs. They will be removed with subsequent patches.

Oh yeah, and why do women have to shave their legs, Mr. ID?
I'm dying to hear that answer

Reuse of the ADAM(tm) blueprints with some minor modifications allowed for a timely release of the EVA(tm) model.
Follicles were considered too unimportant to waste time on removing them from the model. The marketing department assured us they would be able to sell the "furry legs" feature to the customers.

[SoX]

7. The Moon is slowly drifting away from the Earth. If it is getting further, at one time it was much closer. The Inverse Square Law dictates that if the Moon were half the distance from the Earth, its gravitational pull on our tides would be quadrupled. 1/3 the distance, 9 times the pull. Everything would drown twice a day. Approximately 1.2 billion years ago, the Moon would have been touching the Earth. Drowning would be the least of our concerns!

I seem to remember asking my Astronomy Lecturer about this one. And the answer was something to do with friction on sea beds from pulling the water. Also the distance between Earth and the Moon oscillates, can't remember the proof though, but I did have to write it down in the exam. Damn my memory.

[SoX]

7. The Moon is slowly drifting away from the Earth. If it is getting further, at one time it was much closer. The Inverse Square Law dictates that if the Moon were half the distance from the Earth, its gravitational pull on our tides would be quadrupled. 1/3 the distance, 9 times the pull. Everything would drown twice a day. Approximately 1.2 billion years ago, the Moon would have been touching the Earth. Drowning would be the least of our concerns!

In addition to what i just said, i think they shot them selves in the foot here.

The Moon is 384,400Km from the Earth. And is receding at 3cm a year (3 x 10^-5 km).

For the Moon to have been half the distance it is now (receding at 3cm a year constantly, now heres extrapolation, not very scientific but they're doing it). It would have been at 192200km. This divided by the rate at which is it receding would give the time at which the Moon would have been half the distance it is now from the Earth. That number is 6.407 Billion Years ago.