The Sudden Catastrophic Collapse of Evolutionary Time

by Perry 16 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

  • OnTheWayOut
    OnTheWayOut
    Perry- do you ever look for criticisms to the things you post or are you so invested in YEC that you skip this process.

    Perry is so wanting to find out that his beliefs are wrong, so he puts this nonsense up so we can point out the flaws for him. Perry knows he needs a push to start being rational.

    I started watching the video, but was turned off by the conspiratorial string of "what if?" questions

    What if we could exploit the tiniest misunderstandings of widely accepted theories and ignore absolutely every bit of solid evidence that the young earth theories would not support?

    What if God put fossils in the ground to test our faith?

    OR What if the angel who later became Satan put them there to make us doubt our faith?

    Oh, it's staggering what "what if" questions we can come up with.

  • adamah
    adamah

    OTWO asked-

    What if God put fossils in the ground to test our faith?

    God answers the dinosaur question, once and for all:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_9Wx6-c8VSo

    Adam

  • designs
    designs

    Fred Franz got us hoodwinked on this YEC stuff. I got laughed off a stage giving a lecture to a college class on the JW position of the earth being 42,000 years old

  • rawe
    rawe

    Hi Perry,

    One of the most powerful quotes in the book Life How Did It Get Here? - By Evolution or Creation was this one from Robert Gentry:

    Before concluding that Bible chronology is in error, consider that radioactive dating methods have come under sharp criticism by some scientists. A scientific journal reported on studies showing that "dates determined by radioactive decay may be off -- not only by a few years, but by orders of magnitude." It said: "Man, instead of having walked the earth for 3.6 million years, may have been around for only a few thousand.

    You can see this on page 96. This one quote, for many years, made me suspicious of such so-called "radioactive dating methods." After I left the faith I actually went down the Phoenix Public Library main branch and found the November 1979 Popular Science article that contains this quote. I've copied the full quote (see below) from Jan Haugland's website where I found a copy. You'll notice of course PopSci calls Gentry's views "odd speculations" and offers this information mostly to show somethings are still unknown. Elsewhere I've read that Gentry is a Seventh Day Adventist and believes in a literal interpretation of Genesis that involves believing the Earth is not much older than 6000 years.

    In terms of how the Witnesses used the quote, you don't have to get into the U238 / Pb206 ratios, to see dishonesty. PopSci could just as easily said "elephants" or "rivers" or "polar icecaps" where the word used is "man." But if it had, the quote wouldn't have worked for the Witnesses, because they hold the very odd position of old earth, but young age for the history of mankind.

    Not having an explanation for some anomaly does not mean Dr. Gentry has built a case against every other line of evidence. Certainly layers of ice at the poles are also a measure of time and they go far beyond the time frame of the Genesis creation account as well as the global flood of Noah's day. Rates of change in MtDNA is yet another measure of time. A literal understanding of Genesis would compel us to believe all of us have MtDNA from Eve who was the first human female and she lived just over 6000 years ago. His comment about "rates of decay" not varying being an "untestable assumption" means what exactly? Basically it would mean fundemental physics of radiation is not understood. Actually the reliability of the laws of nature is an important reason why we know anything at all.

    Cheers,

    -Randy

    ps: Quote from PopSci...

    So, today, everything -- human artifacts, animal remains, ancient rocks -- can be dated fairly accurately. The dates may be off a little, but that's mainly a matter of impurities in the sample or need to refine techniques, say the scientists involved. Yet major mysteries and curious anomalies remain -- the odd speculations advanced by Columbia Union College's Robert Gentry, for instance. Physicist Gentry believes that all of the dates determined by radioactive decay may be off -- not only by a few years, but by orders of magnitude. His theory revolves around "halos," tiny, ringlike discolorations found within coalified wood (wood on its way to becoming coal) and mica, often in the proximity of radioactive uranium or thorium. Some halos can be explained in terms of conventional radioactive decay. Others, known as giant halos, cannot. They're simply too big to be caused by alpha particles thrown off by known isotopes, and they don't fit into any accepted theory. If the theory of radioactive decay is weak in one spot, says Gentry, doubt is cast on whatever answers isotopes give you. Further, when Gentry studies halos in coalified wood, he finds that the uranium/lead ratios are often not at all what they should be. "Since the coalified wood was obtained from deposits supposedly at least tens of millions of years old," he says, "the ratio between uranium-238 and lead-206 should be low." They're not. They're so high, in fact, that "presently accepted ages may be too high by a factor of thousands." And man, instead of having walked the earth for 3.6 million years, may have been around for only a few thousand. "The possibility of reducing the 4.5-billion-year history of earth by a factor of a thousand," he says with some ire, "has not yet been seriously considered." Most scientists simply dismiss the idea. As one physicist told me, "You can believe it or not; I don't." "I realize it's difficult to believe," counters Gentry. "It would invalidate the whole underlying principle of radioactive dating: that the rates of decay are forever unvarying -- an untestable assumption.

  • hamsterbait
    hamsterbait

    This thread needs an:

    "OH DEAR"

    hb

  • adamah
    adamah

    NCSE (National Center for Science Education) has info on Gentry's failed hypothesis:

    http://ncse.com/cej/9/2/tetrapod-fossil-footprints-polonium-halos-colorado-plateau

    http://ncse.com/cej/8/1/gentrys-tiny-mystery-unsupported-by-geology

    Talk Origins has this:

    http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/po-halos/gentry.html

    This quote, under cross-examination:

    "My understanding is that all the assertions in the Bible which pertain to science would be true."

    -Robert V. Gentry
    Cross-examination
    McLean v. Arkansas , 1981

    Adam

  • rawe
    rawe

    Hi Perry,

    I didn't want to comment specifically on the Polonium Halos in my first post, since it has been awhile since I've read material on this. I just re-read this article: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/po-halos/violences.html

    The author, John Brawley, is an amateur scientist, however I was impressed by the length he went to study this issue and produce a report. It takes awhile to read the report, so if you stop before reaching the end, you'll miss a funny bit about him trying to get people to let him on their land to get samples. To quote him: "[some from a] high-security mining operation and could not wait to get me the hell off their property."

    After his research and examining several examples his conclusion was the Polonium Halos are mostly likely formed by Radon-222. This is consistent with other reports I have read about this. In any regards, it is telling that Dr. Gentry is trying to hang so much on one thing, without considering many lines of evidence that contradict the Genesis creation account and Noah's flood. I mentioned a few above, but there are many -- even simple things like asking would enough population be available after the flood to build Stonehenge, The Great Wall of China and the Pyramids of Egypt? Or why don't we find evidence of lemurs outside of Madagascar?

    I think the best approach to these things is to accept the theories that are most encompasing of all lines of evidence. Yet at the same time appreciate there will always be outliers wherein some small bits of data doesn't seem to fit. Such might indicate a refinement in our theories is required, but jumping to some wild conclusion that is opposed to mountains of other evidence based on an unexplained anomaly is not productive.

    Here is John Brawley's conclusions. If you feel inclined to comment it would be appreciated, but in any regards I enjoy the opportunity these threads create to discuss such things.

    "In Conclusion, I believe that Radon-222 is the most likely candidate for the source of certain "Polonium-218" halos in biotite mica. The process envisioned is most consistent with the data (including some observational data not mentioned by previous researchers), and providentially is unique in its characteristics: Radon is an inert gas, the only gas in the Uranium-238 decay chain, having the thermodynamic ability and more than enough time to migrate about in the mica, a few atoms at a time. Also significant is the apparent impossibility of distinguishing Radon-222 halos from Polonium-218 halos under the microscope."

    Cheers,

    -Randy

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