PJ Media

Michael, this format doesn’t allow me to respond to your last post, so I am posting here. You had a finalizing (for you) question, of which I also want to remind you of the emphasis you put on it. If I can answer it in a valid way then if you are an honest person, in my opinion, it should cause you to think about the entirety of both positions, Evolution and young-earth Creationism (as indicated by the Genesis account), all over again, perhaps.

(Also, to Jacob and anyone else who may notice, your question, Michael, I believe, would fall into that category of “junk science” that Jacob accused me of. The main reason I think this is because people often accuse each other of “junk-science” in this debate because they themselves are not scientists. They learn, from scientists, that their question and answer soundbites, analogies, whatever reduced-laymen-terms that are normally given or asked in these talks are sort of hyper-untechnical, or out of contexts. So, they typically will “take the high-road”, side with the evolutionary majority, and accuse everyone else of being unscientific, as they themselves do not either understand how to explain the information or do not think that spending the time to explain is worth it, apparently.)

Now, even though you use “consistent” as a qualifier it is my understanding that radioactive decay “dates” are not consistent. What is consistent is the scientific process used to extract the information. So what’s wrong with this? There are assumptions about the actual properties of the initial rock samples that play into the science. Assumptions that might never be answerable, simply from the super long ages involved, or the fact that nobody has observed and recorded the original deposition of the rocks. There are typically three assumptions that Creationists will point out in radioactive decay dating.

1. That the initial conditions (amount of daughter elements at the time of creation) of the rock sample are known.

2. The amount of traceable compounds (parent or daughter elements) has not been altered since the rock formed.

3. The decay-rate of parent elements has remained constant through the time-span.

Now, these assumptions alone are enough to show that the science is not sealed when it comes to information that could be discovered in the future that may or may not change how the world understands radioactive-decay dating. Of course, upon your endeavored research there are various other evidences that show the earth is not old (and, even the contradiction – young). Also, to prove the validity in the caution that is given towards these assumptions by Creationists (alleged “anti-science crowd”) there are demonstrable facts that give credence.

For example, “A rock sample from the newly formed 1986 lava dome from Mount St. Helens was dated using Potassium-Argon dating. The newly formed rock gave ages for the different minerals in it of between 0.5 and 2.8 million years. These dates show that significant argon (daughter element) was present when the rock solidified (assumption 1 is false).”

So, the return question to you, Michael, is this. Am I being unreasonable?

I hope this answers your “one last question”.