Fallen From Grace (Creationism Related)

wolveraptor · Post by **wolveraptor** » 2006-03-20 02:00pm

It's still pretty funny, aside from all the dinosaurs and human fossils and such, the biblical site of old jericho is older than 10,000 years!

As well as ancient campsites of the real discoverers of the New World, the native americans. But I think they use carbon-dating to justify these claims, and creationists reject that method. It's not really "aside" from the dino and human fossils in that respect.

Guardsman Bass · Post by **Guardsman Bass** » 2006-03-20 04:21pm

It sort of started when I became a heavy duty reader at age ten, and I tried out a few science books. I didn't understand many of them, but over time I picked up an understanding of evolution, and biology. After that, I don't think I really believed in my now-former religion (Mormonism) anymore, with its anthropomorphized God and humans-everywhere doctrine (the latter really got to me; I thought God had a remarkable lack of imagination).

Setzer · Post by **Setzer** » 2006-03-20 07:02pm

When I learned that Jews didn't believe in Christian hell, that was the final nail in my faith's coffin.

wolveraptor · Post by **wolveraptor** » 2006-03-20 07:13pm

Why is that? It doesn't make sense that a particular religion's arbitrary beliefs should dissuade you from religion.

Utsanomiko · Post by **Utsanomiko** » 2006-03-20 08:04pm

I would assume it's the idea that something so essential to contemporary, spiritualistic Christianity has no meaning or importance to its predecessor religion. When you realize just how arbitrarily different people's beliefs are and how little it changes their behavior you tend not to see the point of any of it, basically.

Setzer · Post by **Setzer** » 2006-03-21 05:40am

Wolveraptor: My faith had been circling the drain for some time then. I already believed in evolution, and I also believed Judaism was the basis for Christianity. When I learned the two didn't share the same beliefs, the last thing keeping me Christian (fear of hell) was gone. Fuck Pascal.

TheBlackCat · Post by **TheBlackCat** » 2006-03-21 01:12pm

wolveraptor wrote:As well as ancient campsites of the real discoverers of the New World, the native americans. But I think they use carbon-dating to justify these claims, and creationists reject that method. It's not really "aside" from the dino and human fossils in that respect.

Carbon dating is just another strawman argument. Carbon dating on its own is not used, its accuracy has been verified, and tweaked, using other entirely unrelated techniques. They may not be used for a particular sample, but the veracity of its accuracy has been independently verified.

What is more, it has very limited usefulness (it requires organic matter that you know died around the same time as the other samples). There are a variety of other techniques that do not require organic matter, have less or practically no chance of contamination, and can be used in date ranges that are outside those that carbon dating is effective under. So creationists attacks on carbon dating is just a bunch of hand-waving They focus on one technique that is the most well known but also one of the most limiting, allowing them to conventiently ignore all the other techniques that are used either as complements and checks for carbon dating or used in place of carbon dating when it is not appropriate.

Besides, most problems with carbon dating, such as contamination, would lead to dates that are younger than the correct age, not older. Creationists, of course, do not mention this fact. If jericho samples were contaminated after being dug up then the date would be too young. As a random example, the carbon dating might say it is 10,000, but that is including contamination with modern or at least younger material that increases the amount of C-14 and thus the date might be mor like 12,000 years, which certainly doesn't help the Creationists' cause.