One Reason to be an Atheist

A prediction and an assumption are not the same thing.  Here let me demonstrate.

Scientific assumption:  The ratio of Carbon-14 to Carbon-12 in the atmosphere has always been the same as it is today.

Evidence: Current levels with no way of knowing what the levels were millions or billions of years ago.

Conclusion:  We assume without knowing.

Being an atheist has, of anything, made me find life much more fascinating.

Quote from: Supertails on May 10, 2012, 12:20:19 PM

Being an atheist has, of anything, made me find life much more fascinating.

Why?

Only if the ratios remained the same all throughout history. 

Quote from: WardoggKC130FE on May 10, 2012, 07:36:56 AM

Only if the ratios remained the same all throughout history. 

That's like saying, "I don't know that someone didn't fuck with my clock, so I should just disregard what it says." Utter nonsense. Unless there is evidence that those values have changed, the reasonable assumptions is that they've stayed pretty much constant in their useful time range.

Quote from: Trekky0623 on May 10, 2012, 09:52:58 PM

Quote from: WardoggKC130FE on May 10, 2012, 07:36:56 AM

Only if the ratios remained the same all throughout history. 

That's like saying, "I don't know that someone didn't fuck with my clock, so I should just disregard what it says." Utter nonsense. Unless there is evidence that those values have changed, the reasonable assumptions is that they've stayed pretty much constant in their useful time range.

You can't be serious.  So you are saying that no matter what, or when, in the earths history the ratios of Carbon-14 and Carbon-12 have always been the same.

Quote from: Trekky0623 on May 10, 2012, 09:52:58 PM

Quote from: WardoggKC130FE on May 10, 2012, 07:36:56 AM

Only if the ratios remained the same all throughout history. 

That's like saying, "I don't know that someone didn't fuck with my clock, so I should just disregard what it says." Utter nonsense. Unless there is evidence that those values have changed, the reasonable assumptions is that they've stayed pretty much constant in their useful time range.

You can't be serious.  So you are saying that no matter what, or when, in the earths history the ratios of Carbon-14 and Carbon-12 have always been the same.

There are more than one way to independently check this, radiometric dating is only one method of dating, and we can cross check these independent methods to ensure their accuracy.  Dendrochronology (tree rings), varve chronology (sediment layers), ice cores, coral banding, speleotherms (cave formations), fission track dating, and electron spin resonance dating. Cross checking these verify that the rate of isotope decay does not change over time, and it verifies the accuracies of the methods.

In order to make the claim that the rate of decay for carbon may have been different in the past, you also have to make the assumption that other methods, of which there are dozens, were all different in the past.  Not only that, but the difference of all these independent methods resulted in the exact same rate of error. 

The Reality of Carbon Dating

The myth is that radiocarbon dating can accurately establish exact dates of the death of organic remains almost as far back as 50,000 years. The reality is that one would have to know the 14C/12C ratio in the environment at the time of the death of the sample. The fact is that we can only infer that ratio for the past 5,000 years or so using historical records. The inference is that the ratio changes sufficiently so that calibration factors have to be used to convert radiocarbon years to actual calendar years. Since the ratio is known to have changed in historic times, it is irrational and unscientific to think that it was constant before historic times.

Carbon 14 Assumptions

Since many of the assumptions that one has to make when using carbon dating are similar to the assumptions one must make for other radioactive dating methods, it is worthwhile to examine them.

As you may know, carbon 14 is produced in the upper atmosphere when cosmic radiation interacts with nitrogen gas, converting nitrogen 14 to carbon 14. These carbon 14 atoms combine with oxygen to form carbon dioxide gas, which is absorbed by plants. The plants use the carbon in the carbon dioxide to make sugar and other edible stuff. Animals eat the plants, ingesting the carbon 14. As long as the plant or animal is alive, it keeps ingesting carbon, which is a mixture of stable carbon 12 and radioactive carbon 14. When the plant or animal dies, it stops eating carbon-containing food, so its earthly remains no longer absorb carbon 14. The carbon 14 that it had when it died, however, slowly decays into nitrogen gas. So, by measuring the amount of carbon 14 left in the specimen, one can tell how long it has been since it died. If you had a good high school science course, you already know all of that.

Here’s what they didn’t teach you in high school. In order to compute the carbon age date, you need to compare the amount of carbon 14 in the specimen with the amount of carbon 14 it had to begin with, and you don’t know how much carbon 14 it had to begin with. You can make a pretty good guess, and that’s where the correction factors come in.

The simplest guess is that the ratio of carbon 14 to carbon 12 is the same today as it was thousands of years ago. We know that isn’t the case.

It's not an assumption when you cross check it with other dating methods to test the accuracy.

The method of counting annual layers only works with the high accumulation Greenland ice sheet. However, the deep Antarctic ice sheet cores have been dated to over 300,000 years showing multiple ice age cycles. The new deep Dome C ice core from the top of the Antarctic ice sheet is claimed to have drilled seven ice age cycles for a total of about 700,000 years near the bottom. Are these ages objective?
Except for coastal ice cores that show only one ice age cycle, the Antarctica ice sheet is dated by assuming that the astronomical theory of the ice age is correct.7 In fact, this assumption also undergirds the annual layer dating of the Greenland ice sheet.7 This is how they obtain three or more ice age cycles, with each cycle being 100,000 years long. They simply count the assumed number of ice age cycles and multiple by 100,000 years, the assumed period for the astronomical theory. These dates are not objective; they simply are based on the assumption of the astronomical theory and old age, which was discussed in 4882chapter 6. It is easy to reinterpret the data from the ice sheet within the creationist’s framework, as we will see in the next section.

That's it. I'm tired of wantonly wasting my writing on WD' wilful wall of worrisome ignorance

Until the last post you hadn't even vaguely mentioned other dating methods, just kept squawking parrot-style about scientists not knowing the carbon ratio 'billions of years ago.'

If refusing to talk to brick walls makes one elitist then yes, I am elitist.

Essentially what you are saying is that these pretty reasonable assumptions are wrong, but at the same time, the assumptions got super lucky by having all dating methods agree with each other.

If multiple dating methods agree with each other using assumptions which are both reasonable and unrelated to each other, then the likelihood of those dates being wrong decreases dramatically. Yes, they could be wrong, but the chances of that are so slim, it's not even worth mentioning.

As an atmospheric scientist, these many questions sparked my interest. After studying meteorology, climatology, and other disciplines of the earth sciences since the 1960s, I developed a theory of the Ice Age based on the Genesis flood.1 This was a unique, fast-acting Ice Age of about 700 years in duration. It is from the background of this unique Ice Age that the answers to the woolly mammoth mysteries find a viable explanation. In other words, I put on my Flood “glasses” to examine the data of science, instead of viewing the world with the “glasses” of slow processes over millions of years, which is the uniformitarian model. I believe the biblical perspective is the key to solving these mysteries, some of which have plagued scientists for over 200 years!

Quote from: Trekky0623 on May 11, 2012, 08:14:19 AM

Essentially what you are saying is that these pretty reasonable assumptions are wrong, but at the same time, the assumptions got super lucky by having all dating methods agree with each other.

If multiple dating methods agree with each other using assumptions which are both reasonable and unrelated to each other, then the likelihood of those dates being wrong decreases dramatically. Yes, they could be wrong, but the chances of that are so slim, it's not even worth mentioning.

When they all use the same assumption why would they not all come up with the same answer?

Quote from: Trekky0623 on May 11, 2012, 08:14:19 AM

Essentially what you are saying is that these pretty reasonable assumptions are wrong, but at the same time, the assumptions got super lucky by having all dating methods agree with each other.

If multiple dating methods agree with each other using assumptions which are both reasonable and unrelated to each other, then the likelihood of those dates being wrong decreases dramatically. Yes, they could be wrong, but the chances of that are so slim, it's not even worth mentioning.

When they all use the same assumption why would they not all come up with the same answer?

The big bang theory proclaims that the
whole universe created itself instantly out of nothing.

never mind that the supposed dark matter has
never been detected.

Obviously, gravity acts much faster than the speed of light; otherwise, the earth would be orbiting around a point where the sun was 8 minutes ago.

Quote

Obviously, gravity acts much faster than the speed of light; otherwise, the earth would be orbiting around a point where the sun was 8 minutes ago.

lol. I couldn't read anymore after that.

A direct experimental verification in the laboratory that gravity propagates faster than light may now be possible.