Well, the author of this article is right about one thing -- his scientific understanding of dating methods is very limited. His claim that the tree rings and ice layers have been debunked is false. I suspect the reason that Ken Ham didn't try to dwell on refutations of dating methods is that he knew he didn't have a leg to stand on there.
The reason we know the dating methods work is because of the *correlation* of radiometric dating methods with NON-radiometric dating methods and the correlation of radiometric dating methods with other radiometric methods, and the correlation between non-radiometric methods. For example, the farther we go into the tree, the deeper we go in the ice, and the deeper we go in the Lake Suigetsu varves, the older the C-14 dates get. The varves and the ice layers contain records of volcanic eruptions, and these records agree with each other about how long ago they occurred. Not only that, but we can identify *where* those eruptions occurred by their chemical signal, and we can go to those particular volcanoes and radiometrically date the eruption and get agreement with the varves and the ice cores.
There is also the strong correlation between the Greenland ice sheet and the Antarctic ice sheet, even though they are on opposite ends of the Earth from each other.
Another example of the correlation between radiometric dating and non-radiometric dating is in the seafloor basalt. Using observed spreading rates from the mid-ocean ridges we can approximate the age of a certain area of seafloor based solely on its distance from the ridge. And when we use radiometric dating to date that same bit of seafloor, we find that our radiometric age agrees with the age derived from spreading rates. Not only that, but the magnetic striping of the seafloor basalt records variations in the Earth's magnetic field, and these variations agree with what we observe in igneous extrusions all over the world, and these too have been extensively dated using radiometric methods, with very good agreement.
I have mentioned nothing of electron spin resonance, thermoluminescent dating, amino acid racemization, or a dozen other indicators of age that have nothing to do with radioactive decay rates, but these methods, too, are in agreement.
There is no young-earth explanation for these correlations. Walt Brown doesn't even attempt it, neither does Answers in Genesis or the ICR or any other "creation science" organization -- they simply nit-pick about this or that dating method but they NEVER address the BIG problem, which is the *correlations* we see across this broad range of methods. Accelerated nuclear decay, accelerated speed of light, trees putting on more than one ring a year, big piles of snow that creationists wrongly liken to the characteristics of the ice cores, cannot explain why all the dates are wrong by the same amount and in the same direction. There *isn't* any explantion for it from the young-earth perspective, except for two possibilites: either God created the Earth with fake fossils already in the rocks, and distant starlight shining on Earth from stars that never existed, and a number of other deceptions, or those Genesis "days" were very long periods of time.
There isn't any way around that, and either of those conclusions utterly falsifies everything "creation science" has ever said, because either way, the Earth looks old and the creation scientists are saying it looks young.
The half-life of C-14 is only 5,700 years, and in C-14 alone we have a continuous line of evidence going back ten times farther than the young-earth view, based on their interpretation of Genesis, will allow. So since the Earth is way more than 6,000 years old, it really doesn't matter what they think -- their interpretation of "God's word" is wrong.
I dispute your assertion of correlation. How you can assert correlation and consistency in radiometric dating, in light of the findings by Austin et al. (1996) and Snelling et al. (1993), is beyond my comprehension.
Correlation alone would prove nothing anyway. Just because two clocks happen to agree, does not mean either clock is telling the correct time. Perhaps each clock keeper is synchronizing his clock by the other clock. Or perhaps both are synchronizing their clocks by a third, equally wrong clock.
And more to the point: your comment does nothing to show the origin of radioactivity. If radioactivity on earth had its origin in the Global Flood, absolutely nothing about current radiometric dating methods would make the slightest difference. That is especially true of C-14. And by the way: can you explain how a 37,000-year-old tree was found buried in basalt that was over a million years old? (Apparent ages given here, not actual ages.)
Your vaunted correlations do not exist. At least three separate investigative teams (the third being the RATE Group, who blew isochron dating out of the water at the Grand Canyon) have shown that such dates are non-correlating and inconsistent.
Submitted by BarryBirkett (not verified) on
Sometimes, it pays to keep things simple. While the musings of the evolutionist above are ludicrous, I would like to suggest that evolutionsists don't have a good grasp of math.
As a tourist visiting the power generating plant on the American side of Niagara Falls, in 1986, I was subjected to the usual guide's presentation of how the falls have been there for 500 million years or so, as she stood in from of a huge mural depicting same. I had been told years before that the falls are eroding at the rate of inches per year. Now, if have seen through photographical evidence over several decades, that the rate is much higher, more likely 50 times more...
If we use our heads, even at an inch per year, that would mean it would have eroded approximately 7,900 MILES over that time frame. Multiply that by a factor of 50, and the erosion would circle the globe 10 times.
Earlier on that same holiday trip, we were on Cavendish Beach in Prince Edward Island, Canada. The National Parks Service had a huge sign depicting the "history" of the beach, coincidentally using the same 500 million years' time span. On the same sign, there were warnings that something had to be done about the 6" per year erosion of the beach. That yields a trip around the globe as well.
When I asked the tour guide about that, the answer basically was that I "didn't understand," and I later learned about how they are trained to handle creationists.
It's interesting, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of physical, not theoretical, evidences for a young earth, and THEY ALL correlate, unlike the assertions here.
The emporer of evolution most certainly "has no clothes."
A very good example of a finding showing the earth must be young. Thank you.
Submitted by wwcl (not verified) on
As to Barry Birkett's comment about Niagara Falls -- man, I don't know whether you're making this up or what, but there is NOBODY in geology that says Niagara Falls are 500 million years old, or even 50,000 years old. If your "math" is right -- that the rate of erosion is "more likely 50 times greater" -- that would still leave the Falls being 10 million years old.
But they're not. Nowhere close. I suggest you refer to Wikipedia or Google or something.
Submitted by wwcl (not verified) on
I'm afraid you guys have fired off replies to my message without fully considering what I said.
Hello, Terry.
You said:
| I dispute your correlation.
Seriously? Are you denying that the C-14 dates get older from the outside of the tree to the inside? Are you denying that the C-14 dates get older the deeper we go in the Lake Suigetsu varves? That is correlation. We have annual processes -- another tree ring or another varve layer -- going backward in time. And we have radiometric measurements that agree with these annual processes, both in magnitude and direction. Same thing with the ice cores. Regardless of the amount of time it was between one layer and the next, the layer above is younger than the next layer down. Whether there was one layer per year or a thousand, the radiometric dates increase by the same amount -- in other words, if you want to say a thousand layers of ice were put down in one year, then there was also a thousand years worth -- by today's rate -- of radioactive decay that occurred in that same year. That is correlation.
When we use C-14 to date the extinction of the Pleisocene megafauna, we see that all over the world, for many of these species, the dates end at about 11,000 years ago. That is correlation. Whether that 11,000 years really is 11,000 years, or is really only 3,000 years, the correlation still exists -- if we find a sabre-tooth tiger fossil we can be pretty certain it is going to give us a C-14 date of more than 10,000 years. C-14 dates correlate with the known age of Egyptian artifacts back 4,000 years or so, with a margin of error of only a few decades one way or the other. So the C-14 really is measuring age, and if you try to say the Pleistocene extinction occurred about the same time the pyramids were being built, you lose your correlation and thereby the credibility of your assertion, because the weight of the evidence is that the end of the Pleistocene is over twice as far back in time as the oldest pyramid. Human occupation of the Biblical city of Jericho is also twice as far back in time as the oldest pyramid, and there is a continuous range of dates from Jericho right up to the C-14 age of the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Your comment shows that you do not understand just how big the problem is that the correlation between radiometric dating and non-radiometric dating poses for the young-earth view. You suggest a global flood as the origin of radioactivity, which you get from Brown. But Brown fails to consider our observation of radioactive decay rates and the constancy of light speed which SN 1987A has provided for us. Just from that one supernova, which occurred 187,000 years ago, we plainly see that a global flood on the Earth a few thousand years ago is NOT the origin of radioactivity. Furthermore, if the observed amount of radioactive decay in the Earth's rocks had taken place a few thousand years ago, the Earth would still be in a molten state from all that heat. Even the ICR's RATE team recognizes this, and they have tried to figure out some scenario of getting rid of all that heat, but an explanation doesn't seem to be forthcoming. Neither does Walt Brown's scenario account for the agreement of radiometric dates and non-radiometric dates such as the seafloor basalt -- what would have to have happened, to explain the correlation, would be for the accelerated decay rates to be *decelerating* at the same time as, and *in complete tandem with,* decleration of seafloor spreading rates.
Radioactivity arising on Earth during the Flood does not explain why the Moon's radioactivity matches the Earth's, nor does it explain why the meteorites we have dated are all about 4.5 billion years old. If these meteorites had been subjected to rapid decay rates to make them age 4.5 billion years in 4.5 thousand years, they would have melted, and when they cooled their radiometric clocks would have been reset to zero. Simple facts like this show Brown is absolutely wrong about the Flood's effect on radiometric dating.
You say:
| Correlation alone would prove nothing anyway.
| Just because two clocks happen to agree, does
| not mean either clock is telling the correct time.
| Perhaps each clock keeper is synchronizing his
| clock by the other clock. Or perhaps both
| are synchronizing their clocks by a third, equally
| wrong clock.
We're not talking about two clocks, Terry. We're talking about dozens of clocks. They are in agreement with each other.
And while they may not be telling "the correct time" they would have to *all be wrong by the same amount and in the same direction* -- that is what correlation does indeed "prove." A few billion years of radioactive decay may take place in one "day," but that just means that everything else that ocurred on Earth during that few billion years of decay *also* took place on that same "day". Which is why I said that God would have had to either put fake fossils in the rocks or those "days" were very long periods of time.
I have thought long and hard about those clocks, and what really makes them tick, for nearly twenty-five years. And Walt Brown has thought about them for much longer.
What you have said is incompetent, hearsay, irrelevant, immaterial, and inconclusive.
Now about the Moon: the effects of the Flood did not limit themselves to the earth. About one percent of the total mass of the earth escaped into space with the violent forces the Flood event unleashed. Among them: seven very large objects that buried themselves into the surface of the Moon and formed the maria. Five of these were in such a tight cluster that they caused the Moon to lock itself tidally to the earth. That's why the face on the Moon always faces the earth.
And the radioactive materials? That's not so hard to imagine. Those materials came from the earth. I predict that if you try to dig deep and mine the Moon for radioactive deposits of any kind, that enterprise will be a big fat bust.
The result you claim from your last paragraph is all from deliberate fudging and "correction." That sort of thing goes on all the time. It is elementary games theory to suppose that I would have figured that out.
Submitted by wwcl (not verified) on
Hello, Terry.
First let me make a correction -- SN 1987A is 168,000 light-years away, not 187,000 light-years away. But still, the point remains the same: we have first-hand observation from SN 1987a that neither the speed of light nor the rate of radioactive decay has changed by any detectable amount for at least the last 168,000 years. And we have no evidence that it changed at any time before then, either.
You say:
| "..the effects of the Flood did not limit
| themselves to the earth. About one
| percent of the total mass of the earth
| escaped into space with the violent
| forces the Flood event unleashed.
| Among them: seven very large
| objects that buried themselves into
| the surface of the Moon and formed
| the maria. Five of these were in such
| a tight cluster that they caused the
| Moon to lock itself tidally to the earth.
| That’s why the face on the Moon
| always faces the earth."
No, Terry, the reason the same side of the Moon is always facing Earth is because it has a "tidal bulge" that has slowed its rotation. Most of the moons in our solar system are similarly locked to their planets. (See Wikipedia's list in the article on "synchronous rotation.") This is another area where Walt Brown's model is a complete failure. We know how far away the Moon was 600 million years ago, and at that time our days were 22 hours long and our years were 400 days. We also know where the Moon was 2.5 billion years ago, and how long the days and years were then. Brown completely ignores these things, and instead wrongly uses a *uniformitarian assumption* that the tidal dissipation in the past was the same as it is today, when we have substantial evidence that this is not the case; the rate of moon recession 600 million years ago was a little over 2 cm/year and the rate 2.5 billion years ago was about 1.3 cm/year. So much for Walt Brown's "moon recession" argument -- falsified by evidence right here on Earth, evidence that he cannot explain with his hydroplate theory, so he just ignores it.
The Moon's tidal bulge is the result of deformation from all those hundreds of millions of years of the Earth's gravity pulling at it, while the Sun's gravity is pulling it a different direction. Over time the Moon's rotation on its axis has slowed to the point that it makes one rotation in the time it takes it to make one orbit around the Earth. This effect has nothing to do with Brown's fantasized ejecta striking the Moon. Is he going to propose that the same thing happened with all the other moons in the solar system?
You have made a number of statements here that are neither Biblical nor scientific -- there is no evidence supporting any of this fantasy of Walt Brown's. In particular there is no evidence that the Earth lost 1% of its mass a few thousand years ago, there is no evidence that anything caused Earth to eject matter into space a few thousand years ago, there is no evidence that the maria on the moon are only a few thousand years old (they have been radiometrically dated at about 3.5 billion years) and the idea that the Moon only became tidally locked a few thousand years ago is, frankly, ludicrous. Science demands evidence, and I am under no obligation to accept claims purporting to be scientific when they have no evidence to back them up, and particularly not so when there is substantial contradictory evidence that the claims do not address.
2.5 billion years ago the Moon should have been touching the Earth given current rates of recession. That the recession rate should have changed, violates uniformitarianism.
Do you deny that the Moon has "masscons" (mass concentrations) that crashed a satellite that Apollo 15 tried to place in orbit around the Moon, and which every subsequent mission of Project Apollo had to plan for? Where do you think they came from?
And yes, Brown proposes that the Great Meteoric Bombardment that affected the Moon, also affected other airless bodies in the solar system — and that all those bombardiers were Flood ejecta. The asteroids are made of such ejecta. So are the comets. All these Mavericks of the Solar System came from flood ejecta.
If you would but read the relevant chapters in his book, you will see that nothing else adequately explains all we know about them.
Brown correctly predicted the finding of vast quantities of water ice on Ceres. (In fact we see water vapor, and in prodigious quantities). I predict, after discussing with him, that the Dawn spacecraft, now heading to Ceres, will find a high concentration of deuterium in that water, maybe twice the concentration in the oceans of earth. That also will be consistent with his model.
If you think you can disprove his model, then Brown challenges you, as he challenges everyone, to recruit a team of PhD-level scientists to challenge him to a debate.
Submitted by transform2012 on
Actually, your "facts" are assumption-filled. As I stated in my article, more information is available to thoroughly answer Mr. Nye's claims (and your "assertions" as well) at the Creation Science websites such as Answers in Genesis, Creation Ministries International, and Institute of Creation Research. These sites contain a wealth of information written and documented by Ph.D.-level scientists doing real science which upholds the Creation model.
Your so-called "debunking proofs" are themselves debunked in many of these articles. Following is brief listing of links to answer many of your objections:
In addition, you have completely ignored the work of the RATE Project which has done much ground-breaking work in exposing the limitations of radiometric dating methods. The RATE Project was a multi-disciplinary team of Ph.D.-level scientists who have proven that decay rates in the past are not "uniformitarian" as you pre-suppose.
My assumption is that you are sincerely seeking the truth on these issues. I've given you a few resources for further study. There are literally thousands of articles on these Creation Science sites. If you have more questions, please consult the experts on the Creation Science model, don't build "straw man" caricatures based on misinformation by those who seek to dismiss thinking Christian scientists without every really investigating their claims and evidence.
That is "real science" - considering ALL the evidence before reaching a conclusion. Most evolution proponents are too afraid or arrogant to sincerely look at the massive, and growing, body of scientific evidence that does, in fact, affirm the Creation model and the Bible's truthfulness in matters of science and origins.
Submitted by wwcl (not verified) on
Hello, Russ.
I am well aware of all these creationist attempts at sounding scientific. They only serve to point up what I said in my original message about how they "nit-pick" one dating method or another, but they NEVER address the correlation problem.
You are right, Russ, that I am seeking truth. I have already studied these articles thoroughly and have been referred to them several times over the last several years. I have studied them so much that I know where they're messing up and what they are deliberately ignoring.
John Baumgardner showed up on Theology Web a few years ago to attempt to defend the RATE team's "C-14 in diamonds" results and he was unable to do so, because there happened to be quite a number of participants there who understood C-14 dating much better than he did, and he finally just had to say that he was sticking to [his interpretation of] the Bible and he left.
But just use a little common sense: if the "C-14 in diamonds" claim had been valid, they should have been able to repeat those results with diamonds all over the world. But apparently it only works with diamonds that have been in proximity with N-decay from uranium deposits. Neither can "instrinsic" C-14 explain why there is so much material in the world, that is clearly organic in origin, that does not contain *any* measurable C-14. If what the RATE team was saying about C-14 is true, then there should be *tons* of C-14 left in *everything*. But there isn't.
Similarly, the RATE team's "helium in zircons" research lacked credibility from the very beginning because of Humphreys' misuse of statistics and because of the possible confounding influence of extraneous helium at the Fenton Hill site, but then it lost *all* credibility because the RATE team failed to follow up on their results. If their results were valid they should have been able to go anywhere on Earth and reproduce those results, and if they had any confidence in their results -- which would have had quite astounding implications -- they should have been *eager* to replicate them elsewhere. But they did not, because they knew the extraneous helium at the Fenton Hill site was what was giving them the results they got, and they knew they wouldn't get those results elsewhere, where extraneous helium was not a factor. And so now someone else has gone and replicated that research in Germany, and the RATE team's results did not hold up.
You say the RATE team blew dating "out of the water" at the Grand Canyon, but Snelling completely ignores the presence of a number of *terrestrial* formations within the Grand Canyon layers, formations which conclusively prove that the Grand Canyon is not the result of a global Flood. Furthermore, the RATE team did not address in any way the C-14 dates for the archaeological sites and the Pleistocene fossils that are *on the very surface of the ground* -- ABOVE all the Grand Canyon layers -- which go back *twice as far* in time as the young-earth view will allow. These things were clearly deposited well after the Grand Canyon layers and well after any hypothesized "accelerated nuclear decay" would have to have ceased. Yet the RATE team doesn't even mention it.
What you guys aren't understanding is that the Earth has *only one timeline,* and everything that has ever happened on Earth still has to happen in the same order. For example, rapid reversals of the magnetic field shown in the seafloor basalt -- let's go with that for the sake of argument: from the time of one reversal to the next you have to have so many tens of thousands of years worth of radioactive decay taking place, you still have to have so many tens of thousands of years worth of seafloor spreading taking place, you still have to have so many tens of thousands of years of continental drift occurring, and you still have to have so many tens of thousands of years of moon recession taking place and that same number of tens of thousands of years of the Earth slowing on its axis. All of these things have to be happening at the same time and in the same order. What this means is that Time itself has to be decelerating.
In other words, if you had a movie of the entire history of the Earth, and were playing the film backward, it would play at normal speed until 6,000 years ago and then its speed would have to increase by several million fold back to the beginning, some 4.5 billion years ago by scientific reckoning, that you would have to cover in just 6 days. But everything that has ever happened still has to happen, or you won't get the observed correlation between dating methods.
There is not a single one of these articles you have linked, Russ, that takes this into consideraion. Not one. They can try to cast doubt on one or the other method in isolation, and ignore everything that contradicts their proposals, but when you put them all together you can't place events on a timeline. You have to move radioactive decay so far into the very recent past that the Earth is still molten. You have to have magical Flood processes, that are laying down 50,000 years of varves in one year, replaced about 4,000 years ago by the perfectly natural process of annual algae blooms that we still see taking place today, and there is no discernible line between the period of magical layers and those that have occurred naturally. Same thing with the tree rings, and same thing with the ice layers, and the varves of the Cariaco Basin, and the annual rings on the corals, and the annual rings on speleotherms -- no detectable difference between those that were magically produced during the Flood and those that have formed since then by the same processes we observe in the present.
There simply is not a coherent young-earth explanation for these things that takes into account all of the evidence and can produce any degree of correlation similar to the explanations that we already have. I have read their work. They don't even try.
Submitted by wwcl (not verified) on
Hello, Terry.
You wrote (above):
| That the recession rate should have changed,
| violates uniformitarianism.
Uniformitarianism just means that the laws of physics and chemistry haven't changed, Terry, and that they are the same throughout the physical Universe. Even catastrophism has to abide by the laws of chemistry and physics. Lyell's brand of uniformitarianism, which is in reference to geology, also has provision for catastrophes, for which we have many examples.
We have evidence of what the recession rate of the Moon was in the past, which we have derived by applying the laws of physics to our observations of tidal rhythmites. If you wish to challenge that evidence, you must challenge the evidence itself. You can't just use made up numbers that don't take into account the very observations that show your numbers are wrong.
| Do you deny that the Moon has “masscons”...
I deny you can make any unambiguous, evidence-based connection between the mass concentrations on the Moon and anything that happened here on Earth a few thousand years ago.
| I predict, after discussing with [Brown],
| that the Dawn spacecraft, now heading to
| Ceres, will find a high concentration of
| deuterium in that water...
So what?
The deuterium:hydrogen ratio of Ceres may tell us something about the early Solar System, and how far from the Sun the Ceres ice accumulated, but it isn't going to tell us anything about what was happening on Earth in 3000 BC. Why should it?
| If you think you can disprove his model,
| then Brown challenges you, as he challenges
| everyone, to recruit a team of PhD-level
| scientists to challenge him to a debate.
It doesn't take a team of Ph.D. scientists to refute Brown. I can do it myself, right here, in just a few paragraphs. Brown never once addresses the correlation of radiometric and non-radiometric dating methods. Unless he can explain this from the paradigm of a young Earth, everything he says about what was happening on the Earth a few thousand years ago is falsified by existing evidence. For that matter, radiocarbon dating alone shows that Brown's entire hydroplate "theory" is false, so let's look at how he deals with carbon dating.
The Lake Suigetsu varves are a perfect example of the evidence that Brown ignores and otherwise misrepresents. The Lake Suigetsu varves accumulate as annual cycles of algae bloom. Brown doesn't mention this at all, although the varves of Suigetsu and of the Cariaco Basin both record fluctuations in the C-14 reservoirs over a period of tens of thousands of years, by processes that we observe happening even now. These records of fluctuations are used in constructing the calibration curves for C-14 dates of terrestrial and marine samples. The terrestrial C-14 calibration curve has recently been extended back to 50,000 years, and you can see this curve yourself, and the variety of materials they have used as checks, at the online Radiocarbon journal.
But what does Brown do? He ignores these two very significant sets of relatively recent varve formation, both of which contain an abundance of biological material suitable for carbon dating, and instead sends you off to the Green River formation, which was formed by *clastic* processes at a period of time so remote that it doesn't have anything to do with carbon dating. And yet even here he only tells you what he wants you to know -- he makes no mention at all of the research that shows the correlation between the "astrochronology" of the Green River formation (i.e. where the Moon was during the 6 million years that the varves were being formed) and the results of radiometric dating of volcanic flows in the region. (So here again is more evidence that his moon recession figures are wrong, but let's stick with the subject of carbon dating.)
Brown uses a similar underhanded tactic in his treatment of radiocarbon dates for mammoths. For one thing, he misrepresents his sources. For example, his claim that the "Vollosovitch mammoth" dated at 29,500 and 44,000 years is not supported by his reference, and if you take the time to hunt down the original lab report for this so-called "Vollosovitch mammoth" you will see why he doesn't give you that reference. Nobody but Walt Brown and Kent Hovind even call this creature the "Vollosovitch mammoth," anyway. Brown does this deliberately, so you *won't be able* to find the original lab report, but I did find it, and not only is he wrong but he is being deliberately deceptive. He does basically the same thing with his claim about the "Fairbanks Creek mammoth" -- he gives you the wrong sources and he fails to mention that the Fairbanks Creek mammoth dates are actually from *two different mammoths,* found in different areas eight years apart and dated at different labs, one in 1961 and the second in 1970. Brown's reference for this is to Anthony, but Anthony's article in "Natural History" was published in September, 1949, before there had ever been radiocarbon dates of *anything* published. The first radiocarbon dates were not published until December of that year, and it would be more than 10 years before the first radiocarbon dates for mammoths were published.
His whole section about the frozen mammoths and the conclusions he draws from them is utterly bogus. His "quick frozen" mammoths are all tens of thousands of years older than the date of his supposed Flood event and we have a multitude of mammoth dates going up to about 10,000 years ago -- much more recent than his frozen specimens but still over twice as far back in time as his Flood event. So he *must* address C-14 dating.
But Brown *falsely* claims that C-14 dating relies on the assumption that atmospheric levels of C-14 in the past were pretty much the same as they are today. We know that this is false, and this is *exactly why C-14 dates are calibrated in the first place.* Brown falsely claims that tree ring chronologies only go back about 3,500 years. He wrongly insinuates that the possibility of trees putting on more than one ring a year make the tree ring chronologies suspect, and he also wrongly insinuates that "missing rings" also make dendrochronologies suspect. He pretends that the recent buildup of C-14 in the atmosphere (which is a well known result of atomic bomb testing) makes C-14 dating suspect. He makes no mention at all of any of the other sources of radiocarbon calibration data such as varves, speleotherms and corals.
In short, he NEVER deals with the evidence. In many cases his references are to decades-old research that has nothing to do with what we know today. In other cases his references are to creationist publications that have never been submitted to peer-review. And in other cases he just makes stuff up and gives the wrong reference, because his references do not support the claims he is making. This is not science; it is baloney. And what it all means is that Brown has had to rely on deliberate misrepresentations of the evidence in order to falsely cast doubt on radiocarbon dating; he has not in the least actually shown that radiocarbon dating does not work nor has he addressed in any way the voluminous data that show radiocarbon does work.
So there is Walt Brown, for you, thoroughly refuted in one brief sweep. Impact craters on the Moon are irrelevant. The recession rate of the Moon is irrelevant. Ceres is irrelevant. Brown's model fails on simple terms -- carbon dating alone shows he is wrong, and not only is he wrong but he attempts to hide his error by misrepresentation. When Brown gets ready to explain the correlation of radiometric and non-radiometric dating methods, I'll be all ears. But I don't look for that to happen any time soon, because as I said to begin with, the *only* possible explanations are that either those Genesis "days" are very long periods of time, or God has made the Earth with "apparent age" -- including "apparent" fossils and a number of other deceptions. And *either* of those explanations puts Walt Brown out of the creation science business.
No, don't try to weasel out. Uniformitarianism means processes at work today, have worked at the same, never-changing rate since time immemorial. And originally, forever. Classic Lyellian (that is, pre-Becquerel) uniformitarianism did not recognize a beginning of time.
Now about deuterium, and indeed any heavy isotope of any chemical element at Z=82 and lighter (except for Tc and Pm): Radioactive materials (trans-lead) came to be on earth when the original metals turned to plasma and formed super-heavy elements in the highly-charged environment of a quartz-laden crust subject to magnitude-10-to-12 earthquakes. That process released a sea of neutrons. Any element that captures a neutron, becomes a heavy isotope. Such is the source of carbon-13. And of deuterium and tritium.
Comets are rich in deuterium, and indeed twice as rich in that isotope as are the oceans of earth. So: where did this deuterium come from? What violent act, in space, spewed so many neutrons throughout the solar system? And why the discrepancy between the oceans of earth and the dirty ice in the comets? That discrepancy reflects the 1:1 dilution of the subcrustal ocean, which absorbed nearly all the neutrons, and the original ocean that was on the surface before the Flood. The ocean we know today has twice the volume and mass of the pre-Flood surface ocean. That, by the way, is where the water went: into a Pacific basin that deepened when the floor caved in. That also is the real source of ocean trenches, and not "runaway subduction."
I will let Dr. Brown reply to the rest of your accusations of scientific mendacity, if he is so inclined. He will probably ask you to gather a team of PhD scientists and accept his written debate challenge, if you are so sure of refuting his model on the points you raise.
13 Comments
Submitted by wwcl (not verified) on
Well, the author of this article is right about one thing -- his scientific understanding of dating methods is very limited. His claim that the tree rings and ice layers have been debunked is false. I suspect the reason that Ken Ham didn't try to dwell on refutations of dating methods is that he knew he didn't have a leg to stand on there.
The reason we know the dating methods work is because of the *correlation* of radiometric dating methods with NON-radiometric dating methods and the correlation of radiometric dating methods with other radiometric methods, and the correlation between non-radiometric methods. For example, the farther we go into the tree, the deeper we go in the ice, and the deeper we go in the Lake Suigetsu varves, the older the C-14 dates get. The varves and the ice layers contain records of volcanic eruptions, and these records agree with each other about how long ago they occurred. Not only that, but we can identify *where* those eruptions occurred by their chemical signal, and we can go to those particular volcanoes and radiometrically date the eruption and get agreement with the varves and the ice cores.
There is also the strong correlation between the Greenland ice sheet and the Antarctic ice sheet, even though they are on opposite ends of the Earth from each other.
Another example of the correlation between radiometric dating and non-radiometric dating is in the seafloor basalt. Using observed spreading rates from the mid-ocean ridges we can approximate the age of a certain area of seafloor based solely on its distance from the ridge. And when we use radiometric dating to date that same bit of seafloor, we find that our radiometric age agrees with the age derived from spreading rates. Not only that, but the magnetic striping of the seafloor basalt records variations in the Earth's magnetic field, and these variations agree with what we observe in igneous extrusions all over the world, and these too have been extensively dated using radiometric methods, with very good agreement.
I have mentioned nothing of electron spin resonance, thermoluminescent dating, amino acid racemization, or a dozen other indicators of age that have nothing to do with radioactive decay rates, but these methods, too, are in agreement.
There is no young-earth explanation for these correlations. Walt Brown doesn't even attempt it, neither does Answers in Genesis or the ICR or any other "creation science" organization -- they simply nit-pick about this or that dating method but they NEVER address the BIG problem, which is the *correlations* we see across this broad range of methods. Accelerated nuclear decay, accelerated speed of light, trees putting on more than one ring a year, big piles of snow that creationists wrongly liken to the characteristics of the ice cores, cannot explain why all the dates are wrong by the same amount and in the same direction. There *isn't* any explantion for it from the young-earth perspective, except for two possibilites: either God created the Earth with fake fossils already in the rocks, and distant starlight shining on Earth from stars that never existed, and a number of other deceptions, or those Genesis "days" were very long periods of time.
There isn't any way around that, and either of those conclusions utterly falsifies everything "creation science" has ever said, because either way, the Earth looks old and the creation scientists are saying it looks young.
The half-life of C-14 is only 5,700 years, and in C-14 alone we have a continuous line of evidence going back ten times farther than the young-earth view, based on their interpretation of Genesis, will allow. So since the Earth is way more than 6,000 years old, it really doesn't matter what they think -- their interpretation of "God's word" is wrong.
Submitted by Temlakos on
I dispute your assertion of correlation. How you can assert correlation and consistency in radiometric dating, in light of the findings by Austin et al. (1996) and Snelling et al. (1993), is beyond my comprehension.
Correlation alone would prove nothing anyway. Just because two clocks happen to agree, does not mean either clock is telling the correct time. Perhaps each clock keeper is synchronizing his clock by the other clock. Or perhaps both are synchronizing their clocks by a third, equally wrong clock.
And more to the point: your comment does nothing to show the origin of radioactivity. If radioactivity on earth had its origin in the Global Flood, absolutely nothing about current radiometric dating methods would make the slightest difference. That is especially true of C-14. And by the way: can you explain how a 37,000-year-old tree was found buried in basalt that was over a million years old? (Apparent ages given here, not actual ages.)
Your vaunted correlations do not exist. At least three separate investigative teams (the third being the RATE Group, who blew isochron dating out of the water at the Grand Canyon) have shown that such dates are non-correlating and inconsistent.
Submitted by BarryBirkett (not verified) on
Sometimes, it pays to keep things simple. While the musings of the evolutionist above are ludicrous, I would like to suggest that evolutionsists don't have a good grasp of math.
As a tourist visiting the power generating plant on the American side of Niagara Falls, in 1986, I was subjected to the usual guide's presentation of how the falls have been there for 500 million years or so, as she stood in from of a huge mural depicting same. I had been told years before that the falls are eroding at the rate of inches per year. Now, if have seen through photographical evidence over several decades, that the rate is much higher, more likely 50 times more...
If we use our heads, even at an inch per year, that would mean it would have eroded approximately 7,900 MILES over that time frame. Multiply that by a factor of 50, and the erosion would circle the globe 10 times.
Earlier on that same holiday trip, we were on Cavendish Beach in Prince Edward Island, Canada. The National Parks Service had a huge sign depicting the "history" of the beach, coincidentally using the same 500 million years' time span. On the same sign, there were warnings that something had to be done about the 6" per year erosion of the beach. That yields a trip around the globe as well.
When I asked the tour guide about that, the answer basically was that I "didn't understand," and I later learned about how they are trained to handle creationists.
It's interesting, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of physical, not theoretical, evidences for a young earth, and THEY ALL correlate, unlike the assertions here.
The emporer of evolution most certainly "has no clothes."
Submitted by Temlakos on
A very good example of a finding showing the earth must be young. Thank you.
Submitted by wwcl (not verified) on
As to Barry Birkett's comment about Niagara Falls -- man, I don't know whether you're making this up or what, but there is NOBODY in geology that says Niagara Falls are 500 million years old, or even 50,000 years old. If your "math" is right -- that the rate of erosion is "more likely 50 times greater" -- that would still leave the Falls being 10 million years old.
But they're not. Nowhere close. I suggest you refer to Wikipedia or Google or something.
Submitted by wwcl (not verified) on
I'm afraid you guys have fired off replies to my message without fully considering what I said.
Hello, Terry.
You said:
| I dispute your correlation.
Seriously? Are you denying that the C-14 dates get older from the outside of the tree to the inside? Are you denying that the C-14 dates get older the deeper we go in the Lake Suigetsu varves? That is correlation. We have annual processes -- another tree ring or another varve layer -- going backward in time. And we have radiometric measurements that agree with these annual processes, both in magnitude and direction. Same thing with the ice cores. Regardless of the amount of time it was between one layer and the next, the layer above is younger than the next layer down. Whether there was one layer per year or a thousand, the radiometric dates increase by the same amount -- in other words, if you want to say a thousand layers of ice were put down in one year, then there was also a thousand years worth -- by today's rate -- of radioactive decay that occurred in that same year. That is correlation.
When we use C-14 to date the extinction of the Pleisocene megafauna, we see that all over the world, for many of these species, the dates end at about 11,000 years ago. That is correlation. Whether that 11,000 years really is 11,000 years, or is really only 3,000 years, the correlation still exists -- if we find a sabre-tooth tiger fossil we can be pretty certain it is going to give us a C-14 date of more than 10,000 years. C-14 dates correlate with the known age of Egyptian artifacts back 4,000 years or so, with a margin of error of only a few decades one way or the other. So the C-14 really is measuring age, and if you try to say the Pleistocene extinction occurred about the same time the pyramids were being built, you lose your correlation and thereby the credibility of your assertion, because the weight of the evidence is that the end of the Pleistocene is over twice as far back in time as the oldest pyramid. Human occupation of the Biblical city of Jericho is also twice as far back in time as the oldest pyramid, and there is a continuous range of dates from Jericho right up to the C-14 age of the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Your comment shows that you do not understand just how big the problem is that the correlation between radiometric dating and non-radiometric dating poses for the young-earth view. You suggest a global flood as the origin of radioactivity, which you get from Brown. But Brown fails to consider our observation of radioactive decay rates and the constancy of light speed which SN 1987A has provided for us. Just from that one supernova, which occurred 187,000 years ago, we plainly see that a global flood on the Earth a few thousand years ago is NOT the origin of radioactivity. Furthermore, if the observed amount of radioactive decay in the Earth's rocks had taken place a few thousand years ago, the Earth would still be in a molten state from all that heat. Even the ICR's RATE team recognizes this, and they have tried to figure out some scenario of getting rid of all that heat, but an explanation doesn't seem to be forthcoming. Neither does Walt Brown's scenario account for the agreement of radiometric dates and non-radiometric dates such as the seafloor basalt -- what would have to have happened, to explain the correlation, would be for the accelerated decay rates to be *decelerating* at the same time as, and *in complete tandem with,* decleration of seafloor spreading rates.
Radioactivity arising on Earth during the Flood does not explain why the Moon's radioactivity matches the Earth's, nor does it explain why the meteorites we have dated are all about 4.5 billion years old. If these meteorites had been subjected to rapid decay rates to make them age 4.5 billion years in 4.5 thousand years, they would have melted, and when they cooled their radiometric clocks would have been reset to zero. Simple facts like this show Brown is absolutely wrong about the Flood's effect on radiometric dating.
You say:
| Correlation alone would prove nothing anyway.
| Just because two clocks happen to agree, does
| not mean either clock is telling the correct time.
| Perhaps each clock keeper is synchronizing his
| clock by the other clock. Or perhaps both
| are synchronizing their clocks by a third, equally
| wrong clock.
We're not talking about two clocks, Terry. We're talking about dozens of clocks. They are in agreement with each other.
And while they may not be telling "the correct time" they would have to *all be wrong by the same amount and in the same direction* -- that is what correlation does indeed "prove." A few billion years of radioactive decay may take place in one "day," but that just means that everything else that ocurred on Earth during that few billion years of decay *also* took place on that same "day". Which is why I said that God would have had to either put fake fossils in the rocks or those "days" were very long periods of time.
There simply is not any way around that.
Submitted by Temlakos on
I have thought long and hard about those clocks, and what really makes them tick, for nearly twenty-five years. And Walt Brown has thought about them for much longer.
What you have said is incompetent, hearsay, irrelevant, immaterial, and inconclusive.
Now about the Moon: the effects of the Flood did not limit themselves to the earth. About one percent of the total mass of the earth escaped into space with the violent forces the Flood event unleashed. Among them: seven very large objects that buried themselves into the surface of the Moon and formed the maria. Five of these were in such a tight cluster that they caused the Moon to lock itself tidally to the earth. That's why the face on the Moon always faces the earth.
And the radioactive materials? That's not so hard to imagine. Those materials came from the earth. I predict that if you try to dig deep and mine the Moon for radioactive deposits of any kind, that enterprise will be a big fat bust.
The result you claim from your last paragraph is all from deliberate fudging and "correction." That sort of thing goes on all the time. It is elementary games theory to suppose that I would have figured that out.
Submitted by wwcl (not verified) on
Hello, Terry.
First let me make a correction -- SN 1987A is 168,000 light-years away, not 187,000 light-years away. But still, the point remains the same: we have first-hand observation from SN 1987a that neither the speed of light nor the rate of radioactive decay has changed by any detectable amount for at least the last 168,000 years. And we have no evidence that it changed at any time before then, either.
You say:
| "..the effects of the Flood did not limit
| themselves to the earth. About one
| percent of the total mass of the earth
| escaped into space with the violent
| forces the Flood event unleashed.
| Among them: seven very large
| objects that buried themselves into
| the surface of the Moon and formed
| the maria. Five of these were in such
| a tight cluster that they caused the
| Moon to lock itself tidally to the earth.
| That’s why the face on the Moon
| always faces the earth."
No, Terry, the reason the same side of the Moon is always facing Earth is because it has a "tidal bulge" that has slowed its rotation. Most of the moons in our solar system are similarly locked to their planets. (See Wikipedia's list in the article on "synchronous rotation.") This is another area where Walt Brown's model is a complete failure. We know how far away the Moon was 600 million years ago, and at that time our days were 22 hours long and our years were 400 days. We also know where the Moon was 2.5 billion years ago, and how long the days and years were then. Brown completely ignores these things, and instead wrongly uses a *uniformitarian assumption* that the tidal dissipation in the past was the same as it is today, when we have substantial evidence that this is not the case; the rate of moon recession 600 million years ago was a little over 2 cm/year and the rate 2.5 billion years ago was about 1.3 cm/year. So much for Walt Brown's "moon recession" argument -- falsified by evidence right here on Earth, evidence that he cannot explain with his hydroplate theory, so he just ignores it.
The Moon's tidal bulge is the result of deformation from all those hundreds of millions of years of the Earth's gravity pulling at it, while the Sun's gravity is pulling it a different direction. Over time the Moon's rotation on its axis has slowed to the point that it makes one rotation in the time it takes it to make one orbit around the Earth. This effect has nothing to do with Brown's fantasized ejecta striking the Moon. Is he going to propose that the same thing happened with all the other moons in the solar system?
You have made a number of statements here that are neither Biblical nor scientific -- there is no evidence supporting any of this fantasy of Walt Brown's. In particular there is no evidence that the Earth lost 1% of its mass a few thousand years ago, there is no evidence that anything caused Earth to eject matter into space a few thousand years ago, there is no evidence that the maria on the moon are only a few thousand years old (they have been radiometrically dated at about 3.5 billion years) and the idea that the Moon only became tidally locked a few thousand years ago is, frankly, ludicrous. Science demands evidence, and I am under no obligation to accept claims purporting to be scientific when they have no evidence to back them up, and particularly not so when there is substantial contradictory evidence that the claims do not address.
Submitted by Temlakos on
2.5 billion years ago the Moon should have been touching the Earth given current rates of recession. That the recession rate should have changed, violates uniformitarianism.
Do you deny that the Moon has "masscons" (mass concentrations) that crashed a satellite that Apollo 15 tried to place in orbit around the Moon, and which every subsequent mission of Project Apollo had to plan for? Where do you think they came from?
And yes, Brown proposes that the Great Meteoric Bombardment that affected the Moon, also affected other airless bodies in the solar system — and that all those bombardiers were Flood ejecta. The asteroids are made of such ejecta. So are the comets. All these Mavericks of the Solar System came from flood ejecta.
If you would but read the relevant chapters in his book, you will see that nothing else adequately explains all we know about them.
Brown correctly predicted the finding of vast quantities of water ice on Ceres. (In fact we see water vapor, and in prodigious quantities). I predict, after discussing with him, that the Dawn spacecraft, now heading to Ceres, will find a high concentration of deuterium in that water, maybe twice the concentration in the oceans of earth. That also will be consistent with his model.
If you think you can disprove his model, then Brown challenges you, as he challenges everyone, to recruit a team of PhD-level scientists to challenge him to a debate.
Submitted by transform2012 on
Actually, your "facts" are assumption-filled. As I stated in my article, more information is available to thoroughly answer Mr. Nye's claims (and your "assertions" as well) at the Creation Science websites such as Answers in Genesis, Creation Ministries International, and Institute of Creation Research. These sites contain a wealth of information written and documented by Ph.D.-level scientists doing real science which upholds the Creation model.
Your so-called "debunking proofs" are themselves debunked in many of these articles. Following is brief listing of links to answer many of your objections:
Ice Cores:
http://creation.com/do-greenland-ice-cores-show-over-one-hundred-thousand-years-of-annual-layers
http://creation.com/greenland-ice-cores-implicit-evidence-for-catastrophic-deposition
http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/tj/v16/n1/ice-core
http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/tj/v11/n1/oxygen
Carbon 14:
http://creation.com/diamonds-a-creationists-best-friend
http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/aid/v2/n1/radiocarbon-in-diamonds
http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/am/v7/n4/carbon-14
Rapid Magnetic Reversals:
http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/nab/catastrophic-plate-tectonics
http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/aid/v5/n1/catastrophic-plate-tectonics
http://creation.com/fossil-magnetism-reveals-rapid-reversals-of-the-earths-magnetic-field
Fallibility of All Dating Methods:
http://creation.com/the-dating-game
In addition, you have completely ignored the work of the RATE Project which has done much ground-breaking work in exposing the limitations of radiometric dating methods. The RATE Project was a multi-disciplinary team of Ph.D.-level scientists who have proven that decay rates in the past are not "uniformitarian" as you pre-suppose.
My assumption is that you are sincerely seeking the truth on these issues. I've given you a few resources for further study. There are literally thousands of articles on these Creation Science sites. If you have more questions, please consult the experts on the Creation Science model, don't build "straw man" caricatures based on misinformation by those who seek to dismiss thinking Christian scientists without every really investigating their claims and evidence.
That is "real science" - considering ALL the evidence before reaching a conclusion. Most evolution proponents are too afraid or arrogant to sincerely look at the massive, and growing, body of scientific evidence that does, in fact, affirm the Creation model and the Bible's truthfulness in matters of science and origins.
Submitted by wwcl (not verified) on
Hello, Russ.
I am well aware of all these creationist attempts at sounding scientific. They only serve to point up what I said in my original message about how they "nit-pick" one dating method or another, but they NEVER address the correlation problem.
You are right, Russ, that I am seeking truth. I have already studied these articles thoroughly and have been referred to them several times over the last several years. I have studied them so much that I know where they're messing up and what they are deliberately ignoring.
John Baumgardner showed up on Theology Web a few years ago to attempt to defend the RATE team's "C-14 in diamonds" results and he was unable to do so, because there happened to be quite a number of participants there who understood C-14 dating much better than he did, and he finally just had to say that he was sticking to [his interpretation of] the Bible and he left.
But just use a little common sense: if the "C-14 in diamonds" claim had been valid, they should have been able to repeat those results with diamonds all over the world. But apparently it only works with diamonds that have been in proximity with N-decay from uranium deposits. Neither can "instrinsic" C-14 explain why there is so much material in the world, that is clearly organic in origin, that does not contain *any* measurable C-14. If what the RATE team was saying about C-14 is true, then there should be *tons* of C-14 left in *everything*. But there isn't.
Similarly, the RATE team's "helium in zircons" research lacked credibility from the very beginning because of Humphreys' misuse of statistics and because of the possible confounding influence of extraneous helium at the Fenton Hill site, but then it lost *all* credibility because the RATE team failed to follow up on their results. If their results were valid they should have been able to go anywhere on Earth and reproduce those results, and if they had any confidence in their results -- which would have had quite astounding implications -- they should have been *eager* to replicate them elsewhere. But they did not, because they knew the extraneous helium at the Fenton Hill site was what was giving them the results they got, and they knew they wouldn't get those results elsewhere, where extraneous helium was not a factor. And so now someone else has gone and replicated that research in Germany, and the RATE team's results did not hold up.
You say the RATE team blew dating "out of the water" at the Grand Canyon, but Snelling completely ignores the presence of a number of *terrestrial* formations within the Grand Canyon layers, formations which conclusively prove that the Grand Canyon is not the result of a global Flood. Furthermore, the RATE team did not address in any way the C-14 dates for the archaeological sites and the Pleistocene fossils that are *on the very surface of the ground* -- ABOVE all the Grand Canyon layers -- which go back *twice as far* in time as the young-earth view will allow. These things were clearly deposited well after the Grand Canyon layers and well after any hypothesized "accelerated nuclear decay" would have to have ceased. Yet the RATE team doesn't even mention it.
What you guys aren't understanding is that the Earth has *only one timeline,* and everything that has ever happened on Earth still has to happen in the same order. For example, rapid reversals of the magnetic field shown in the seafloor basalt -- let's go with that for the sake of argument: from the time of one reversal to the next you have to have so many tens of thousands of years worth of radioactive decay taking place, you still have to have so many tens of thousands of years worth of seafloor spreading taking place, you still have to have so many tens of thousands of years of continental drift occurring, and you still have to have so many tens of thousands of years of moon recession taking place and that same number of tens of thousands of years of the Earth slowing on its axis. All of these things have to be happening at the same time and in the same order. What this means is that Time itself has to be decelerating.
In other words, if you had a movie of the entire history of the Earth, and were playing the film backward, it would play at normal speed until 6,000 years ago and then its speed would have to increase by several million fold back to the beginning, some 4.5 billion years ago by scientific reckoning, that you would have to cover in just 6 days. But everything that has ever happened still has to happen, or you won't get the observed correlation between dating methods.
There is not a single one of these articles you have linked, Russ, that takes this into consideraion. Not one. They can try to cast doubt on one or the other method in isolation, and ignore everything that contradicts their proposals, but when you put them all together you can't place events on a timeline. You have to move radioactive decay so far into the very recent past that the Earth is still molten. You have to have magical Flood processes, that are laying down 50,000 years of varves in one year, replaced about 4,000 years ago by the perfectly natural process of annual algae blooms that we still see taking place today, and there is no discernible line between the period of magical layers and those that have occurred naturally. Same thing with the tree rings, and same thing with the ice layers, and the varves of the Cariaco Basin, and the annual rings on the corals, and the annual rings on speleotherms -- no detectable difference between those that were magically produced during the Flood and those that have formed since then by the same processes we observe in the present.
There simply is not a coherent young-earth explanation for these things that takes into account all of the evidence and can produce any degree of correlation similar to the explanations that we already have. I have read their work. They don't even try.
Submitted by wwcl (not verified) on
Hello, Terry.
You wrote (above):
| That the recession rate should have changed,
| violates uniformitarianism.
Uniformitarianism just means that the laws of physics and chemistry haven't changed, Terry, and that they are the same throughout the physical Universe. Even catastrophism has to abide by the laws of chemistry and physics. Lyell's brand of uniformitarianism, which is in reference to geology, also has provision for catastrophes, for which we have many examples.
We have evidence of what the recession rate of the Moon was in the past, which we have derived by applying the laws of physics to our observations of tidal rhythmites. If you wish to challenge that evidence, you must challenge the evidence itself. You can't just use made up numbers that don't take into account the very observations that show your numbers are wrong.
| Do you deny that the Moon has “masscons”...
I deny you can make any unambiguous, evidence-based connection between the mass concentrations on the Moon and anything that happened here on Earth a few thousand years ago.
| I predict, after discussing with [Brown],
| that the Dawn spacecraft, now heading to
| Ceres, will find a high concentration of
| deuterium in that water...
So what?
The deuterium:hydrogen ratio of Ceres may tell us something about the early Solar System, and how far from the Sun the Ceres ice accumulated, but it isn't going to tell us anything about what was happening on Earth in 3000 BC. Why should it?
| If you think you can disprove his model,
| then Brown challenges you, as he challenges
| everyone, to recruit a team of PhD-level
| scientists to challenge him to a debate.
It doesn't take a team of Ph.D. scientists to refute Brown. I can do it myself, right here, in just a few paragraphs. Brown never once addresses the correlation of radiometric and non-radiometric dating methods. Unless he can explain this from the paradigm of a young Earth, everything he says about what was happening on the Earth a few thousand years ago is falsified by existing evidence. For that matter, radiocarbon dating alone shows that Brown's entire hydroplate "theory" is false, so let's look at how he deals with carbon dating.
The Lake Suigetsu varves are a perfect example of the evidence that Brown ignores and otherwise misrepresents. The Lake Suigetsu varves accumulate as annual cycles of algae bloom. Brown doesn't mention this at all, although the varves of Suigetsu and of the Cariaco Basin both record fluctuations in the C-14 reservoirs over a period of tens of thousands of years, by processes that we observe happening even now. These records of fluctuations are used in constructing the calibration curves for C-14 dates of terrestrial and marine samples. The terrestrial C-14 calibration curve has recently been extended back to 50,000 years, and you can see this curve yourself, and the variety of materials they have used as checks, at the online Radiocarbon journal.
But what does Brown do? He ignores these two very significant sets of relatively recent varve formation, both of which contain an abundance of biological material suitable for carbon dating, and instead sends you off to the Green River formation, which was formed by *clastic* processes at a period of time so remote that it doesn't have anything to do with carbon dating. And yet even here he only tells you what he wants you to know -- he makes no mention at all of the research that shows the correlation between the "astrochronology" of the Green River formation (i.e. where the Moon was during the 6 million years that the varves were being formed) and the results of radiometric dating of volcanic flows in the region. (So here again is more evidence that his moon recession figures are wrong, but let's stick with the subject of carbon dating.)
Brown uses a similar underhanded tactic in his treatment of radiocarbon dates for mammoths. For one thing, he misrepresents his sources. For example, his claim that the "Vollosovitch mammoth" dated at 29,500 and 44,000 years is not supported by his reference, and if you take the time to hunt down the original lab report for this so-called "Vollosovitch mammoth" you will see why he doesn't give you that reference. Nobody but Walt Brown and Kent Hovind even call this creature the "Vollosovitch mammoth," anyway. Brown does this deliberately, so you *won't be able* to find the original lab report, but I did find it, and not only is he wrong but he is being deliberately deceptive. He does basically the same thing with his claim about the "Fairbanks Creek mammoth" -- he gives you the wrong sources and he fails to mention that the Fairbanks Creek mammoth dates are actually from *two different mammoths,* found in different areas eight years apart and dated at different labs, one in 1961 and the second in 1970. Brown's reference for this is to Anthony, but Anthony's article in "Natural History" was published in September, 1949, before there had ever been radiocarbon dates of *anything* published. The first radiocarbon dates were not published until December of that year, and it would be more than 10 years before the first radiocarbon dates for mammoths were published.
His whole section about the frozen mammoths and the conclusions he draws from them is utterly bogus. His "quick frozen" mammoths are all tens of thousands of years older than the date of his supposed Flood event and we have a multitude of mammoth dates going up to about 10,000 years ago -- much more recent than his frozen specimens but still over twice as far back in time as his Flood event. So he *must* address C-14 dating.
But Brown *falsely* claims that C-14 dating relies on the assumption that atmospheric levels of C-14 in the past were pretty much the same as they are today. We know that this is false, and this is *exactly why C-14 dates are calibrated in the first place.* Brown falsely claims that tree ring chronologies only go back about 3,500 years. He wrongly insinuates that the possibility of trees putting on more than one ring a year make the tree ring chronologies suspect, and he also wrongly insinuates that "missing rings" also make dendrochronologies suspect. He pretends that the recent buildup of C-14 in the atmosphere (which is a well known result of atomic bomb testing) makes C-14 dating suspect. He makes no mention at all of any of the other sources of radiocarbon calibration data such as varves, speleotherms and corals.
In short, he NEVER deals with the evidence. In many cases his references are to decades-old research that has nothing to do with what we know today. In other cases his references are to creationist publications that have never been submitted to peer-review. And in other cases he just makes stuff up and gives the wrong reference, because his references do not support the claims he is making. This is not science; it is baloney. And what it all means is that Brown has had to rely on deliberate misrepresentations of the evidence in order to falsely cast doubt on radiocarbon dating; he has not in the least actually shown that radiocarbon dating does not work nor has he addressed in any way the voluminous data that show radiocarbon does work.
So there is Walt Brown, for you, thoroughly refuted in one brief sweep. Impact craters on the Moon are irrelevant. The recession rate of the Moon is irrelevant. Ceres is irrelevant. Brown's model fails on simple terms -- carbon dating alone shows he is wrong, and not only is he wrong but he attempts to hide his error by misrepresentation. When Brown gets ready to explain the correlation of radiometric and non-radiometric dating methods, I'll be all ears. But I don't look for that to happen any time soon, because as I said to begin with, the *only* possible explanations are that either those Genesis "days" are very long periods of time, or God has made the Earth with "apparent age" -- including "apparent" fossils and a number of other deceptions. And *either* of those explanations puts Walt Brown out of the creation science business.
Submitted by Temlakos on
No, don't try to weasel out. Uniformitarianism means processes at work today, have worked at the same, never-changing rate since time immemorial. And originally, forever. Classic Lyellian (that is, pre-Becquerel) uniformitarianism did not recognize a beginning of time.
Now about deuterium, and indeed any heavy isotope of any chemical element at Z=82 and lighter (except for Tc and Pm): Radioactive materials (trans-lead) came to be on earth when the original metals turned to plasma and formed super-heavy elements in the highly-charged environment of a quartz-laden crust subject to magnitude-10-to-12 earthquakes. That process released a sea of neutrons. Any element that captures a neutron, becomes a heavy isotope. Such is the source of carbon-13. And of deuterium and tritium.
Comets are rich in deuterium, and indeed twice as rich in that isotope as are the oceans of earth. So: where did this deuterium come from? What violent act, in space, spewed so many neutrons throughout the solar system? And why the discrepancy between the oceans of earth and the dirty ice in the comets? That discrepancy reflects the 1:1 dilution of the subcrustal ocean, which absorbed nearly all the neutrons, and the original ocean that was on the surface before the Flood. The ocean we know today has twice the volume and mass of the pre-Flood surface ocean. That, by the way, is where the water went: into a Pacific basin that deepened when the floor caved in. That also is the real source of ocean trenches, and not "runaway subduction."
I will let Dr. Brown reply to the rest of your accusations of scientific mendacity, if he is so inclined. He will probably ask you to gather a team of PhD scientists and accept his written debate challenge, if you are so sure of refuting his model on the points you raise.