Origins: Millions and Billions of Years!

Discussion in 'Science' started by usfan, Nov 2, 2019.

  1. HereWeGoAgain

    HereWeGoAgain Banned

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    Details details! LOL! Note the twisted language "young blood" used to skew the facts and twist them into a narrative. So typical!
     
    Last edited: Nov 9, 2019
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  2. Durandal

    Durandal Well-Known Member Donor

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    Why are you posting this nonsense in the science forum? Religious denial of science would be better placed in either the religious forum or the conspiracy theory forum. Either works, because religion and conspiracy theories go hand-in-hand.
     
  3. Diablo

    Diablo Well-Known Member

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    Quite right. He's always posting nonsense like this, I think it's his hobby.
     
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  4. tecoyah

    tecoyah Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    I think it is more of a job vs. a hobby.
     
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  5. usfan

    usfan Banned

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    I posted arguments, facts, and summaries of real problems with the ASSUMPTIONS of ancient dating beliefs. What data or evidence are you presenting here to support your belief in this?
    Great scientific rebuttals!

    ..progressive indoctrinees... :roll:
     
  6. Derideo_Te

    Derideo_Te Well-Known Member

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    Trolling the Science forum with pseudo-science that debunks itself seems to be confined to a subset of theists who are THREATENED by FACTUAL VERIFIABLE KNOWLEDGE.

    If faith is so weak that it cannot hold it's own then that is not the problem of Science. The declining trend for religious adherence is not going to be reversed with this type of drivel. Even the Catholic Church had to belatedly apologize to Galileo centuries later. Education takes effort but being told what to believe takes none at all.
     
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  7. drluggit

    drluggit Well-Known Member

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    I would simply point out that statistical isn't science. And statistics can be skewed to demonstrate literals any stupid concept. The fact that deviation from the "normative" happen, regularly, never seems to dissuade those who revere statistics from cheerleading and devotion though. I assert that it's the love or emotional need to believe that drives statements like the one quoted above. So, absent an actual argument about the OP, you get professions of faith instead. The sad thing about it seems to be the dogmatic fervor that comes with it...
     
  8. drluggit

    drluggit Well-Known Member

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    How does one "date" lead then? The first question would ask, can lead exist without the decay of uranium? The problem with the proxy process is it never considers the possibility of the preexistence of the result of the resulting mineral. In this case, lead. Since lead becomes "stable" it seems unlikely that it could be dated, could it? Given that the isotopes that contribute to the actual substance may or may not actively decay further, from 208 to 204, this seems problematic. And clearly, given the speed at which this might happen, it seems unlikely that a mathematic model will every be certainty on this question.
     
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  9. Derideo_Te

    Derideo_Te Well-Known Member

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    All DATING techniques INCLUDE a margin of error.
     
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  10. Durandal

    Durandal Well-Known Member Donor

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    Absolutely. It reveals that the only way to remain a biblical literalist in this century is to reject and deny a lot of genuine science. That very conflict eventually drove me, several years ago now, to admit that Christianity is bunk. The creation myth is foundational to Christian teaching, since Christianity is predicated on the idea of a "perfect" and sinless humanity falling into sin and needing to be saved, and there is no perfection and sinlessness without a perfect creation by a perfect creator. It's a blockheaded approach to those ancient writings to take them so literally and then insist that modern people reject science in order to sustain that interpretation.

    I like the interpretation that it depicts humanity before the evolution of self-awareness and the knowledge of good and evil, a childlike state of innocence before humans had any notion of right and wrong, or of being naked. It works well as a neat metaphorical little story to help us understand ourselves as intelligent, self-aware beings. It has value without being taken literally, and in fact has more value to humanity today that way.
     
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  11. drluggit

    drluggit Well-Known Member

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    I'm sure they do. IN this case approx 1-3%. which still doesn't address the actual concern which is, being able to actually date something that doesn't implicitly come with a decay cycle. So, if it doesn't, the ability to ascribe a confidence on the actual dating seems limited. Perhaps this is insurmountable because it implies that our current methods cannot address this reality. Perhaps future research can develop a method, but the original observations remains. It is unlikely that unless we find unstable components included in samples, we are unlikely to be able to date them. More, the inability to ascribe dating also then infers our inability to determine coexistence absent the decay. I assume then that there are vast blind spots that we cannot look into yet with certainty. So why run from what is clearly there to see?
     
  12. drluggit

    drluggit Well-Known Member

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    I would ask who is requiring anyone to take a biblical literal position here? It doesn't seem supported in the OP, so why attempt to undermine the observation with something not asserted? If, although so far no one has actually attempted to address those observations with any "genuine science" as you termed it, and you instantly leaped to mythology busting instead. That doesn't seem inherently honest, or valuable. Do you have a specific scientific assertion to make that you can substantiate, or are you simply wrapping yourself in the warm blanket of your own certainty here. Very "scientific" of you...
     
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  13. Durandal

    Durandal Well-Known Member Donor

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    Did you have anything of substance to add?
     
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  14. drluggit

    drluggit Well-Known Member

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    Clearly you didn't... LOL
     
  15. skepticalmike

    skepticalmike Well-Known Member

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    Herewegoagain was correct. Radioactive decay is fundamentally a statistical process with no underlying cause. It has to be a statistical theory and it is certainly science. Quantum theory in radioactive decay involves consideration of the wave nature of a particle that is confined to a potential energy well of finite height. Occasionally one of those particles tunnels through the potential energy well and escapes. The exact time is not predictable with 100% accuracy. It is a statistical phenomenon.
     
  16. skepticalmike

    skepticalmike Well-Known Member

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    It isn't lead that is dated; it is the crystal or rock under consideration that is dated. It is the ratio of 2 isotopes that is measured in order to find the date of the specimen. A crystal like zircon strongly rejects lead
    during its formation. Even if there is a small amount of radioactive lead that wasn't rejected during the formation of the crystal there are ways to correct for this error.
    Lead of atomic weight = 204 is the only stable isotope of lead and is made from stellar nucleosynthesis, not from the decay of uranium.
     
  17. HereWeGoAgain

    HereWeGoAgain Banned

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    You don't understand the concept of "statistical" in this context.

    In short, there is no way to know when a particular particle will decay. It might take a minute and it might take a million years. But we can state with great confidence and accuracy how many particles will decay over a period of time. This is why we use the half life. We know that over the period of one half life for a substance, half of the particles will decay. We just don't know which ones.

    This shows how accurate probability is when we have a very large number of samples. For example, if there is a 50/50 chance of each car at a stop turning left instead of right, we have no way to know which way a particular car will turn. Ten or a hundred cars in a row might turn left. But over a sample of millions of cars, we will find that almost exactly half turned left, and half turned right.

    Since there are many millions of particles in most any sample of material, the probability of decay becomes a very reliable number for the sample; but again, not for any particular atom.
     
    Last edited: Nov 13, 2019
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  18. HereWeGoAgain

    HereWeGoAgain Banned

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    Also, the notion that "statistical" isn't science, is a very nice Newtonian view of things. But that isn't how things work. Quantum Mechanics is nothing but probabilities. In fact, the the state of a system is calculated using the probability amplitude - a mathematical description of the entity or system, it is the equation for a wave. It ultimately tells us that quantum entities operate statistically, and not predictably for any particular entity. We can only say what will happen given a very large number of quantum entities. And that model has never been shown to be in error yet. As far as we know, Quantum Mechanics has never made an incorrect prediction.

    Even Einstein objected to this model and declared that "God doesn't play dice with the universe!". He didn't want to accept that the universe is discretely unpredictable.

    “Einstein, stop telling God what to do” replied Neils Bohr
     
    Last edited: Nov 13, 2019
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  19. Derideo_Te

    Derideo_Te Well-Known Member

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    Agreed!

    In fact when you examine the faith of some of the most famous scientists of their day they understood that taking it metaphorically was the smart move because there was way too much evidence for it to be literal. Galileo had the evidence of the moons of Jupiter with his own eyes to understand how the Solar system worked but it was sacrilege for him to express that knowledge. Newton was an Ordained Minister in the Church of England but he refused to give sermons because he did not want to have to tell students to believe things that would conflict with what he was teaching them in classes. Darwin renounced his own faith because he witnessed the suffering of his own daughter on her deathbed and could not reconcile that his prayers were ignored.

    Interesting to note that while there have been thousands of "gods" and countless religions that have all come and gone, all the while professing to be the "only one true religion", that it is essentially the same metaphorical message about how to be better person that has survived all of them. No one actually needs the religious clap-trap if they just treat others the same way they want to be treated themselves.
     
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  20. Derideo_Te

    Derideo_Te Well-Known Member

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    Without a decay cycle for the object itself the surroundings would have to be devoid of any cycle too for it to be completely unknowable. That is unlikely given how everything is "contaminated" merely by being in contact with our planet itself.

    There are various different methods for dating the age of the universe based upon the hypothesis that the universe cannot be younger than the oldest object within it. However our measurements are only as good as the tools we are using to make those measurements and we already know that they limitations. Our current estimate falls within the range of 11 to 14 billion light years. Using that as a yardstick to measure the size of the universe we come up with a range from 27 to 41 billion years depending on the composition of the universe. But the point here is that if the universe were nothing but energy without any matter the size would be constantly growing in an exponential manner and be impossible to measure.

    https://medium.com/starts-with-a-bang/how-is-the-universe-bigger-than-its-age-7a95cd59c605

    With all of the variables above that makes for a extremely large range of outcomes and makes dating an imperfect science. However given that we started with a random GUESS of 6000 years and we have learned a great deal about the universe in our quest to determine the actual age it is fair to presume that our techniques will improve as we gain a better understanding of what it is that we are trying to measure.
     
  21. Durandal

    Durandal Well-Known Member Donor

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    Regarding the huma need for religion, I think many need it for more personal reasons than the Golden Rule can account for. It aids comfort in the face of mortality and suffering, and offers easy answers to very difficult questions and problems. On top of all of that, organized religion offers community and ways to do things that make us feel better about ourselves, whether it is simply putting something in the collection plate or volunteering or donating much more.
     
  22. Derideo_Te

    Derideo_Te Well-Known Member

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    I agree that religions definitely serve a purpose and fulfill a need within some that they cannot find elsewhere.

    While I make donations to causes that I support like Planned Parenthood and Cystic Fibrosis I also donate my time as a volunteer and I do all of this because I want to contribute to society. While this is primarily altruistic I am honest enough with myself to appreciate that doing these things brings with it a "reward" in terms of how I feel about myself. My motivation to donate and volunteer is not predicated upon the "reward" but rather a side effect that I acknowledge exists.

    I only mention this because even atheists like myself experience the urge to help others. :)
     
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  23. usfan

    usfan Banned

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    How about lunar drift? ..about 1.48" per year, so let's do some calculations.. Since uniformity is assumed in all ancient dating methods, we should do that here, as well.

    1.48÷12÷5280×4,500,000,000= 105,000 miles.

    That's about half of what it is now. 225,623 miles, at its nearest point.

    When the moon first began orbiting the earth, so it is hypothesized, it was 105,000 miles closer..

    This is fraught with all kinds of problems.. tides, gravitational pull, proximity to the atmosphere.. too many problems positing 4.5 billion years, for the moon. Half the distance?

    It's orbit would have decayed eons ago, and sent it crashing into the earth. The speed needed to keep orbit at that distance would have more likely slingshot it into space. The exact distance for balancing the earth's climate, its rotation, counter to earth's, and the perfect distance to the sun does not support a 'billions of years!' hypothesis.

    Combined with all the other glib assertions of ancient universe belief, and the idea is laughable.

    Only those who suspend reason, critical thinking, and sound scientific methodology are fooled by these decrees from pseudoscientists. But it appeals, for some unknown reason, to indoctrinees in progressive institutions, who nod like bobbleheads at every, 'millions and billions of years!', that the propagandists assert.

    When assumptions are made, regarding events after a First Cause, whether positing Intelligent Design, or atheistic naturalism, they must follow the rules of physics.

    Perhaps an atheistic 'big bang' happened much nearer to us, time wise. Since an 'inflation' is suggested, that expanded the universe 'trillions fold, in trillions of a trillionth of a second,' why not project back less? A few million, or even tens of thousands would suffice, and fits the data better. But blindly clinging to 'billions of years!', is just religious dogmatism. The facts be damned, we will believe in the Official Party Line, no matter what.
     
  24. Derideo_Te

    Derideo_Te Well-Known Member

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    :roflol:

    Regurgitation of the Perfect Puddle Fallacy duly noted and ignored for risible reasons.
     
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  25. usfan

    usfan Banned

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    ..as long as you found an excuse to ignore the scientific problems.. that's what matters..

    Deflections and fallacies are the main 'rebuttals', from the True Believers..
     

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