Introduction
A family member sent me this article a couple days ago. I could have preferred that the tone be different. I probably would have omitted some of the points. But it brings up an underlying point that I believe is valuable: it is not fair for us and our children to be ridiculed or treated as unintelligent simply because we don’t believe that evolution is truth. I’ll get into why – and why I think the essential issues are being missed – in a moment.
First let me just state, for the record, that I am not going to get into debating evolution vs. creationism in the comments here. I’d love to but, frankly, experience has taught me that it becomes quite the time-suck, and I have children who like to eat more than once a week. 😉 So I’m just going to decide not to go there from the get-go.
But here’s why I believe I can forego the debate about which is “right” and still address the issue: at its heart, the real issue is not whether one school of thought or the other is true or right (at least as far as our educational system is concerned). The issue is whether or not it’s fair and right to teach our children that it is valid and acceptable to believe different things. As it is, creationists are being asked to attain a much higher standard than evolutionists – and we’re still being called idiots.
Some Groundwork: Getting a Few Points Out on the Table
In no particular order, some points to consider:
- Common objection from evolutionists: “You can’t prove that Creation happened.” You’re right; we can’t (scientifically speaking, at least). I’ve never claimed that this is possible. However,
- You can’t prove a pool of primordial slime or any other element of origins on which evolution is dependent. That’s because
- Anything that happened prior to the history of man must be taken on faith. (To a certain degree, anything that happened before our own time must be taken on faith, as well. You have to decide which early writings you do or don’t believe. The Bible, for instance.)
- The relatively fair evolutionist, upon acknowledging this, then objects, “but we can watch what is happening now, we can look at the evidence that does exist (like the fossil record) and make reasonable deductions.” Ahh. Now we’re getting somewhere. Because, see,
- So can I. This particular point is usually missed in these “discussions,” where it is somehow assumed that evolutions can make reasonable “secondhand” assumptions about what happened based on the evidence available (I mean nothing derogatory by that; I believe it is the best any of us can do, since we’re unable to travel back to that time to watch the beginning for ourselves) and that’s valid, but creationists must accomplish the impossible of definitively proving something that happened prior to the existence of man, or it isn’t valid. Quite the double standard!
- Another common objection from evolutionists: “You throw around this word ‘theory’ as though you don’t know what it means. ‘Theory’ does not equal ‘hypothesis.'” You’re right, it doesn’t. A theory is more than a hypothesis. However, I must make two observations here. First, a theory is still not something that is definitively proven. It’s a working model. Among a legitimately scientific community, a theory is understood to be the best way we understand something to work unless and until we find something better. It is understood to be subject to be proven wrong, at which point a new theory will be constructed.
- Second, a theory is meant to be something that has been demonstrated to stand the test of time and hold up to all of the currently-available information or evidence. Despite the indoctrination by the school systems, this is simply not the case for evolution. The case for evolution is full of holes. (I don’t just mean holes like “missing links,” either. I mean any number of things, a few of which I’ll mention in a bit.) So perhaps it is you who are throwing around this word ‘theory,’ because somewhere along the way, somebody wanted what is actually more of a working hypothesis to be generally accepted as more than that.
- The last common evolutionary objection I’ll mention here: “The mere fact that you don’t understand something [like, for instance, how an eyeball could have evolved to its current state without failing somewhere along the way] doesn’t inherently make it untrue.” Nope, it doesn’t. Just as the mere fact that you don’t understand something [like God] doesn’t inherently make it untrue. Our understanding or lack of understanding of a subject has no bearing on what is or isn’t the truth.
Evidence Does Not Equal Answers
Putting together some of the things I mentioned above, any belief about origins must be taken on faith, because none of them can be definitively proven. However, we are able to look at the existing evidence and make reasonable deductions to arrive at the conclusions we believe are the most likely. What causes us a problem is not looking at all of the evidence, but choosing to ignore whatever doesn’t seem to support our own stories.
Take, for instance, the age of the earth. Evolutionists are fond of saying that creationists are clearly wrong, because the earth is definitely proven to be much older than 6,000-8,000 years. Well, yes…and no. Because we weren’t there, any evidence we encounter now is subject to a very big assumption: that the rate of _________________ (enter the relevant verb here: decay, growth, shrinkage, movement, etc.) has been constant throughout all time.
For instance, the radiometric dating of archaeological finds assumes that the rate of decay is constant. (It also makes other assumptions, which I’ll get to.) However, even if we allow for this assumption that everything has been constant, we are not left with evidence that points overwhelmingly to an “old earth”; we’re actually left with conflicting information. Uniformitarian methods for dating the earth have shown everything from under 10,000 years up to over 5 million years. There are huge variances in the results. (See Henry M. Morris’ work for more information.)
Most radiometric dating methods require a number of conditions to be reasonably accurate, including the necessity of a closed system! What this means, in essence, is that if heat or water were ever involved, their results are useless. But without heat or water, we generally don’t have fossils – just decayed matter! Only carbon-14 is an exception, but the half-life of this form of carbon is less than the supposed evolutionary age of the earth, so the very fact that any early specimens contain it contradicts the idea of an “old earth.”
Let’s just assume for the moment, though, that these dating methods are accurate. What about the fossil record? Well, we have human and dinosaur footprints side by side. We have fossils in earlier or later layers than where they’re “supposed” to be. We have a lack of fossils for certain supposed stages. In short, there are still an awful lot of holes and an awful lot of questions to answer before evolution can be demonstrated to hold up at the level of, say, gravity.
Other elements of science must be overcome or ignored, such as the current working theories of entropy and the idea that “spontaneous generation” was ruled out a very long time ago.
What about DNA evidence? That proves evolution, right? Well, it’s another bit of evidence that can looked at an interpreted in multiple ways. You see strands of DNA in common and assume familial connections. I see strands of DNA in common and assume the consistent design styles and materials of an orderly designer. Again, assumptions are being made – on both sides – because we can’t see the beginning. But the evidence of DNA strands in common is not the “fact” of evolutionary familial ties; that is an interpretation of the evidence, and there are other rational ways it can be interpreted.
I Doubt I’ve Just Converted You…
I seriously doubt that I’ve just convinced anyone to believe in creation over evolution. I’m not sure that’s possible in such a small space, and it’s really not the point. The point is that:
- any system of origins must be taken on faith,
- the evidence we have available allows us only to make our best reasonable guesses, and
- there is more than one way to interpret that evidence.
So now we get down to the real point of all of this:
What is the Purpose of Teaching Science?
What is the purpose of a science class? Surely it’s to teach students to think scientifically. But are we doing that? The way I see it, there are two basic options, if we’re really looking to be “scientific.”
A) We exclude any study of origins or anything that came before us because, strictly speaking, they aren’t “science.” They aren’t observable and absolutely knowable (scientifically speaking).
-OR-
B) We allow for the inclusion of these sorts of philosophical extensions of science that seek to answer “how” and “why” (along with concepts like “string theory,” etc.), but we allow for multiple ways of thinking, because we acknowledge that we do not know for certain (again, from a scientific standpoint) who is right (we could all be wrong!), and no great scientific discovery has ever been made by thinking like everyone else.
I mean, think about it. Real scientific advancement has always been made by someone willing to think “outside the box,” hasn’t it? To challenge the status quo and ask, “what if?” Some of the concepts we accept as matter-of-course today were considered downright crazy when they were originally proposed.
So let’s use something really “crazy” as an example here, to consider how a good science class might go. One of the commenters on the post mentioned earlier said that she believes we weren’t created here or evolved here; she believes we were brought here from an alien planet. (I know, that still leaves the question of how we came into being before that. I’m choosing to overlook that for the moment.) Most modern Americans would consider that absurd. So let’s pretend this is the idea a student brings up in class.
The teacher could respond by ridiculing the student for thinking something so “clearly absurd.” He could rail about what an idiot she is, how she doesn’t understand science, etc. (This, by the way, is precisely what typically happens to our creationist students.) Now, even assuming she is patently wrong, what is this teaching her and the other students?
Is she learning to think scientifically? Not really. She hasn’t just been taught to examine her hypothesis on the basis of evidence. She hasn’t been taught to find evidence. She’s only been taught that she’s supposed to regurgitate the information provided her by her “superiors” (not a very scientific way of thinking!) and, frankly, been bullied. (Side note: and then we wonder why bullying has become such a rampant issue among students. Did you ever consider that they’re just following the example of their elders?)
What if, instead, the teacher responded by accepting the idea as a valid starting point? I know, sounds crazy, right? But imagine this with me. “That’s an interesting hypothesis, Sally. How do we test a hypothesis?” The teacher then proceeds to walk the student through the ideas of finding current scientific knowledge and evidence and weighing her hypothesis against it and/or brainstorming experiments that might be used to prove or disprove the hypothesis.
Now what have our students learned?
- They’ve learned that all ideas are okay – even welcomed – because “disruptive thinking” is what leads to truly new knowledge.
- They’ve learned that these idea are okay, in part, because we can test them to see if they hold water. So we don’t have to be afraid of producing a bad idea; if it’s bad, that’ll show up in the testing and we can throw it out.
- They’ve learned how to weigh a hypothesis against what we already know (and probably learned it well because they did it in the context of something important to them).
- They’ve learned how to devise experiments and test a hypothesis (and probably learned it well because they did it in the context of something important to them).
- They’ve learned to value one another, even with our differences. Even great scientists often disagree with each other! That’s part of how new knowledge bases are forged.
(And who knows? We just might be surprised and some student might one day propose some “ridiculous” hypothesis that actually proves true!)
Conclusion
So I’ll say it again: it is not fair for us and our children to be ridiculed or treated as unintelligent simply because we don’t believe that evolution is truth. In fact, it’s not even beneficial to scientific thinking and progress. If we’re interested in scientific progress and in teaching scientific thinking to our students, the real importance lies in welcoming the exchange of ideas, rather than in squashing the ones we don’t like and declaring our own supreme.
For those seeking truth, there shouldn’t be any danger in an open exchange and examination of ideas, because the truth will hold up under scrutiny!
I’ll leave you with a final question. (Okay, it’s two questions.) If you believe that one particular idea should be taught, to the exclusion of any others (instead of the open exchange and examination of ideas as I’ve just described), why? The only reason I can think of to suppress all others is the fear that they might actually show your own pet idea up. Are you really seeking the truth (which is what real science is all about), or are you only seeking to see your personal belief system preserved? (And, yes, that goes both ways.)
Re: “You can’t prove a pool of primordial slime or any other element of origins on which evolution is dependent.”
You’re conflating evolution with abiogenesis. Evolution doesn’t conjecture on the origins of life, only what happened later. Every subsequent criticism of evolution based on this point is now in question.
Re: “…it is somehow assumed that evolutions can make reasonable ‘secondhand’ assumptions about what happened based on the evidence available… but creationists must accomplish the impossible of definitively proving something that happened prior to the existence of man…”
Thing is, evolution makes testable predictions that can be falsified and have been verified. When a scientist- the term “evolutionist” is so silly- makes an “assumption” about evolution- a hypothesis, really- that hypothesis must conform to the existing body of data and withstand challenges from other scientists. Creationists simply don’t have hypotheses to offer. You can’t falsify the assumption that “God made everything.” And as far as I know, no aspect of Biology is predicated on Creationist ideas. Creationists could go a long, long way toward advancing the legitimacy of their claims if they could demonstrate any of their claims- even one- in the context of the scientific method.
Re: “Among a legitimately scientific community, a theory is understood to be the best way we understand something to work unless and until we find something better.”
Exactly right! I’m actually quite pleased to see you say this. So… what’s better?
Re: “…a theory is meant to be something that has been demonstrated to stand the test of time and hold up to all of the currently-available information or evidence. Despite the indoctrination by the school systems, this is simply not the case for evolution.”
Oh darn. You were doing well with the definition of theory, but no, I’m afraid essentially all Biologists everywhere uncritically accept the theory of evolution because it might be the most well establish and thoroughly demonstrated theory science has ever produced. I’m just crossing my fingers now hoping your case won’t revolve around the fake macro/micro distinction.
Re: “…the mere fact that you don’t understand something [like God] doesn’t inherently make it untrue…”
Certainly. Just to add to your point, God can’t be tested scientifically or falsified by definition. It is literally impossible to disprove God. The downside for God, of course, is that you can’t prove something which can’t be disproven. Ah well.
Re: “Putting together some of the things I mentioned above, any belief about origins must be taken on faith, because none of them can be definitively proven.”
Repeat after me, “Evolution has nothing to do with abiogenesis.”
Re: “…any evidence we encounter now is subject to a very big assumption: that the rate of… has been constant throughout all time.”
So you’re into Solipsism now? Maybe God created the entire universe (including your blog post and my response!) five seconds ago but made everything look a bit older to trick us? There’s no way to know! That said, assuming that carbon isotopes decay at a consistent rate seems reasonable because they have been doing so since we started watching.
Re: “Most radiometric dating methods require a number of conditions to be reasonably accurate, including the necessity of a closed system!”
I’d like you to expand upon this with a bit of information about which temperatures in Earth’s historical climate appreciably alter radioactive decay rates. I’m no nuclear physicist, but I don’t recall decay equations having a temperature coefficient.
Re: “…we have human and dinosaur footprints side by side.”
We really don’t and there’s considerable evidence indicating that dinosaurs and proto humans were separated by sixty million years or so. I’m actually surprised to see you make this claim because it seems like it is losing favor among Young Earth Creationists in recent decades.
Re: “I see strands of DNA in common and assume the consistent design styles and materials of an orderly designer.”
There are so many examples of poor design in Biology I’m shocked that anyone even makes this claim. Type I Diabetes? The appendix? The fact that a giraffes have a nerve which travels 20 feet through their body to transmit a message a few inches? The human eye- vaunted treasure of the Creationist notion of irreducible complexity- is terribly “designed”; it’s needlessly complex and has a blind spot because the nerve cluster is in the wrong place!
Re: “Any system of origins must be taken on faith”
Repeat after me, “Evolution has nothing to do with abiogenesis.” Sigh… I’m not even going to remark on this anymore.
Re: “…no great scientific discovery has ever been made by thinking like everyone else.”
So you’re cool with teaching all the world’s creation myths as well as anything I can make up in equal measure, yes? I don’t agree with you, but that’s what you’re advocating. Just out of curiosity though, shouldn’t science class reflect science? In a world where essentially every Biologist in existence agrees with evolution, is it fair to give kids the misapprehension that mainstream science might jive with the idea that humanity emerged from the armpit of Ymir so we could run around on Yggdrasil The World Tree between the Realms of Fire and Frost? One myth is as good as the next, right? Do we need to teach that “controversy?” In science class?
Re: “What if, instead, the teacher responded by accepting the idea as a valid starting point?”
It’s a nice idea but let’s see how it plays out. I’ve posited that religion is completely beyond the realm of scientific testability but you might disagree. I’d be glad to hear the thought experiment our indulgent, hypothetical teacher concocts to address the notion of Creationism. Let’s start with the proposition that “God created the universe.” How might we falsify that? How do you poke at that in a purely scientific way? This is science class, right?
Re: “…it is not fair for us and our children to be ridiculed or treated as unintelligent simply because we don’t believe that evolution is truth.”
Would you believe I agree? Nobody should ridicule your beliefs; it is unkind and unproductive. But there’s no reason for anyone to accept unscientific ideas as science, either. Evolution is the clear winner as far as scientists are concerned and Creationism hasn’t even suited up for the race, empirically speaking.
Re: “If you believe that one particular idea should be taught, to the exclusion of any others… why?”
I think science classes should reflect the most complete, age-appropriate description of the current state of scientific inquiry and that doesn’t leave room for ideas like Creationism that are ignored or discredited by essentially all published research. If you want to work a philosophy class or a world religions class- I took a few of these and they were great- into the curriculum somewhere, great! But, as the Dover trial so thoroughly demonstrated a few years ago, Intelligent Design or Creationism are not science and have no place in a science class legally or ethically.
Re: “Are you really seeking the truth… or are you only seeking to see your personal belief system preserved?”
Absolutely. There are different kinds of truth, of course, but for materialist truth- for understanding of the natural world- science is the only game in town. Sure, science won’t answer the Big Questions but that’s mostly by design.
First of all, Scott, I’d just like to say thank you for a rational, respectful comment! This is the kind of discussion we could stand to have more of. 🙂
I’m not going to address your comments point-by-point due to the time constraints I mentioned in the original post (household duties call 🙂 ). But there is one I wanted to address because I think it will add needed clarity. And one where I’ll just point you in a general direction.
You are absolutely right that, strictly speaking, “evolution” and “creation” don’t parallel. It’s more like (origin the evolutionists posit began the process/came before it) + evolution -OR- creation + (everything that came after). The problem is we don’t really have more precise terms that would be readily recognizable. So I’ve used them as general overarching terms for the bodies of thought encompassed by each camp. It is clunky. Can you recommend a better set of terms?
As for radiometric dating…well, I’m definitely no physicist, either. And I’m not sure what are the most reliable online sites to point you to. There is one here: http://www.earthage.org/EarthOldorYoung/Radiometric%20Dating,%20and%20The%20Age%20of%20the%20Earth.htm which summarizes the issue. Admittedly, it’s from a creationist site. (It also seems to have been reproduced a zillion times all over the web, which makes one wonder.) But it’s thoroughly referenced. Unfortunately, most of the references are offline resources. The last one for the “chapter,” though, is a webpage which, frankly, makes my head spin. It is unfortunate that primary sources are often not readily available to the “average Joe,” but I’m going to do some digging (no pun intended 😉 ) and see if I can find a more direct source for the known examples of “heat contamination” mentioned in the article.
Or did I misunderstand the question?
Oh, and you might be fascinated by what you find if you do some searching regarding dinosaurs. Even if we assume that more modern reports of creatures such as “Nessie” are false, there is record of creatures we would know as “dinosaurs” as recently as the late 1700’s, at least. A book called After the Flood has summarized a good number of them in one or two of its chapters. (This is not a science book, by the way; it’s an investigation of historical documents.) Even just in the collection “displayed” in this chapter, there are too many accounts and they are too specific to be readily brushed off as imagination. An honest weighing of the evidence clearly shows that dinosaurs have definitely coexisted with humans, although not necessarily by that name.
Regarding terminology:
“Abiogenesis” is a great term that describes life arising from non-life. Creationism implies abiogenesis caused by God. The scientific notion of evolution doesn’t even ask about abiogenesis; it assumes that you have life at the outset and follows the way that life changes over time. The theory of evolution will not tell you where life came from. It doesn’t even try. Many religious people reconcile the theory of evolution with their faith by simply allowing that evolution happened the way Biologists say it did but was guided by God, though this may be difficult if you’re theologically married to a specific timescale in which it all happened.
About radiometric dating, a few reaction to the article and your earlier post:
The assertion about heat altering decay rates isn’t discussed in the link at all. I found the cited paper (“The Failure of U-Th-Pb ‘Dating’ at Koongara, Australia”) but it doesn’t seem to make the claims about “heat contamination” attributed to it. Since I’ve never seen a decay equation with a temperature coefficient I went looking and found research indicating that decay rates might be influenced by temperatures as warm as 12 degrees Kelvin (-438 Fahrenheit), though I’ve never heard anyone suggest the earth has ever been that cold. It’d kill pretty much everything.
In terms of leaching or contamination, rocks from similar strata produce dates that can vary by about 2%. You might say that means the rock isn’t 50,000 years old so much something like 49,000 or 51,000 years old but I can live with that. That and, scientists being the clever guys they are, they’ve actually thought of these problems- peer review!- and come up with ways to detect and mitigate contamination via things like “isochron methods” and the correlated decay rates of two or more radioactive isotopes and their byproducts in the same sample.
And while C-14 has a half-life of something like 6,000 years and isn’t really trusted to reach back more than 50,000 years or so, we have several isotopes with half-lives measured in billions of years. I’m curious to know which fossils in particular you allude to containing C-14 are old enough to contradict the current consensus view on the approximate age of the earth. A word about magnitude though: if you think the earth is 6,000 years old- do you by the way?- you’re arguing that radiometric dating isn’t just wrong, it’s almost impossibly wrong. If we estimate the age of the earth at 4.5 billion years and it is only 6,000 years old, we’re off by factor of 750,000- five orders of magnitude! Pret-ty bad.
Regarding dinosaurs:
I’ll see if I can dig up something related to that book at some point but, honestly, the fact that people in the Middle Ages all knew what a dragon was doesn’t mean there were dragons flying around breathing fire on things. I don’t mean to condescend but those who claim 18th century dinosaurs are really grasping at straws.
We don’t really have a word for the counterpart to evolution, though, right? (Maybe just “non-evolution”?)
Yes, I believe the earth is 6,000 years old – give or take. And, yes, I believe that radiometric dating is that inaccurate. Different methods of dating the same specimens produce wildly varying results. And things *known* to be the result of catastrophes within the past several hundred years have been dated as millions of years fossilized by these methods. I just don’t know any online sources to link these to.
If the half-life of C-14 is around 6,000 years, then why is there ANY notable amount of C-14 in specimens purported to be millions or billions of years old? That seems so fundamentally wrong that surely I must be missing something!
As far as dinosaurs: I’m not saying that people in the Middle Ages “knew what a dragon was” (‘though that is obviously also true). I’m saying that people reported them existing and behaving in typical animal fashion: complained of them destroying livestock, made observations regarding the weather based on their behavior, etc. A lot.
Perhaps it is those who assume 18th century dinosaurs are a myth are the ones grasping at straws. 😉 You start with an assumption – that dinosaurs and man never coexisted – and consider it the conclusion instead. As a result, a HUGE body of evidence is ignored or explained away (with some pretty flimsy explanations in some cases). There is a truly AMAZING amount of evidence of dinosaurs coexisting with man. (I am using the term “dinosaur” here in its broadest possible sense – not in the more scientifically precise sense of terrestrial reptiles. Some were flying creatures, some were sea creatures; others were, indeed, terrestrial reptiles.)
Here’s more on radiometric dating: http://www.creationism.org/articles/swenson1.htm
See, here’s the thing. You can test things of unknown origin all day long and get whatever dates you want; no one can definitively prove them wrong ,because they’re of unknown origin. But it only takes one instance (or perhaps a few, to allow for a margin of error) of something of known modern origin to be mis-dated to make clear that the methods used aren’t dependably accurate.
Problem is, if the scientific community is vested in the idea of the earth being millions or billions of years old, do you think the “peers” involved in reviewing things for the journals are going to approve these things that so obviously prove them wrong? Hardly! (“It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” -Upton Sinclair Or, we could say, “…to get a man to believe something…”) The idea of peer-reviewed journals is a two-edged coin. It does help weed out “junk science.” But it also tends to make them something of a “popularity contest,” and studies that support unpopular views often don’t get in. That doesn’t inherently make them wrong.
Given that other methods for estimating the age of the earth (like, for instance, the slowing of the earth’s rotation) suggest a much younger earth, radiometric dating methods really should be given closer scrutiny.
Re: “We don’t really have a word for the counterpart to evolution, though, right?”
Sorry, I don’t follow your meaning. Things either evolved or they were created. Some people think that God caused evolution to happen and this is generally called “Theistic evolution.” Abiogenesis is a generic concept that can be attributed to naturalistic causes or God. What “counterpart” do you seek?
Re: “I just don’t know any online sources to link these to.”
Unfortunately there is no way for me to discuss those assertions if there’s no source material for me to look at.
Re: “If the half-life of C-14 is around 6,000 years, then why is there ANY notable amount of C-14 in specimens purported to be millions or billions of years old?”
Can you offer an example of a time C-14 dating has been used to characterize the age of a specimen in billions of years? I ask because I don’t know of one and, honestly, doubt the veracity of this claim. I have an open mind- I went looking for the Koongara paper, after all- and if you provided a source I could try to answer your question.
Re: “Perhaps it is those who assume 18th century dinosaurs are a myth are the ones grasping at straws.”
Isn’t it weird how all the dinosaurs died right before cameras came into existence at the beginning of the 19th Century? Facetiousness aside, why do you find inference from anecdote in a world full of Tall Tales more credible than nuclear physics? Should we necessarily accept anecdotal evidence common in a particular time and place as proof? There was a time when everyone was quite familiar with the Greek Pantheon and lamented the daily interference of the gods in their lives– was Zeus real? Is the Chupacabra real? There are a lot of Mexican farmers who will say so…
Re: “You start with an assumption – that dinosaurs and man never coexisted – and consider it the conclusion instead.”
This is incorrect. People had no idea what dinosaur bones were for a long time. A 17th Century museum curator, faced with a giant leg bone, postulated an enormous man. In the early 19th Century, unusually large teeth were attributed to huge iguana. It wasn’t until the middle of the 19th Century that Richard Owen had an epiphany and realized he was looking at the fossilized remains of a distinct species. Nobody started with the assumption that dinosaurs existed long before man; they simply proceeded like science always does and made the best inferences they could based on existing data. At that point in time, it was a matter of relative dating methods like strata evaluation which, interestingly enough, Geology was just getting a good handle on via the development of the “stratigraphical column”, essentially a description of rock layers related through time. Scientists- many of whom where Christian- had figured out the world was at least several million years old decades before the invention of radiometric techniques through a variety of novel experiments and good old fashion legwork. The knowledge that dinosaurs predate man is empirical.
Re: “There is a truly AMAZING amount of evidence of dinosaurs coexisting with man.”
What little information I’ve found on this matter- mostly on Creationism sites which appear to be the only source for such claims- is anecdotal. A question: Why are Christian scientists suppressing these fact if they exist? Why aren’t they publishing in reviewed journals? [edited to add: I see now that your answer is something along the lines that they refuse to publish because they fear losing reputation or funding, an assertion I categorically reject.]
Re: “You can test things of unknown origin all day long and get whatever dates you want; no one can definitively prove them wrong, because they’re of unknown origin.”
That’s really not what happens though. If you use radiometric dating to consider two samples and get the same answer, that bolsters confidence. If those samples are from rock strata known to date to the same period, that bolsters confidence yet more. If other dating techniques like, say, tree rings, also seem to confirm that same date, it looks even better!
Re: “But it only takes one instance (or perhaps a few, to allow for a margin of error) of something of known modern origin to be mis-dated to make clear that the methods used aren’t dependably accurate.”
If you want to offer specific examples we can discuss them. The mere fact that it is possible to deliberately alter a sample to provide a misleading result doesn’t prove the technique is irretrievably flawed. You can cheat a drug test; that doesn’t prove the related Chemistry is a failure.
Re: “Problem is, if the scientific community is vested in the idea of the earth being millions or billions of years old…”
Why do you assume this? Essentially the only way to become famous in modern science is to refute a long-held belief. If you honestly believe there are publishing researchers who can prove a young earth but choose not to do so because they fear the establishment there’s probably nothing I can say to change your mind. In a world where science doesn’t work and scientist are hiding the truth anyway, I doubt anyone could know anything.
Re: “Given that other methods for estimating the age of the earth (like, for instance, the slowing of the earth’s rotation) suggest a much younger earth”
Why is the projection to which you’re alluding more reliable than the many that mainstream science relies on? Do you understand the relevant math behind your claim? Can you explain it? Don’t just link to a Creationism site, explain it to me in your own words.
…I think I’ve been more than fair but you continue to make vague claims and link to Creationism sites w/o demonstrating that you understand the arguments you’re quoting. To facilitate the conversation I’m willing to overlook the fact that you flatly reject all sorts of established science for reasons I find specious. And I didn’t come here under the illusion that I could change your mind but this discussion would be more interesting for us both if you tried harder. I can go read the Creationism sites myself; I want to know what YOU think.