I believe that the "young oil" and the "anomalous K/Ar results" have been
discussed in this forum before. It would help if the critic would supply
references rather than say "and what about..."
I still stand by my statement that the natural nuclear reactor at Oklo,
Gabon, Africa is proof positive of an old earth (see my earlier postings)
because a natural reactor requires a 235U/235U ratio that is higher than at
present (0.72%) to sustain a chain reaction.
Chuck Vandergraaf
Pinawa, MB.
> ----------
> From: kbmill@ksu.edu[SMTP:kbmill@ksu.edu]
> Sent: March 24, 1999 2:06 PM
> To: asa@calvin.edu
> Cc: acg-l@dordt.edu
> Subject: Re: Young Earth
>
> To all:
>
> I am posting this request for Ed who is seeking a way to respond to the
> critiques of dating made below. Please cc any responses to Ed at
> <Ceaa151b@aol.com> since he is not on the listserve.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Keith
>
> ________________________________________________________________
>
>
> >Could you help or do you know someone who has the time. This guy is way
> over
> >my head. Here's his site. -
> <A HREF="http://www.theologyonline.com/rmcf/">Rocky Mountain Christian
> Fellowship</A>
> >
> >Ed
>
> >
> >Have you read that Astronomers have known for decades about the strange
> >'connection' between the galaxy NGC4319 and the quasar Markarian 205.
> There
> >are other issues such as light speed changes, Schwartzchild time,
> possible
> >distances are not so far after all...etc. I agree that there is a lot of
> >science to dig through, but the problem you have is that since you rely
> on
> >scientific evidence, your views will change with every tide. The bible
> has
> >remained consistent far longer than any scientific discovery.
> >
> >It might also be pointed out that processes once thought to take long
> >periods of time -- millions and millions of years -- are now known to
> occur
> >in much shorter periods of time. It is generally assumed, for instance,
> that
> >oil is formed only after the original complex organic matter is covered
> by
> >several thousands of feet of overburden and after a lapse of several
> >millions of years. Yet Smith has found hydrocarbons (oil is a mixture of
> >hydrocarbons) in sediments dated as "Recent." A composite sample of
> >hydrocarbons taken from the Gulf of Mexico and dated by the C14 method
> gave
> >an age of 12,300 ± 1,200 years,59 -- a far cry from the millions of years
> >previously thought necessary for their formation.
> >
> >So my statements regarding K-Ar dating are meaningless? What about New
> >Zealand's newest and most active volcano, Mt Ngauruhoe in the Taupo
> Volcanic
> >Zone, produced andesite flows in 1949 and 1954, and avalanche deposits in
> >1975. Potassium-argon "dating" of five of these flows and deposits
> yielded
> >K-Ar model "ages" from <0.27 Ma to 3.5 ± 0.2 Ma. "Dates" could not be
> >reproduced, even from splits of the same samples from the same flow, the
> >explanation being variations in excess 40Ar* content. A survey of
> anomalous
> >K-Ar "dates" indicates they are common, particularly in basalts,
> xenoliths
> >and xenocrysts such as diamonds that are regarded as coming from the
> upper
> >mantle. In fact, it is now well established that there are large
> quantities
> >of excess 40Ar* in the mantle, which in part represent primordial argon
> not
> >produced by in situ radioactive decay of 40K and not yet outgassed. And
> >there are mantle-crust domains between, and within, which argon
> circulates
> >during global tectonic processes, magma genesis and mixing of crustal
> >materials. This has significant implications for the validity of K-Ar and
> >40Ar/39Ar "dating".
> >
> >Since the matter of geochronological clocks is one of the central
> arguments
> >for an old earth, it is crucial to see how young-earth advocates look at
> >this evidence. Here are the foundational tenets necessary to read "time"
> >into a ratio of chemicals in a rock specimen:
> >
> >1. The time units must be meaningful and readable.
> >
> >2. The timer must be sensitive enough to measure the interval in
> question.
> >The same time would not be used for a hundred yard dash and the return of
> >Halley's comet.
> >
> >3. We must know when the time was started. True, some clocks have a
> >calendar, but a clock does not tell how many times its hands have gone
> >around.
> >
> >4. We must not only know when the timer was started, but what the reading
> >was on the timer scale when it started. Was the stop watch at zero when
> the
> >race began? Or was it on thirty seconds?
> >
> >5. The timer must run at a uniform rate; if it does not, we must know
> what
> >the irregularities are in order to have a meaningful timer.
> >
> >6. The timer must not have been disturbed in any way or reset since it
> was
> >started.2
> >
> >After a thorough and detailed study of each of the geochronological time
> >clocks, Kofahl and Segraves concluded the following:
> >
> >Generally speaking, the evidence as it has been presented indicates that
> the
> >radiometric and non-radiometric clocks being used by scientists to time
> >earth events fall short in one or more of the requirements for the ideal
> >clock which we studied earlier in this chapter. In particular, the last
> four
> >of the requirements . . . are normally not met by the usual methods for
> >measuring.
> >
> >There is no way to determine whether or not the "timer" was set at zero
> when
> >it was started. As a matter of fact, if the world was created, we would
> >expect it to display an appearance of age from the very beginning.
> Attempts
> >to date it, then, would generally be expected to make it appear older
> than
> >it really is.
> >
> >Similarly, the requirements that the timer ran at a uniform rate and that
> it
> >not be disturbed in any way are not subject to experimental verification.
> We
> >cannot prove that these requirements have been met over the years since
> the
> >earth came into existence. We know, however, of several kinds of events
> >which could have disturbed the timer or the rate at which it has run. The
> >development of the industrial age, great storms on the sun, and
> variations
> >in cosmic radiation are examples of such disturbances.
> >
> >There is sufficient evidence "solid rock evidence", that dating
> techniques
> >are flawed. How do you deal with this?
> >
> >Thanks, in Him,
> >Ed
> >
>
>
> Keith B. Miller
> Department of Geology
> Kansas State University
> Manhattan, KS 66506
> kbmill@ksu.ksu.edu
> http://www-personal.ksu.edu/~kbmill/
>
>