Re: ID and YEC in Switzerland and "Thousands not Billions"

Points 2, 3, and 4 that your YEC critic makes are a bad case of circular reasoning. Just a quick scan of the RATE book (volume 1) indicates that this is so. In section 3 of the chapter on accelerated nuclear decay, in a section tellingly entitled "Little time for the decay to occurr", the author admits in very lengthy and wordy prose that the all of the isotopic evidence of billions of years worth of decay must be explained in terms of a young creation, and the only way to do that is with accelerated decay. The observations in 2, 3, and 4 ONLY indicate accelerated decay if a young earth is ASSUMED. The conclusion that accelerated decay occurred can't be used as evidence for a young earth if it requires the assumption of a young earth.

Point one is just ridiculous. To date anything by C14 with an age thought to be much greater than the Half-life of C14 is to guarentee failure. You might as well measure the temperature of a blast furnace with a glass thermometer and conclude from the failure that glass thermometers don't work.

Point 5 is irrelevant. As YECs are fond of pointing out the various isotopic clocks depend on many assumptions. Everything has to go just right. Often it doesn't and the "date" is not the true age of the rock. But when the assumptions do hold there is often remarkable concordance that defies coincidence. One group of rocks where the assumptions usually are true is meteorites. Why would there be such remarkable agreement on dates of about 4.55ga. Why do all of the failed assumptions and errors combine to give the same result? Discordance of dates doesn't matter. It's a big so what.

Brent

---- Peter Ruest <pruest@mysunrise.ch> wrote:

=============
Jim Hofmann wrote:
> Of possible interest:
> http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/helium/zircons.html
> http://gondwanaresearch.com/rate.htm
> Jim Hofmann
> -----Original Message-----
> From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu on behalf of Randy Isaac
> Sent: Sat 5/6/2006 2:50 PM
> To: asa@calvin.edu

Thank you, Jim, for these interesting articles!

In fact, my YEC critic refers to the following five different "reseach results"
in the book "Thousands not Billions", which all "indicate a very young Earth"
(my translation of his German):

"1. For very old samples, radiocarbon measurements give dates of 35,000 years
only, on the average.
2. Helium content in zircon crystals indicates an accelerated decay and a very
young Earth on the order of 6,000 years.
3. The frequency of radiohaloes in the Paleozoic/Mesozoic points to an
extraordinary event, namely to a temporarily accelerated radioactive decay.
4. Fission tracks in zircon crystals also indicate a temporarily accelerated decay.
5. The results of different measurement methods don't agree. They show that the
prerequisites, namely known initial conditions, closed systems and constant half
lives, are not given."

In answering him I perused the two net articles Jim Hofmann indicated and
recommended Wiens' article Charles Carrigan mentioned and Dalrymple's "The Age
of the Earth", among others. Like Charles, I am not at all eager to read the
Vardiman volume(s).

I sympathize with Wayne Dawson's feelings about the helium-in-zircons criticism
of Humphreys by Henke. But is it really worth while devoting much PSCF space to
these issues? And certainly no secular science journal is going to accept such a
discussion. So, after all, the internet is the only place you can do such a
criticism thoroughly.

Blessings,
Peter

-- 
Dr. Peter Ruest, CH-3148 Lanzenhaeusern, Switzerland
<pruest@dplanet.ch> - Biochemistry - Creation and evolution
"... the work which God created to evolve it" (Genesis 2:3)
"... my sons... and my daughters..., everyone..., whom I
created... formed... evolved." (Isaiah 43:6-7)