Argument with a fundie

[Populist_Prole]

He had the usual creationist meme that the world is not 4 billion years old. I countered carbon dating is accurate because it decays at a constant rate enough to mathematically extrapolate the age of objects. He says carbon dating is only accurate up to 3K years.

Kept it civil and short as we both knew the futility of changing each other's minds, but I had to get a dig in about people riding dinosaurs after being told I was nuts for believing in evolution.

Anybody here knowledgeable on the sciences behind carbon dating? I'd sure like to pick up this debate another time and clobber him.

Thanks

[TexasObserver]

1. Why argue with someone who doesn't believe in science?

Why argue with anyone who believes the world is only 6000 years old? They calibrate their world to a cluster of myths than even a child of ten should recognize as symbolic, not literal or historical.

[Odin2005]

2. The age of the earth has been determined by URANIUM dating.

Carbon-14 only has a half-life of 5,000 years, Uranium has a half-life of 4.5 billion years.

[Angry Dragon]

3. Just googled it and it said

58,000 to 62,000 years

[gratuitous]

4. I don't know that you have to "argue"

Simply say that science is concerned with the observable, the measurable and the reproducible. Observations and measurements, buttressed by laboratory experiments under controlled conditions with appropriate safeguards to rule out unaccounted-for externalities (to the extent possible), have proved evolution as a fact. The theory is the mechanism of evolution, whether punctuated equilibrium, survival of the fittest, natural selection, something else, or a combination of mechanisms.

Saying "God did it" isn't observable or measurable. Perhaps your interlocutor would be so kind as to reproduce creation?

[Populist_Prole]

11. "God did it"

Yeah he used that line ( in so many words ). Told him it was circular logic.

[Mz Pip]

5. There's a good argument

that involves light. We know how fast light travels. It's measurable.

Also through measurement we can determine how long it takes for light from distant galaxies to reach us. It takes billions of years for light from some of the distant galaxies to reach us. That means that the light we are seeing is billions of years old. Some of the light we are seeing is from the early formation of the universe, of which we are a part of.

So unless his God is playing some huge trick on us, the earth is a whole lot older than 6,000 years. Why we should worship a God that plays tricks on his children is beyond me.

[Bitwit1234]

6. Why argue with a nut who has his

head buried in those oil sands in the Gulf. He might as well have. These people are so damn dumb they will never change their mind. The would kiss Beck and Rush and any radical republican and tea bags messy butt in public if they were asked.

[annabanana]

7. "It wastes your time and annoys the pig."

(only possible response)

[madmax]

8. +1

I save my strength for those who are on the fence and young adults who are our future.

[Speck Tater]

9. Arguing with a fundie = polishing a brick to make a mirror. nt

[Populist_Prole]

10. Good responses

Thanks, good fodder for debate although I'm well aware honest debate isn't really possible. I know that I can't change his mind: I just want to make him look categorically stupid in front of others.

[H2O Man]

12. It's about as worthwhile

as debating someone who does not believe in gravity. Why bother?

[izquierdista]

13. Not just carbon

Any radioactive element can be used for dating purposes, once you know the half-life. It is true that carbon-14 has a short half life, 5730 years, but that allows dating to about 10 half-lives or 60,000 years (so your fundie acquaintance is off just an order of magnitude or so). The Wikipedia entry (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiocarbon_dating) is a good place to start, but don't just stop there. Carbon dating is just a subset of radiometric dating (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiometric_dating), and by using other isotopes, you can get a seamless chronological record going back billions of years.

Radiometric dating has been cross-correlated with tree-ring dating, and also ice-cores from glaciers, and it consistently explains geological ages. It all boils down to who are you going to believe, millions of self-consistent scientific observations made by the most educated people across the globe, or the tribal lore of some half-literate Middle Eastern goat herders?

I actually knew Willard Libby, winner of the 1960 Nobel Prize for Chemistry, who developed the carbon-14 dating process. My office was across the hall from his, and after he passed away, there were all sorts of interesting radioactive isotopes that were discovered, hidden away in his bookcase. Even though his wife was an environmental chemist, he had an old school attitude toward isotopes, and "just put it in a metal box" was enough shielding for him. :eyes:

[glen123098]

14. I don't understand much about Science but...

I understand that light travels at a constant rate. A light year is how far light travels in a year. We can see planets that are millions or billions of light years away. According to the strict fundie interpetation of the bible, God created the universe in the same week 6000 years ago he created the Earth. If that is so, how can you see planets more than 6000 light years away? If you get into another discussion with a fundamentalist, that would be a good point to raise.

[Cresent City Kid]

15. Light travels at a constant rate in a vacuum

I have a creationist co-worker who tries to twist this into support for his theory, but the speed only varies downward in nonvacuum settings. This would mean that all celestial objects are 6000 light years away or less. I don't bother pointing this out, I just do my work and get the hell out of there.

[TransitJohn]

16. He's right about carbon dating,

give or take a few tens of thousands of years. That's why we use other elements in radioactive dating.

[dtotire]

17. Read this paper on Radiometric Dating from an Evangelical Scientist (All you want to know)

Extremely interesting--all you need to know from an expert

Radiometric Dating

A Christian Perspective

Dr. Roger C. Wiens

http://www.asa3.org/ASA/RESOURCES/WIENS.html



Dr. Wiens has a PhD in Physics, with a minor in Geology. His PhD thesis was on isotope ratios in meteorites, including surface exposure dating. He was employed at Caltech's Division of Geological & Planetary Sciences at the time of writing the first edition. He is presently employed in the Space & Atmospheric Sciences Group at the Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Radiometric dating--the process of determining the age of rocks from the decay of their radioactive elements--has been in widespread use for over half a century. There are over forty such techniques, each using a different radioactive element or a different way of measuring them. It has become increasingly clear that these radiometric dating techniques agree with each other and as a whole, present a coherent picture in which the Earth was created a very long time ago. Further evidence comes from the complete agreement between radiometric dates and other dating methods such as counting tree rings or glacier ice core layers. Many Christians have been led to distrust radiometric dating and are completely unaware of the great number of laboratory measurements that have shown these methods to be consistent. Many are also unaware that Bible-believing Christians are among those actively involved in radiometric dating.

This paper describes in relatively simple terms how a number of the dating techniques work, how accurately the half-lives of the radioactive elements and the rock dates themselves are known, and how dates are checked with one another. In the process the paper refutes a number of misconceptions prevalent among Christians today. This paper is available on the web via the American Scientific Affiliation and related sites to promote greater understanding and wisdom on this issue, particularly within the Christian community.

More about the author: Dr. Wiens received a bachelor's degree in Physics from Wheaton College and a PhD from the University of Minnesota, doing research on meteorites and moon rocks. He spent two years at Scripps Institution of Oceanography (La Jolla, CA) where he studied isotopes of helium, neon, argon, and nitrogen in terrestrial rocks. He worked seven years in the Geological and Planetary Sciences Division at Caltech, where he continued the study of meteorites and worked for NASA on the feasibility of a space mission to return solar wind samples to Earth for study. Dr. Wiens wrote the first edition of this paper while in Pasadena. In 1997 he joined the Space and Atmospheric Sciences group at Los Alamos National Laboratory, where he has been in charge of building and flying the payload for the solar-wind mission, as well as developing new instruments for other space missions. He has published over twenty scientific research papers and has also published articles in Christian magazines. Dr. Wiens became a Christian at a young age, and has been a member of Mennonite Brethren, General Conference Baptist, and Conservative Congregational, and Vineyard denominations. He does not see a conflict between science in its ideal form (the study of God's handiwork) and the Bible, or between miracles on the one hand, and an old Earth on the other.

Lots more at the link (Something like 28 pages)

[dtotire]

18. Read Page 22 of the PDF Version of that paper

[MrScorpio]

19. The greatest trick that the Devil ever played...

Was convincing fundies that science didn't exist.

[Curmudgeoness]

20. You think you have it bad...dinosaurs in the bible are worse.

I got hit with the dinosaurs and man lived side by side as described in Job 40:15-24.

15 ¶ Behold now behemoth, which I made with thee; he eateth grass as an ox.
16 Lo now, his strength in his loins, and his force in the navel of his belly.
17 He moveth his tail like a cedar: the sinews of his stones are wrapped together.
18 His bones strong pieces of brass; his bones like bars of iron.
19 He the chief of the ways of God: he that made him can make his
sword to approach .
20 Surely the mountains bring him forth food, where all the beasts of the field play.
21 He lieth under the shady trees, in the covert of the reed, and fens.
22 The shady trees cover him their shadow; the willows of the brook
compass him about.
23 Behold, he drinketh up a river, hasteth not: he trusteth that he
can draw up Jordan into his mouth.
24 He taketh it with his eyes: nose pierceth through snares

Some people are just not worth your arguments. They will never believe you, they only believe "god", and the bible is "god's word" literally. How to you fight that!