Carbon dating is flawed. [Spirituality & Religion]

Of course, the video you presented was just hearsay after all.

@Bushranger [quote]Radiocarbon dating is not perfect[/quote]

At least we agree on that.

[quote]Of course, the video you presented was just hearsay after all.[/quote]

However, this you're going to have to prove.

@GodSpeed63 And you both uncritically swallow whatever AIG and others like them tell you, because it agrees with your faith.

You're wrong, Bushranger, it's what God says about Himself and His Word is what really matters to us. Anything else is hearsay.

That's the whole post. Your own words condem that video to the realm of hearsay.

@Bushranger [quote]That's the whole post. Your own words condem that video to the realm of hearsay.[/quote]

My own words do not condemn the video to hearsay being that it refutes evolution's theory of carbon dating. Okay?

@GodSpeed63 Unless you can prove the video is the word of God, your words are what condemns it.

Given that the oldest dating I've heard of for radiocarbon dating is about 60,000 years (a time that would be extremely questionable), it does absolutely nothing to refute evolution even if it didn't work at all.

@Bushranger [quote]Given that the oldest dating I've heard of for radiocarbon dating is about 60,000 years (a time that would be extremely questionable), it does absolutely nothing to refute evolution even if it didn't work at all.[/quote]

You've heard - did you bother checking to see if it's true or not?

@GodSpeed63 Not having the equipment or expertise to conduct the tests myself, I rely on work done by people in that particular field. Do you check the claims made by organisations like AIG?

But you have failed to address the point I made. Not that I really expect you to do so.

@Bushranger [quote]Not having the equipment or expertise to conduct the tests myself, I rely on work done by people in that particular field.[/quote]

People are faulty and can't be trusted or reliable. This is why science is being messed with instead of being studied properly.

@GodSpeed63 Do you have any idea of the process involved in using any form of radiometric dating? I'm not talking about the chemistry and physics of it, but the processes used to reduce errors.

From your comments, I would assume you have not bothered to acquaint yourself with them.

@GodSpeed63 [quote]People are faulty and can't be trusted or reliable. [/quote]
You do realise AIG is written by these fautly people who can't be trusted or reliable?

@Bushranger [quote]Do you have any idea of the process involved in using any form of radiometric dating?[/quote]

Yes which is why I know it can b based on faulty assumptions rather than accuracy of conclusions. You can't pull a number out of a hat and expect it to be accurate on the age of the earth. Get used to the fact that evolution never happened.

@GodSpeed63 Evolution has nothing to do with dating the earth.

It's not a case of pulling a number out of a hat, but determining the number based on actual science. Your response strongly suggests you have no idea of what you are talking about.

@GodSpeed63 [quote]Get used to the fact that evolution never happened[/quote]

Really? Despite all the evidence?

Would you like to [b]yet again[/b] see some of that evidence?

Then you can [b]yet again[/b] run away from that evidence

@GodSpeed63 (this is the bit where you yell ‘no no no goddidit!’)

@GodSpeed63 Even though I know it's probably a waste of time because you will refuse to read it, here's a link that gives some excellent information about radiometric dating. Admittedly it doesn't deal with carbon dating, but the principle is very similar. Also, radiocarbon dating can't date rocks and, therefore, is totally useless in dating the age of the earth.

https://ncse.ngo/radiometric-dating-does-work

@newjaninev2 [quote]Really? Despite all the evidence?[/quote]

What evidence?

@GodSpeed63 [quote]What evidence?[/quote]

As always, you try to fall back on disingenuity... it’s childish and tedious, but apparently it’s all you have available to mask your fear.

Nevertheless, let’s begin

Genes synthesise proteins. That’s pretty much all they do (they have quite dull social lives, and don’t seem to have hobbies or outside interests). Those proteins are built up from amino acids.

The genes comprise large numbers of base-pairs, which are simply guanine matched with cytosine and adenine matched with thymine. The human genome contains around 3.2 billion of these base pairs (the largest we’ve found so far is that of the flowering plant Paris japonica, which has 150 billion base pairs. The marbled lungfish has 133 billion base pairs).

As I said, proteins are built up from amino acids. Each amino acid that is used to build the proteins is specified by three base-pairs (those blocks of three base-pairs are called codons).

Let’s look at cytochrome c (we could use any number of such proteins, but I have a fondness for cytochrome c… I like the alliteration)

The cytochrome c protein is built up from around 100 amino acids.
This means that there are 10E135 possible ways that the amino acids could be arranged… but not all of those arrangements would work, of course.
However, because there’s a high level of redundancy in the construction of cytosine c (and all proteins), a stunning 10E93 variants would still be functional.
So that’s 100,000,000,000, 000,000,000, 000,000,000, 000,000,000, 000,000,000, 000,000,000, 000,000,000, 000,000,000, 000,000,000, 000,000,000 possible ways that DNA could code for functional cytosine c.

Time to make some predictions in accordance with the Theory of Evolution, don’t you think?

1. Because evolution began from a tightly limited range of organisms, only one of those possible functional variants will have been passed down over the last 3.5 billion years.

2. Because of point mutations (among other factors), there should be evidence of extremely slight variation that has crept in over the last 3.5 billion years… after all, even high-fidelity copying systems aren’t perfect (and it would be suspicious if they appeared to be so)

3. That variation should be negligible for species that have comparatively recent common ancestors, and increase between species with more distant common ancestors… while still remaining negligible (The process is remarkably stable, so we wouldn’t expect too many of the 10E93 functional variants to have appeared).

So, what do we find?

How many amino acid differences are there between humans and other species?
To make things interesting, let’s list some species in order of how long it has been since we shared a common ancestor with each species, and then see how many amino acid differences there are between us and that species.
Chimpanzee = 0
Rhesus Monkey = 1
Rabbit = 9
Cow = 10
Pigeon = 12
Bullfrog = 20
Fruit Fly = 24
Wheat Germ = 37
Yeast = 42

Evidence-based simplicity and elegance… the Theory of Evolution

Your response will involve cowardly attempts to claim ‘misinterpretation’ whereas interpretation is not required.

[i]Explanation[/i] is required.

You will also run away to your default position of ‘no, no, no, goddidit’

What you will [i]not[/i] do is honestly, rationally, and meaningfully, address the [b]evidence[/b]

@GodSpeed63 Humans and chimpanzees both carry inactive genes acquired from viruses.
This occurs because some viruses insert a copy of their genome into the DNA of whichever species they infect. These are called retro-viruses... HIV is one such.

Where such viruses infect the cells that produce sperm and eggs, they can be passed on across generations.

The human genome contains thousands of these remnants of long-past infections... now rendered harmless... and so does the chimpanzee genome.

Most of them are in [b]exactly[/b] the same place on both genomes.
That’s astonishing, so I’ll repeat it: most of them are on [b]exactly the same place on both genomes[/b].

Let’s choose an explanation from a few (non-exhaustive) options:

1. astonishing coincidence

2. when the gods created humans they decided to sprinkle around several thousand retro-viruses, and they put the preponderance of retroviruses at matching sites on both species because... umm... because... well... because... stop questioning the gods!

3. The majority of retroviruses match because both species inherited them from a common ancestor, who had itself accumulated them from the line of its own descent.

The small number which do not match are the remnants of infections that each species has warded off independently since divergence from the common ancestor... as predicted by the Theory of Evolution.

@GodSpeed63 [quote]What evidence?[/quote]

All apes except humans have 24 pairs of chromosomes. We humans are the only apes to have 23 pairs.

Evolution made a testable prediction; That somewhere in the human genome we should find evidence of chromosomal fusion. In other words, we should be able to find a fused human chromosome with the remnants of extra telomeres and centromeres.

Since the loss of all the genes in a chromosome would have been fatal to any species, scientists reasoned that if the Theory of Evolution was correct about common ancestry, one of two things must have occurred. Either two chromosomes had fused in humans’ evolutionary past, or chromosomes had split in the other apes. Using 'Occam's Razor’, which states that among competing hypotheses, the simplest explanation is most likely the correct one, the most likely event was chromosome fusion in humans’ ancestors.

Normal chromosomes have a centromere (a chromosomal locus that ensures delivery of one copy of each chromosome to each daughter at cell division.) and ends that are capped with telomeres… think of them as the aglets on shoelaces). It was postulated that if two chromosomes had fused, evidence for such an event would be found in a chromosome with two centromeres and telomeres where they did not belong. That is exactly what was found in human chromosome 2 (chromosomes are numbered by length).

It was subsequently established that the equivalent chimpanzee chromosomes contain the same genes as human chromosome 2 and if placed end to end the positions of those genes match those of the human chromosome. The same chromosomes in all other ape species also line up in the same way…. the fusion event has been confirmed.

Recently we have obtained largely complete genomes of two other human species, those of Neanderthal and Denisovans. We see the same chromosome fusion in their genomes as well, which tells us that the fusion event took place in a common ancestor.

The greatest test of any scientific Theory is in its usefulness as a predictive tool. In this case, as in many others, the Theory of Evolution has delivered.

_______________________________________

By the way, thank you for this opportunity to demonstrate the explanatory and predictive power of the Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection and, by extension, the absurdity and academic poverty of creationist fantasy

@GodSpeed63 [quote]What evidence?[/quote]

Very small marine organisms, such as plankton, are ideal for showing gradual evolutionary change. There are many billions of them, many with hard parts, and they conveniently fall directly to the seafloor after death, piling up in a continuous sequence of layers. Sampling the layers in order is easy: you can thrust a long tube into the seafloor, pull up a columnar core sample, and read it from bottom to top (our research institutes here in New Zealand do this routinely).

Come to New Zealand and you can see a two-hundred-meter-long core taken from the ocean floor near New Zealand, presenting an unbroken history of the evolution of the marine foraminiferan [i]Globorotalia conoidea[/i] over an eight-million-year period.

Or you might prefer the eighteen-meter-long core extracted near Antarctica, representing two million years of sediments, showing us, again in an unbroken history, the evolution of the radiolarian [i]Pseudocubus vema[/i]

Or perhaps you’d like to see my personal favourite… a core sample that shows an ancestral plankton species [i]Eucyrtidium calvertense[/i] dividing into two descendants from a common ancestor over 3.5 million years. The new species is [i]Eucyrtidium matuyamai[/i]

@GodSpeed63 [quote]What evidence?[/quote]

In a female mammal there is a pair of tubes along which eggs travel from the ovaries to the uterus. These are called the Fallopian Tubes (salpinges). Sometimes when a human egg is ejected from an ovary it does not make it into the fallopian tube. This is because, quite oddly, the fallopian tube is not actually connected to the ovary. Rather, the opening of the fallopian tube envelops the ovary, like a too-large garden hose resting on a too-small spigot. The two are not actually attached, and sometimes an egg gets squirted out of the ovary and into the abdominal cavity instead of into the fallopian tube.

When this happens, it is usually of no consequence. The egg simply dies after a few days and is resorbed by the peritoneum, the thin wall of highly vascular tissue surrounding the abdominal cavity. No problem.

However, if an egg falls into the abdominal cavity and sperm arrives within a day or so, it might find this egg and fertilise it. The resulting embryo, completely unaware of how far it is from home, begins the process of growth, division, and tunnelling into whatever nearby tissue that it can find, usually the peritoneum but occasionally the outer covering of the large or small intestine, liver, or spleen. This is called an abdominal pregnancy

Abdominal pregnancies pose serious risks. In developing countries, they usually result in the death of the mother. In developed countries, they are easily spotted with ultrasounds and treated with surgical intervention to remove the doomed embryo and repair any damaged tissue or bleeding.

Despite creationists’ laughable claims of an ‘intelligent designer’, abdominal pregnancies are 100% the result of unintelligent design. Any reasonable plumber would have attached the fallopian tube to the ovary, thereby preventing tragic and often fatal mishaps. An ‘intelligent designer’ would never have created the small gap between the human ovary and Fallopian tube, so that an egg must cross this gap before it can travel through the tube and implant in the uterus.

In reality, [i]the gap is a remnant of our fish and reptilian ancestors,[/i] who shed eggs directly from the ovary to the outside of their bodies. The Fallopian tube is an imperfect connection because it [b]evolved[/b] later as an add-on in mammals.

@GodSpeed63 [quote]What evidence?[/quote]

I’ll pause here so that you have a chance to account for all the [b]evidence[/b] I have just shown.

In reality, everyone here knows that all we’ll see from you is disingenuity, ‘goddidit’, or pretending e that you haven’t seen anything that I have just posted.

Always pretence.

Pretence after pretence... a hallmark of creationism

Then, of course, you’ll simply run away and hide before sneaking back in a few days and repeating the same lies.

Also a hallmark of creationism.

Still, thank you for this opportunity to demonstrate to everyone the true nature of creationism, where abject ignorance, fear of reality, and self-deception, are seen as viruses.

@Bushranger If you want to have some fun... you have to be really observing but you can some of the sources the video is talking about.

About the fires disturbing the carbon dating technique, you see a short flash of a study which is this one:

[i]The Influence of Fire on the Radiocarbon Signature and Character of Soil Organic Matter in the Siskiyou National Forest, Oregon, USA[/i]

Published in 2012, can be found here for free:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/267292560_The_Influence_of_Fire_on_the_Radiocarbon_Signature_and_Character_of_Soil_Organic_Matter_in_the_Siskiyou_National_Forest_Oregon_USA

This isn't my field of expertise, so I'm not going to evaluate all the stuff in there. But just reading the conclussion, I have a good impression that what these people are writing about has nothing to do with the severe stuff portrayed in the video. It's also focussed on forest fires, it doesn't really bring volcanoes into the mix.

The 38 labratory thing... I'm still looking for the original paper, but there was a short piece made by it in a scientist journal in 1989 which can be found here:

https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg12316841-900-unexpected-errors-affect-dating-techniques/

It's kinda funny that these people aren't debunking carbon dating. Just like you they say it's not perfect, but it's pretty close considering the timespans and what they are wanting to do. And they are all trying to optimilise something that seems to be doing fairly well in a lot of examples but seems to have hickups in others due to circumstances.

The dramatic ideas presented in the video can't be found in this article. Maybe it was found in the original paper, but I can't find it.

@newjaninev2 [quote]I’ll pause here so that you have a chance to account for all the evidence I have just shown[/quote]

You have just shown that evolution didn't happen and that you have misread the evidence given to you by science. Like Dawkins, you may know science but you do not understand it.

@newjaninev2 Your predictive powers are excellent. You were spot on with your prediction of his response.