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→But, but, but...!: - Response
What about [[radiometric dating]], indeed? Well, did any of you hear about a little episode in 1996, in which a geologist named Steven A. Austin took samples from the cooled lava dome at Mount Saint Helens and sent them in to a radiometric dating laboratory? Of course he didn't tell them where he got the rocks. Now how old do you think those rocks were? Ten years old, right? After all, Mount Saint Helens blew its top in 1986. Well, guess how old that lab thought the rocks were? Half a million years old, or even two point eight million!
What about [[radiometric dating]], indeed? Well, did any of you hear about a little episode in 1996, in which a geologist named Steven A. Austin took samples from the cooled lava dome at Mount Saint Helens and sent them in to a radiometric dating laboratory? Of course he didn't tell them where he got the rocks. Now how old do you think those rocks were? Ten years old, right? After all, Mount Saint Helens blew its top in 1986. Well, guess how old that lab thought the rocks were? Half a million years old, or even two point eight million!
:First off, the rocks would have been older than the actual eruption. The lava that coalesced into the new rock formations existed prior to the actual eruption. Secondly, the lab attempted to use a K-Ar dating method which cannot be used to date samples younger than 2 million years. Using K-Ar dating to date these rocks would be like using a high powered telescope to look for your keys. Additionally, the samples that Austin sent to be dated were not purified properly beforehand. Ultimately, there were all sorts of reasons for anomalous dates to appear, none of which are an indictment of radiometric dating.
If any hospital lab had made a comparable mistake, it would have been shut down for its pains. So how did that lab make that mistake? Simple--they presupposed that no daughter nuclide would be present in the formation of igneous rock. And yet they found a clear excess of radiogenic [[argon]], the decay product of the radioactive [[potassium]] in the rock. And it wasn't a matter of "tolerances," either--they reported five different ages for the rock, and those ages were further apart than the sums of their rated tolerances. ''They couldn't even figure out that the rocks all came from the same source, and that source was a recent volcanic eruption!''
If any hospital lab had made a comparable mistake, it would have been shut down for its pains. So how did that lab make that mistake? Simple--they presupposed that no daughter nuclide would be present in the formation of igneous rock. And yet they found a clear excess of radiogenic [[argon]], the decay product of the radioactive [[potassium]] in the rock. And it wasn't a matter of "tolerances," either--they reported five different ages for the rock, and those ages were further apart than the sums of their rated tolerances. ''They couldn't even figure out that the rocks all came from the same source, and that source was a recent volcanic eruption!''
Nor was this the first such mistake. Back in 1993, miners in the Crinum Coal Mine in [[Australia]] unearthed a fossil tree buried in [[basalt]]. Andrew Snelling and his team sent a sample of the wood to one lab, and samples of the surrounding rock to two different labs. And what do you suppose the labs told them? They got back one apparent age for the tree (about 10,000 years) and apparent ages for the rocks that were orders-of-magnitude higher--as in, in the millions of years.
Nor was this the first such mistake. Back in 1993, miners in the Crinum Coal Mine in [[Australia]] unearthed a fossil tree buried in [[basalt]]. Andrew Snelling and his team sent a sample of the wood to one lab, and samples of the surrounding rock to two different labs. And what do you suppose the labs told them? They got back one apparent age for the tree (about 10,000 years) and apparent ages for the rocks that were orders-of-magnitude higher--as in, in the millions of years.
:Polystrate fossils are a very well understood phenomenon having first been described in the 1860s. Only young earth proponents still consider this any sort of problem for Geology.
Now don't you think that somebody's got some explaining to do? What kind of stupid mistake was this? Not stupid--merely ignorant and prejudiced by their worldview--and making a bunch of wrong assumptions about radioactive decay.
Now don't you think that somebody's got some explaining to do? What kind of stupid mistake was this? Not stupid--merely ignorant and prejudiced by their worldview--and making a bunch of wrong assumptions about radioactive decay.
"But speciation happens all the time!" Sure, it does--but only within definitely prescribed kinds. You don't get a new species that is a cross between a wolf and a big cat--nor could you produce a viable pup/kitten hybrid by crossing any species of wolf (the domestic dog is a subspecies of the gray wolf ''Canis lupus'') with any species of big cat.
"But speciation happens all the time!" Sure, it does--but only within definitely prescribed kinds. You don't get a new species that is a cross between a wolf and a big cat--nor could you produce a viable pup/kitten hybrid by crossing any species of wolf (the domestic dog is a subspecies of the gray wolf ''Canis lupus'') with any species of big cat.
:Evolutionary theory doesn't propose that one would be able to cross and dog and a cat. Cross-species mating is not a prediction of the Theory of Evolution. What the theory does propose is that through various selection processes a single species could split into two species which were incapable of breeding with each other, and this has been observed.
"But didn't Miller and Urey show how amino acids probably formed in the early atmospheric conditions?" No, they didn't. First, they set up a gas mixture that might work, with no good reason to suppose that those were the gases that were ever the way earth's atmosphere was put together. Second, they got a racemic mix of amino acids--not the uniformly left-handed mix that we observe in all of life today.
"But didn't Miller and Urey show how amino acids probably formed in the early atmospheric conditions?" No, they didn't. First, they set up a gas mixture that might work, with no good reason to suppose that those were the gases that were ever the way earth's atmosphere was put together. Second, they got a racemic mix of amino acids--not the uniformly left-handed mix that we observe in all of life today.
:The purpose of the Miller Urey experiment was not to perfectly replicate the early atmosphere, but to show in principal that the building blocks of life could be generated abiotically. Clearly, there is still the issue of creating a non-racemic mixture, but some studies show that aqueous clay can cause the left handed amino acids to be preferentially generated.
== Accusations against creationism and creationists ==
== Accusations against creationism and creationists ==