Christians & Fossils
Offline #1- Fossils take millions of years to form.
There's a problem with that statement. It's not true.
Museums have fossils that are only a few decades old. For example, there is a museum that has a fossilized cowboy boot and a fossilized pickle from the 1950's. It does not take very long for something to become fossilized.
Didn't it take millions and millions of years for dinosaurs to turn into oil? No. There is a refinery in Texas that takes in turkey carcasses and turns them into oil in three hours. It doesn't take millions of years to make oil. Given the right conditions of temperature, pressure, etc., it only takes a few hours.
#2 - It took millions of years to build up all those rock layers the fossils are buried in.
There's a problem with that statement. It's not true.
When Mount St. Helens erupted scientists observed thousands of layers of sediment, 30 feet thick, laid down in three hours. A lot of water (say from Noah's global flood), over a short time can easily create millions of rock layers. And what would we find in those rock layers? Lots of dead things killed by Noah's flood--which is exactly what we see.
#3 - There are scientific methods used to date rocks that tell us they are millions of years old.
There's a problem with that statement. It's not true.
There are about 100 methods of dating rocks based on measuring radioactive decay. The problem is that using these methods you'll probably get 100 different ages for the rock. One of the problems scientists face is picking the dating method that gives an age for the rock that is the age they want it to have. They'll test a rock, and if the test does not give the age they want, they try another test.
It's interesting that these same tests, when used on new rocks (from volcanos such as Mt. St. Helens) give ages for these new rocks that say they are millions of years old. That doesn't add up.
*Our world is far more complex than the rigid structure we want to assign to it, and we will probably never fully understand it.*
"Those believers who are sophisticated enough to understand the paradox have found exciting ways to bend logic into pretzel shapes in order to defend the indefensible." - Hamby
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Wow, that's a lot of lies in one paragraph.
Edit: Oops, that's two paragraphs.
Our revels now are ended. These our actors, | As I foretold you, were all spirits, and | Are melted into air, into thin air; | And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, | The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, | The solemn temples, the great globe itself, - Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, | And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, | Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff | As dreams are made on, and our little life | Is rounded with a sleep. - Shakespeare
100 methods of dating and he doesn't even give a list of 3....
At least the oil concerns of the future are under control! We can all just send turkey's to Texas! I was considering buying a hybrid before this.
They're just like stubborn children. They miss the point and ignore your reasoning. Part of why these people are so frustrating is that they don't listen. They go out of their way to oversimplify everything to a degree that makes you question the intelligence of their audience. It's all propaganda, pure and simple, and I highly doubt the authors of these ridiculous ideas really believe it. That's why they go out of their way to misconstrue everything.
Do these people honestly believe that the work of scientists who dedicate their entire life to understanding the history of the earth can be "debunked" in several badly, evidence-lacking and false paragraphs?
The worst part is that so many people read this and accept it. It's an easy, quick fix. The thinking has been done for them, and there's nothing more to say.
*Our world is far more complex than the rigid structure we want to assign to it, and we will probably never fully understand it.*
"Those believers who are sophisticated enough to understand the paradox have found exciting ways to bend logic into pretzel shapes in order to defend the indefensible." - Hamby
I read about this awhile back and from what I can remember was, they basically washed the whole process away based upon the fact that scientist would discard anomalies when doing a series of samples when estimating the date of a rock.
I sort of figured if this was the case perhaps we should look into the potential breakdown of our entire telecommunication network and all modern recorded music. After all the conversion from analog to digital signaling relies upon this same premise.
These guys better stop using phones or recodring any lectures into DVD format. Their entrie message could be getting distorted.
Your mind will answer most questions if you learn to relax and wait for the answer. - William S. Burroughs
I dont want to be redundant...but:
http://markii.wordpress.com/2007/09/10/lewis-black-on-creationism-and-the-flinstones/
www.RichWoodsBlog.com
hahaha stone cold fuck nuts. That's the perfect way to describe it. He's funny.
*Our world is far more complex than the rigid structure we want to assign to it, and we will probably never fully understand it.*
"Those believers who are sophisticated enough to understand the paradox have found exciting ways to bend logic into pretzel shapes in order to defend the indefensible." - Hamby
theres always /facepalm
Knowledge is power
Power leads to corruption
Corrution leads to crime
Crime doesn't pay
So if you study you'll go broke.
Of course they measure the age by as many methods as are applicable, and they all come out with at least slightly different results. Any researcher would be suspicious if the dating tests all gave exactly the same result. As long as the spread is within a reasonable range, say +- 10%, we have useful data.
On sediment layers, a lot of water over a short term may well lay down a thick layer, but it would not look remotely like strata deposited more slowly over a long time over many seasons and changes of climate, and would certainly not show 'millions of layers'.
Obviously expecting way too much to expect a few links to support such assertions....
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
OK, first off, let me address the OP:
I don't fucking care how long it takes for fossils to be formed or for dinosaurs to become oil. What matters is where we find stuff. As it happens, we find stuff in really old rocks. If fossils formed in ten minutes but we found them in gazillion year old rocks, then the time that it took for them to form fully fails to impress me.
Yes, we do have a couple of pilot plants that turn garbage into oil. They could turn pretty much any organic matter into oil but they happen to be next door to poultry plants, so they use the garbage that is easy to get to.
Actually, they use really old technology that was a major industry in Europe in the 1930's. This brings up the question of why it is not a major industry today. Honestly, the answer is complicated but I will provide a couple of points that relate:
First, there is an economic basis to this. There is a concept of Energy Returned on Energy Invested (EROEI). There really is not anything to gain by turning garbage into oil when it is easier to pull oil out of the ground. Today we pull oil out of the ground in the middle east because it has a very favorable EROEI ratio. When they run out of oil, they will no longer be the world's best friend.
Second, remember that it was a huge industry in Europe in the 1930's. That pretty much spells out that the technology was developed by Nazi Germany. The fact is that Germany has lots of coal but little oil. So to wage WW2, they had to do what they had to do.
Apart from the EROEI consideration, we could have developed this technology decades ago but we did not because of the Nazi connection. Basically we were gripped with the idea of OMG! The Nazis did that and they were evil. Clearly we cannot do that or we will become evil by contact.
Half a century later, the EROEI formula means that the next fortune may be made by using evil Nazi technology. There is money to be made in this. Now I really don't know absolutely where all of the money in my mutual funds is at any given second but I would be quite surprised if I was not an investor in this technology.
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