Happy Darwin Day! And Creationist agrees that the evidence points towards evolution

It's the 13th here in Korea, but still the 12th in many countries, so I think I'm in the clear and don't have to add an embarrassed 'belated' to the title.

Nice work, Mr President.*

Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky offered remarks about the discovery of gravity waves - I really should learn what their significance is.

Mohler said Christians believe the universe is telling a different story: as the psalmist puts it, “The heavens declare the glory of God.”

Mohler said part of being created in God’s image is an innate desire to understand and know the cosmos around us. At the same time, he warned, much of what is presented as scientific proof is at odds with the Bible, including the historical account of creation recorded in the opening chapters of the book of Genesis. 

“Now to be candid, I don’t believe that the world is 1.3 billion years old, certainly not billions of years old,” Mohler said. “I don’t even believe that is actually millions of years old. But one of the interesting things we need to note here is that the scientists who believe that believe it because they are looking at certain patterns that, to their observation, tell them that. And what we need to note is this, if we ourselves were operating from a simply materialistic and naturalistic worldview, we would probably come to the very same conclusions.”

Does this say that Mohler agrees the evidence, as viewed objectively, supports evolution?

“And we also understand that we are fallen, fragile, fallible thinkers and so as we look at this, if we’re operating from a basically secular worldview, if we believe the universe is going to have to tell us the story all on its own, then there’s no way we’re going to come up with the right story.”

It think it does.
Via the Sensuous Curmudgeon.
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*Thanks, photofunia.

Creationists and science - they do it wrong, sometimes dishonestly so

Creationists and evolutionists use the same evidence,

but evolutionists use all the evidence.

From Boingboing, of all places, comes a tale of an encounter with a creationist at the American Geophysical Union conference.  The author meet a man at the poster section.

A name badge declaring him to be Hugh Miller, the first author on the poster.He asked if I had any questions. I asked if he could just give me a quick summary of the work. He talked about performing mass spectrometry on samples of various dinosaur bones that produced age estimates ranging from 15,000 to 50,000 years. My spidey-sense tingled. I peered over his shoulder, searching for bullet points to figure out what was going on here.
That's when I read it: "humans, neanderthals, and dinosaurs existed together."

The author continues:

Now, here's the thing about Carbon-14 dating. This isotope has a very short half-life (the time necessary for the element to reduce in mass by half) of only 5730 years. Since it decays so quickly, it is useless for dating objects more than about 40-50,000 years old. The background levels of C-14 radiation in the laboratory have to be compensated for. 

The author points out

...often a technique called "bracketing" is used where the igneous rock on either side of the fossil is dated with radioactive isotopes that have half-lives on the order of millions of years. This give scientists a range of time in which the animal could have lived. The poster authors, Hugh included, were basing their attack on one technique in the geological toolkit, and disregarding all other evidence that would have undermined their conclusions.

Indeed, Ken Ham did the same thing in his televised debate with Bill Nye, saying:

In Australia there were engineers that were trying to search out about a coal mine, so they drilled down and they found a basalt layer, or lava flow that had woody material in it, branches and twigs and so on, and when Dr. Andrew Snelling, our PhD geologist sent that to a lab in Massachusetts in 1994, they used the potassium-argon dating method and dated it at 45 million years old. Well, we also sent the wood to the radiocarbon section of the same lab, and they dated it at 45,000 years old. 45,000 year old wood in 45 million year old rock. The point is, there is a problem.

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Jason Rosenhouse looks at how creationists abuse math in defense of their claims.

Sewell also argued that Darwinism runs afoul of the laws of thermodynamics. Evolution requires a decrease in entropy over time, whereas a cherished principle of physics says that is impossible. Since Sewell recognizes that the second law applies only to closed systems (which the Earth is not), it is unclear what the problem is. His claim that “natural forces do not cause extremely improbable things to happen” is pure gibberish. Does Sewell invoke spuernatural forces to explain the winning numbers in last night’s lottery?The fact is that natural forces routinely lead to local decreases in entropy. Water freezes into ice and fertilized eggs turn into babies. Plants use sunlight to convert carbon dioxide and water into sugar and oxygen, but Sewell does not invoke divine intervention to explain the process.

Reactions to the Ham vs Nye debate

This post is not finished but I don't know when that will be.  I watched the opening of the debate live, then stopped and drove to my in-laws and watched the last hour or so.  Then I began watching again and have made it to one hour, thirty-nine minutes.  I do plan to see the fifteen or twenty minute gap.

A friend described those who found Nye the clear winner to be displaying confirmation bias.  I had made similar, but less eloquent, statements so I was pleased to see my own conclusion reinforced.  Still, Nye did a lot right.

I guess I need to give some specifics at the start.  On Feb 4, Ken Ham defended the proposition that Creation is the most viable model of origins in today's modern, scientific era against Bill Nye, who defended evolution.  The video is available at a few locations but I don't know for how long: try here, here and here.

My own impressions:

Ham is getting mileage from his previous debate -at Harvard in the '90s.

Ham has a degree in applied science -emphasis in environmental biology.

five minute intro: Ham begins the attack and offers scientists who accept creationism but do science. Of course, they don't appear to use creation science in their work. Then, he gets into his personal division of science into observational and historic focuses.

Nye takes his time to gain some acceptance by telling a pretty good, but long, joke.  Then he uses the example of CSI to tear down the idea of two kinds of science.  

Billions of people are religious but not creationists.

thirty minute talks.

Ham: More professional scientist claiming they are creationists without any appearance of using creationism in their work.

Ham and one of his scientist discusses Lenski's work: The ability to grow on citrate is not complex new ability.

Andrew Fabich: E-coli supposably evolving.  The information is already there - it's just a switch that's turned on and off.  There's nothing new. ... Later, Dr Lenski and his student read Fabich's claim in horror and have responded 1, 2, 3.  I have excerpted a few paragraphs from the third link below in my notes of reactions to the debate. (More about Dr Lenski.)

"Darwin was racist." From a book -not necessarily by Darwin - "The highest race of all, the Caucasians..." Everyone from the 1800's would appear racist to us today. Australians, Ham's own nationality, had some racist image problems even just a few decades ago.

I just remembered how to do screen shots: 

In discussing the difference between observational and historic science, Ham showed a video of Nye talking about creationists accepting many scientific wonders -including smoke detectors - while yet not accepting evolution.  Ham emphasized a few such wonders -including smoke detectors - and called then observational science.  And yet, I think smoke detectors use the half-life of radioactive elements and this must remain unchanged through history or the detector's results would be meaningless.

Nye:

Deep time. - ice cores.

Nine thousand year old tree.

"Your claim, for me, is not satisfactory." An elegant statement but not a thrilling one.

Nye on Ham's need for incredible speed in evolution to suit creationism's short time line:

Noah's ark and modern shipbuilding.

Around 1:20, Nye talks about the Big Bang Theory. This is important stuff and you need to explain the small details, but it takes a lot of time and comes off as a little dry at a debate.  I hope creationists were listening.

First 5:00 minute rebuttal
Ham:
"You can't observe the age of the Earth"
Radioactive decay - Uranium to lead, etc.

"The point is, there's a problem." - Yes, there is. The radiocarbon dating used on the wood can only give results up to around 50,000 years so a result in that range is equal to a pegged needle.  To suggest otherwise is dishonest. This claim can also be found at creation.com  and the original source, 'research' by Andrew Snelling is at the same site.   Gondwana Research looks into a similar claim here.

The more I think about this, the more impressed I am with Ham's daring, with his cajones (it seems less crude in a foreign language).  If Nye had understood how radiometric dating worked -and why didn't he, this was an obvious direction for a Young Earther to go? -he could have exposed clear dishonesty on Ham's part.

Dr Steve Austin used Potassium-Argon dating on a lava flow from Mt St. Helens.  The results varied greatly.

There is a big problem.  From Wikipedia: "Due to the long half-life, the technique is most applicable for dating minerals and rocks more than 100,000 years old. For shorter timescales, it is likely that not enough Argon 40 will have had time to accumulate in order to be accurately measurable."

slides from 1:32:00 - get them while on Windows computer.

Nye:
Didn't understand about radiocarbon dating - dang it!!! Attempted a rebuttal and moved on.
"Were the fish sinners?"
On Ham's claim that you cannot see the past, "but that's what astronomers do."

2nd rebuttal
Ham:
"What is a kind? ...  Predicted less than a thousand kinds on Noah's ark."
1:42 - planes in the ice on Greenland. Wow!  and Wow!
Bears have teeth very much like a lion or tiger.  Look at a panda's teeth - it looks like it should be a savage carnivore.
      Okay, I just searched with Google images for lion, bear, panda bear and Australian fruit bat teeth.  All have big scary canines.  The bears and bat all have grinding molars and the lion has only cutting teeth.  I guess he figures Nye can't do the search in time for his next turn to talk.

"The Chinese and the Egyptians built big boats. Research shows some had three layers interlocking so they wouldn't twist like that (like the Nye discussed a giant American wooden ship had twisted and leaked)."  Right, except the only place i can find news of three interlocking layers is at Creationist websites and there is substantial disagreement about whether the giant Chinese ships were actually built (some claim they were and did sail to India and elsewhere, others say they only floated in a sheltered lake, others say they may have existed on land and finally some say they were never built).

Horizon problem. Light and the expanding universe.

Nye:
1000 kinds makes Nye's criticism even stronger - instead of needing 11 new species to appear every day, now we need 35!
Nye claims some knowledge of shipbuilding and is skeptical that Noah could build the Ark with seven others.
"...explain to us why we should accept your word for it that natural law changed 4000 years ago, completely, and there's no record of it.  You know, there are pyramids that are older than that."
It is not reasonable to me to believe that everything changed 4000 years ago: species, the surface of the Earth, the stars in the sky and the relationships of all the other things on Earth to humans.

Evolution is not exclusively atheistic.

We need scientists and engineers.
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Questions from the audience
1st question - Nye asks ham if he can predict something
2nd What was before the Big Bang?  Nye: I don't know - it is wonderful!
Ham: "There is a book..."
3rd dating techniques
Ham:....appendix is very important to the immune system -
...I did make predictions....one race, God made kinds
4th question - how did consciousness come from matter
Nye: "Don't know.  It's a great mystery. ...The joy of discovery."
Ham: There is a book" .. debaters both beyond debate subject....  Ham: after you die, you are gone, why bother with discovery?
5th question "What would change your mind?"
Ham:  long answer  "No one's ever going to convince me that the word of God is not true."
The model of the flood is subject to change but the fact of the flood is not subject to change.
Nye: We would need evidence. Bring on any of those things and you would change me immediately.
--
6th question: radiometric dating
Nye the science is strong on radiometric dating
Ham: showed slide from before "Hundreds of physical processes..."
This is a form of the Gish Gallop.  I know the coral reef claim is wrong and I'm pretty sure the meteor dust one is, too.  Note that Ham doesn't even try to defend any of them so what is Nye to do, attack 50+ in his next turn.  And even if he did, from the little info Ham offered, Ham could say, "No, I meant a different form of meteor dust buildup" or the like.

7th Question for Ham: Compare the rate of continental plates today to the rate 6000 years ago.
Ham: There was a catastrophic breakup.  Historic V observational science.
Nye: It must have been easier for you to explain this a hundred years ago.  The evidence of reversed magnetic fields supports old age slow plate movement evidence.

8th:  Favorite colour

9th: 2nd law of thermodynamics
Nye: Earth is not a closed system.We receive energy from the sun.
Ham: Energy or matter will never produce life.

10th: Could you be convinced the world is older than c10,000 years.
Ham: No
Nye: You want us all to take your claim based on nothing.  What can you predict?

11th: Is there room for God in science?
Nye: yes.
Ham: God is necessary for science.  observational v historic science. We assume laws of logic, nature the uniformity of nature. Where does that (as I've written it, "Where do they come from) come from?

12: Mr Ham, do you take everything in the Bible literally? Should we stone pig-touchers? Should men marry many wives?
Ham: Define literally.  If it's history, like Genesis, take it as literal.  The Bible shows marriage to multiple women causes trouble.
Nye: You pick and choose what to take literally.

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stopped at 2:28

religion and evolution

Quoting Ray Comfort:

“Bill Nye is living in the same dream-world as Charles Darwin, Richard Dawkins and their cut-and-paste clone believers,” Comfort told WND. “These devotees believe in the fairytale of evolution and quote Einstein (who wasn’t an atheist) and Mark Twain (who wasn’t an atheist) as though they too denied God’s existence, when they didn’t.”

Via the Sensuous Curmudgeon.

I rewatched the Bill Nye video -no hardship there - and noted that Nye never mentioned 'Christianity' or 'religion'.  He did talk about creationism but creationism is by no means all of Christianity.  Comfort is not alone in conflating the two concepts, and I have to wonder, because he surely has been corrected before now, how he can state  that evolution = atheism and still expect to retain credibility.  If his mission is to convert atheists to his religious beliefs, one would imagine that he would be forced to be more honest. Perhaps his mission is merely to literally preach to the converted and continue to receive their money.

At Ask the Atheist, the question “Does belief in evolution lead to atheism?” was debated and I definitely see evolution guiding seekers that way (toward atheism) but noted religious leaders and scientists-who-are-also-religious suggest otherwise.  At the Clergy Letter Project, more than 12,000 Christian Clergyfolk have signed a letter stating that the theory of evolution does not contradict their Christian beliefs.

I think this is the appropriate place to discuss a problem with many of the scientists placed on lists of believers and hence creationists.  I actually see two problems, but one is simple to point out and move on from.  Many scientists are Christian but also evolutionists.  Others, like Einstein, have very peculiar ideas about religion and cannot easily be considered Christians or Jew or be fit into any organized religion.

The second problem is timing.  da Vinci might have been a creationist - and I don’t think he fits a model that most creationists would accept - but he also died long before evolution was even considered.  Similarly, Lord Kelvin estimated the age of the Earth (to 20-400 million years of age) before radioactivity was discovered.  I am certain that the age he settled on was the result of serious and rigorous work.  However, his result can’t be seen as a refutation of later estimates because he was unaware of a key discovery.  Newton was a creationist but this can’t be held as a refutation of evolution because Darwin proposed his theory long after Newton died.

Law of Biogenesis?

A fragment from a website called Truth-is-life:

"If you accept the law of biogenesis as reality, you accept a major pillar of creation science that Pasteur, a major creationist opponent of Darwin, conclusively proved. If biogenesis is scientific then creation has scientific support. "

I am reminded of faith healing charlatans that claim their therapies use quantum theory.  Quantum theory explains the actions of minute particles and does not show much or any effect on the human scale of things.  In the same way, Pasteur did show that a sterile organic solution, in a glass container, did not spontaneously produce macroscopic life.  It probably did not produce any life, but Pasteur would not be able to 'conclusively prove' that as microscopes were limited in resolving power at the time.

Here is one (admittedly, of many) definitions of 'scientific law'.  Note the bolded clause:

"A scientific law or scientific principle is a concise verbal or mathematical statement of a relation that expresses a fundamental principle of science, like Newton's law of universal gravitation. A scientific law must always apply under the same conditions, and implies a causal relationship between its elements.
A law differs from a scientific theory in that it does not posit a mechanism or explanation of phenomena: it is merely a distillation of the results of repeated observation. As such, a law is limited in applicability to circumstances resembling those already observed, and is often found to be false when extrapolated."

This is important as Pasteur studied a limited amount and variety of materials  amount of material for a limited time.  He did not have - and had no reason at the time to include - rock faces that could work as catalysts.  Some catalysts, notably meteor fragments, are known to change the chirality ratios of amino acids formed on their faces.

There is no explanation for how life originated from non-living materials and it seems likely that there never will be.  This is not to say that it could not happen, but that the evidence is transient and there is no reason to imagine it would last.  The recipe for creating life may include "simmer  for a hundred thousand years".

I don't want to argue by metaphor, but imagine someone questioning your (or my) ancestry.  Here is my claim:  If you cannot name all of your 32 great-great-great grandparents (five generations back), then those of your 16 great-great grandparents (four generations back) were created by God.  This claim is almost impossible to disprove.  If you find it disprovable, then let me go back ten generations to your 1024 ancestors.  At some point, the genetics would be inconclusive and you would be utterly unable to prove your ancestry was not created by God.  And yet, even creationists would say that only two people were created by God and that was a lot more than ten generations ago.

More at The Frame Problem and Talk Origins.

Status:  The point is, as far as the possibility of an ancient origin of life from non-life, The Law of Biogenesis does not apply and people using it are either innocently ignorant or deliberately deceptive.

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I may need to reread the truth-is-life article.   It contains gems like:

CONCLUSION Many of the giants in medicine--Edward Jenner, Gregor Mendel, Louis Pasteur, Howard Florey and Ernst Chain, Selman Waksman--did pioneering work (including in genetics and antimicrobial resistance) while either rejecting Darwinism or ignoring it altogether.

This after pointing out that Pasteur was a contemporary of Darwin's, as was Mendel.  It would be better to say that they were unaware of Darwin's work, rather than that they rejected or ignored it.  This is certainly true of Mendel, whose work only came to light after his death, while Pasteur's famous experiment took place in the same year as Darwin's theory was published.

DARWINISM DIRECTLY PROMOTED THE MEDICAL PRACTICE OF EUGENICS 

I am not sure what Darwinism is.  Some proponents of self-directed evolution (more on this below the extended quote) were involved, but Wikipedia suggests it started with Mendel's work.

The origins of the concept of eugenics began with certain interpretations of Mendelian inheritance,

It is also well-known that at least some religious groups were involved.

...as the Eugenics movement came to the United States, the churches, especially the Methodists, the Presbyterians, and the Episcopalians, embraced it.Methodist churches around the country promoted the American Eugenics Society “Fitter Family Contests” wherein the fittest families were invariably fair skinned and well off. Methodist bishops endorsed one of the first books circulated to the US churches promoting eugenics. Unlike the battles over evolution and creationism, both conservative and progressive church leaders endorsed eugenics.  The liberal Rev. Harry F. Ward, professor of Christian ethics and a founder of the Methodist Federation for Social Service, writing in Eugenics, the magazine of the American Eugenic Society, said that Christianity and Eugenics were compatible because both pursued the “challenge of removing the causes that produce the weak. Conservative Rev. Clarence True Wilson, the General Secretary of the Methodist Episcopal Board of Temperance, Prohibition and Public Morals, and the man chosen to debate Clarence Darrow after William Jennings Bryan’s death, believed that only the white Aryan race was the descendent of the lost tribes of Israel.

The problem with laying all the blame for eugenics on evolutionists (and self-directed evo proponents) is that artificially altering an organism's characteristics was not what Darwin proposed.  He did use 'artificial selection' as a comparison for what evolution could do, but did not invent farming techniques or animal husbandry.  A related problem is that the author of the Truth-is-life article accepts micro-evolution, a subset of which could be said to include the goals of eugenicists. 

Just as our understanding of how atoms are put together does not mean we need to make atomic bombs, knowing how evolution works does not mean we have to change animal characteristics.  The 'Darwin-caused-eugenics' argument has nothing to do with whether Darwin's scientific claims are correct.  It seems a disgusting attempt to confuse the issue.

Radio-carbon dating of shells

From "Dating the Earth -3":

 Quotes from Experts onDating about Gigantic Errors In Dating Methods

Examples of where uniformitarian dating has been shown to be wrong.:

... 

16 A living water snail taken from an artesian spring in Nevada was given as assessed age of 27,000 years. Science, Vol. 224, April 6, 1984 p:58-61  The original article explains that C14 dating works when living things get their carbon from atmospheric sources. But, for many years, evolutionists were claiming C14 could be used for dating all sorts of things, including living things. (check this for accuracy). 

17 Shell from living clams was 'dated' thousands of years old. Science, Vol. 141, August 16, 1963 p:634

Indeed, check it for accuracy.

The abstract for "A living water snail taken form an artesian..."

Carbon-14 contents as low as 3.3 ± 0.2 percent modern (apparent age, 27,000 years) measured from the shells of snails Melanoides tuberculatus living in artesian springs in southern Nevada are attributed to fixation of dissolved HCO₃^- with which the shells are in carbon isotope equilibrium. Recognition of the existence of such extreme deficiencies is necessary so that erroneous ages are not attributed to freshwater biogenic carbonates.

If you don't understand my concern, let me explain where Carbon-14 comes from:

To have some understanding of how carbon dating works I will describe it for you. Basically the sun shines down on the earth's atmosphere, which is composed mostly of nitrogen 14. By the sun shining on the atmosphere it makes the nitrogen 14 or (N14) atom unstable changing into a carbon 14 isotope or (C14). The small amount of C14 made each day combines with our normal carbon dioxide. Organic objects such as people, animals, and trees are either taking or breathing in carbon dioxide every day. When an organism dies it will no longer take in any more C14. So the C14 unstable isotope continues to decay. Scientist measure this decay time by a unit called half-life. The half-life of C14 is 5,730 years. Scientists then take what organic item they want to date and find out how many half-lives have passed on that object. Thus the date of an organism is found. See figure 1 to visualize the paragraph above. See the figure to visualize the paragraph above.  

This quoted section and image come from We Need Intelligent Creation Education and from the article 'Dating the Earth-3'.

So, for radiocarbon dating to work, the Carbon-14 needs to come from the atmosphere in the plant material and gathered through photosynthesis or from the plants the animal eats.  Note that the Science abstract specifically states that the shell of the snail is made from carbonate in the water, not from food the snail has eaten.  The article in Science is not at all showing that radio-carbon dating is wrong.  It is showing that the source of carbon needs to be known.

The best metaphor I can think of for the complaint in "Dating the Earth-3" is that of a student going to a language school (by a huge coincidence, I work in a language school).

Little Timmy goes to language school for a year and studies very hard.  Then he takes a proficiency test.  His mother comes in, furious."My son studied here for a year and look at his proficiency score.  He scored 5% on his TOIEC (a standardized test for English ability).  Therefore your methods here are terribly wrong!"  She says.
The school director looks at her quizzically, then responds, "You do know this is a French language school, do you not?"

The quoted section in red confuses me. Especially this part: But, for many years, evolutionists were claiming C14 could be used for dating all sorts of things, including living things.
I presume this is true, but I notice no reference or attribution.  I would like to see evidence that evolutionists claimed "C14 could be used for dating all sorts of things, including living things."


My original concern, the one that eventually led to this blog, is that Evolutionary (or mainstream scientific) claims change with new evidence while creationist ones do not. I think everyone would agree that many scientific claims have been changed with new evidence - this is a strength, not a weakness!  The sub-title of the quoted section is "Examples of where uniformitarian dating has been shown to be wrong."  These days, I only hear creationists using the term 'uniformitarian' but what we have seen, and what the cited articles describe, is how to improve dating techniques.  The sub-title could be "Examples of where uniformitarian dating has been shown to improve".

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'Dating the Earth-3' is a long article and my goal is to break it up so that individual pieces can be examined in depth.  One problem I have is that I am going into far greater depth than my coworker did in making the article.  I specifically asked him where I could find the articles he references and quotes from and he replied he had not read most of them himself.  I feel this means I need only show how a few are deceptive.  If he has researched these claims properly, then any serious rebuttal (more than typing errors or the like) of even one claim throws all the rest into doubt and harms his perceived honesty greatly.  If he has not researched these claims, then any serious rebuttal of even one claim throws all the rest into doubt and shows him to be a bad researcher, although not a deceptive person.

As examples of articles I do not feel he has read, see the above two referenced above and these:

Dried seal carcasses less than 30 years old were 'dated' as 4,600 years old. Antarctic Journal of the United States, Vol. 6, October, 1971 p:210+ 

A freshly killed seal was assessed at 1,300 old. Antarctic Journal of the United States, Vol. 6, October, 1971 p:210+ 

"There has been in recent years the horrible realization that radiodecay rates are not as constant as previously thought, nor are they immune to environmental influences. And this could mean that atomic clocks are reset during some global disaster, and events which brought the Mesozoic [era] to a close may not be 65 million years ago but, rather, within the age and memory of man." Written in Frederic B.Jueneman, "Secular Catastrophism", Industrial Research and Development, June 1982 p:21

The Antarctic Journal of the United States is only available online form 2005 so am certain that he could not have read it.  I have not either, but suspect that it may have included information like this:

The seals feed off of animals that live in a nutrient-rich upwelling zone. The water that is upwelling has been traveling along the bottom for a few thousand years before surfacing. The carbon dioxide in it came from the atmosphere before the water sank. Thus, the carbon in the sea water is a couple of thousand years "old" from when it was in the atmosphere, and its radiocarbon content reflects this time. Plants incorporate this "old" carbon in them as they grow. Animals eat the plants; seals eat the animals, and the "old" carbon from the bottom waters is passed through the food chain. As a result, the radiocarbon content reflects a mixture of old radiocarbon, which is thousands of years old, and contemporaneous radiocarbon from the atmosphere. The result is an apparent age that differs from the true age of the seal. 

Or this:

Notice that all of the examples given of discordantly dated artifacts result from organisms from aquatic environments or which obtain significant amounts of carbon from aquatic sources. Since carbon in aquatic environments may have long since have been removed from atmospheric sources, it will have depleted its ratio of C14 to C12 already to some degree even before incorporation into the organism eventually tested. Trying to produce a C14 date when the initial assumptions are violated is not likely to succeed.

My second quote is from October '99, so this information has been available for more than ten years.

As for the quote by Jueneman, no such article exists online nor can I find any journal with the fairly generic name of Industrial Research and Development.  If such a journal exists, from it's name, I cannot see it being a strong forum for "Secular Catastrophism".  If such a journal and entry exists, my bet is that this is a letter to the editor, not a peer-reviewed article in it.

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Status:  These quotes, divorced of all outside context, have to be questioned and treated skeptically.  I have shown how a very few are incorrect and plan to look at more, but again, I feel I am putting in more work than my coworker did in listing them here.  They may have started as innocently wrong, but after ten or more years without fact-checking, they are close to being deliberately deceptive.  Because the man is my coworker, I cannot go that far.  Innocently Wrong

Coral growth rates and the age of the earth

From my coworker's letter "Dating the earth-3"*:

Enewetak coral reef has been drilled through and is about 1,405 meters thick.  Evolutionists say that this proves the world is millions of years old.  Creationists say it’s only a few thousand years old.  But, here is the real scientific data.   This shows how all scientists are tempted to interpret data according to their own worldview. Here are the facts:
FACT:  The Enewetak reef is about 1405 m thick (2^nd pic is enewetak)
FACT:  Observed rates range from .5cm (=5mm/year) to 414mm/year  with many in the 100-200mm range (faster or slower rates may also exist but haven’t been observed).
z1405m = 1,405,000mm 5mm/year rate =281,000 years estimated coral age 50mm/year rate =28,100 years estimated coral age 100mm/year rate =14,050 years estimated coral age 200mm/year rate =7,025 years estimated coral age 300mm/year rate =4,683 years estimated coral age 414mm/year rate =3,393 years estimated coral age

These are ONLY the observed rates of coral growth.  Faster or slower rates may have that haven’t been observed.  In 1992, this coral in the picture above was found on a shoe that was less than 4 years old.  This shows that coral growth can sometimes be extremely fast.

 This image was in the email but also can be found here.

For Enewatak’s rate of growth, we only have recent observations.  Many things can cause drastic changes in the rate of growth and we don’t know the rates of growth for most of the past.   Which rate happened at Enewetak? Nobody has been watching and measuring the Ewenetak coral reef for 5,000 years, so we don’t know.  Science can only guess what might have happened.  Skeptics choose the 5mm rate. Creationists choose the 200-400 rates.  Both are using a lot of faith.  It does seem logical to match the fast rates with the thickest corals on the planet, but this is just a logical guess and cannot be proved scientifically.

Here is the problem: Coral reef growth rate appears to be conflated with Coral growth rate.  The difference? Corals obviously grow faster than the reef they are part of.

Let me take a moment to explain this.

First, here is Staghorn coral.

 Here is lettuce coral.

Here is Brain coral. 

Finally, here is a gorgonid coral.

 If that brain coral grows 414 mm a year, it looks like it would fill a two-metre diameter hemisphere in about two-and-a-half years.  That is, it would be one metre tall and two metres wide and all that volume would be filled.  This clearly is not true for the other three examples.  If the coral on the shoe, offered as evidence of a high growth rate, were ten centimeters tall and twenty wide, we would not say the reef had grown by this much.  Most of the volume is open sea-water, not solid material.

My coworker's letter included several links.  One was to an article at grisda.  At grisda, my point is repeated:

   The fastest growth rate reported for any coral is the staghorn species Acropora cervicornis (Figure 4). Lewis et al. (1968) found in Jamaica a maximum rate of 264 mm/year. Shinn (1976) studied the growth of this species following destruction in a hurricane near Florida. He estimated linear growth rates of 100 mm/year. He also found that because of the branching habit (several new branches added to a single previous one) much more than the linear growth of a single branch is involved in establishing a dense stand of this coral (see Figure 3 for an example). Under these branching growth conditions, carbonate production would be more geometric than linear and could contribute further to the carbonate mass of the reef. Gladfelter, Monahan and Gladfelter (1978) report rates of 99 mm/year for Acropora palmata in the Virgin Islands. Some massive corals (Figure 5) grow much more slowly.

The Cervicornis is a kind of staghorn coral and there is an example of a 'massive coral' that is a brain coral similar to the image I used above.  Both of these corals are familiar to me as I spent time diving on coral reefs and studying them as part of my degree in biology.

Another problem is the source of the 414mm/year growth rate.  It is from an 80 year old paper (J. Verstelle, ‘The Growth Rate at Various Depths of Coral Reefs in the Dutch East-Indian Archipelago’, Treubia 14:117–126, 1932.) and I don't believe any modern paper suggests growth rates nearly as high.  A third and very-related problem is that neither my coworker nor I have read this article.  For this reason, when I proclaim a status below, I will not be calling this claim 'intentionally deceptive' as I don't have enough information to make that call.  I do have enough to information to say this claim is very weak.

Here are some relevant links.
Fast growth:
Answers in Genesis
creation.com
Apologetics Press
asa

Slow growth or rebuttals of above:
earthhistory
exploring our matrix
talkorigins
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Status: Weak.  I am satisfied that this claim does is not supported by evidence and that coral growth rates support an old earth.  As I have not read the Verstelle paper (414 mm/year growth rate), I cannot say this argument is debunked, but I do note that no one seems to quote the contents of this paper, only that one number.  This has to appear suspicious.

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*The original email he sent me was "Dating the earth-1".  I don't see any differences in the letters but I suspect that the sections of short quotes has been changed or expanded.  This document (Dating the Earth-3) can be found online by searching for some of the quoted text.

Greenland ice and icecores: the lost squadron

This is my first post here and I want to get into the meat of an argument I've had with a creationist here in Busan.  Still, some background is probably necessary.

My creationist coworker sent me a long (20 page) discussion of why secular science is wrong about the age of the Earth.  That was the first article he gave me.  He has now sent me four or five and all of a similar length and breadth.  There are two problems with much of the stuff he sends me.  Well, two problems that affect my ability to respond.

First, although he gives an enormous number of references and links, he has admitted that he has not read all of them.  To my uncertain knowledge, of the 39 bullet point examples he gives showing that modern science's aging techniques are wrong, he has read fewer than 10% himself.  I believe this to true for all the references and mined quotes he offers.  I feel that with his name on the article, all errors affect his credibility.
Second, he occasionally covers material that I don't understand well enough to critique and I don't think he understands well enough to use as a defense.  For example, I know the absolute basics of radiocarbon dating and nothing of the practicalities.  How does one collect a sample and ensure it is not contaminated?  I don't know.  For me, this is reason enough to read the articles with interest but not to post them with my stamp of approval.  I'm not asking for expertise - that would be hypocritical- but when I offer a link, I do so only if I understand the concepts.

The article I'm starting on today covered many aspects of how to date the Earth or what is wrong with dating methods that give answers greater than 6-10,000 years.  This article had many different articles and links in it and I am looking at one of these titled, "Ice Core Sample Dating/ The Lost Squadron".  The original was by Carl Wieland and my coworker appears to have copied it in its entirety from creation.com/the-lost-squadron although the article contains a hyperlink to Answers in Genesis.  I don't think there are copyright issues as he has given links and this means I can share a link the original article.

In brief, the Wieland's article attempts to show why ice cores taken from Greenland glaciers cannot show ages of tens of thousands of years.  That material would be rather dry, and is in fact untrue, so he uses the dramatic true story of a fleet of US fighters and bombers that crash landed on the island as a disguise or hook.  Indeed, of the fifteen or so paragraphs, ten describe the fate of the aircraft and only a few actually discuss ice cores.  One of the key excerpts:

...the 3000-metre-long ice core [brought up by the joint European Greenland Ice-core Project (GRIP) in Greenland in 1990–1992] would only represent some 2,000 years of accumulation.

The article is amazing as a tutorial in how to lie by omission.  One would imagine that the ice cores were taken very near the crash-site. but the two are in fact hundreds of kilometres apart and in what I would describe as different climatic areas.  The planes are near the coast where they receive ocean-effect precipitation (Wikipedia - short version: lots), while the ice core site is more than a hundred kilometres inland.  Here is all the location information given:
Regarding the planes: "Realising that their only hope was to crash-land on the icy wastes of Greenland’s east coast, they desperately searched till they found a break in the cloud cover."
And here is everything the article has to say about the location of the ice cores: " "

On maps, the two locations are clearly distant. Further, one is quite distant inland, while the other is on the coast. Maps (Glacier Girl, Eismitte):

A possibly more accurate map of the ice core site is here.

Why is it important that one site is on the coast and the other more than a hundred kilometres inland?  Because of something called Ocean Effect Snow.  This is also known as Lake effect snow and simply describes the phenomenon of greater snowfall occurring close to unfrozen bodies of water than distant from water.  Greenland's coast around the crash site received about 1.5 metres of snow per year but that does not mean that inland site would get a similar amount.

How much snow does the Eismitte get?
Between 1910 and '28, it received less than half a metre a year. Added later. That link seems to fail. Again, less than half a metre a year (updated Mar 10, 2019).

More recently (and from a different, but nearby location):

Both show average snowfalls of less than half a metre - the average in the image is 0.24- metres.
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Added later: True Size Map shows the size of countries without distortion brought on by using a Mercator projection map.  Because Greenland is so far north, it looks huge.  In True Size Map, I pulled it down to the continental USA and it is a lot narrower there - but still longer North-South than the USA so clearly saying the two events are in Greenland cannot mean they must have similar weather conditions

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I believe I have shown why Weiland's article cannot be trusted and is probably deliberately dishonest.  Is there more to the story?  Yes, thanks for asking.

From Weiland's article:

In fact, ice cores in Greenland are used for dating, based on the belief that layers containing varying isotope ratios were laid down, somewhat like the rings of a tree, over many tens of thousands of years.

This is the only description of how secular scientists (should those two words be in quotes?) determine the age of segments of the ice core.  There is no attempt to show why varying isotope ratios should be incorrect either.  Left out of Weiland's work is how ice cores can be calibrated by looking for volcanic ash from known eruptions.

To summarize, not only are Weiland's conclusions wrong, they show a strange combination of in-depth research on certain areas and no research on others.  The highest quality of research is on matters that do not relate to the controversy being discussed.  For example, we learn what device is used, and what it's parameters are, for melting the ice to reach the planes, but no details on where the planes were found compared to the location of ice core drilling site.  Further, they the two locations are suggested to be near one another -note the quote about 3000 metres of ice equalling 2000 years accumulation as if those 3000 metres were in the same climate zone.

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The story gets more disturbing when I relate a verbal discussion I had with my coworker about these issues.  He brought up two rebuttals to my claims.  They were:
1) moraines Dang it, what is the term?  The formation of lakes of liquid water somewhere on the glacier- The water in these locations could have been responsible for higher snowfall rates at the ice core sites.  He used the right term, but I have forgotten what it is.

2) The theory that where there is more snow on the ground, that place receives more snowfall.

To my knowledge, the liquid water found on the glacier is a sign of a drainage area that sometimes becomes blocked and fills.  These are not large enough to affect local weather and the direct measurements at the ice core sites given above show the snow fall was much lower than at the coast.

His second claim was clearly off the cuff but it still bothers me.  To defend the claim by using the word 'theory' as if more than one person believed it seems deceptive.

Regarding The Lost Squadron article, I am willing to give my coworker the benefit of the doubt, but I feel I need to repeat that Weiland showed strong research skills when describing the aircraft and their manner of removal from the ice to have accidentally missed: 1) the great distance between the two locations, 2) the observed snowfall records at both locations and 3) the many ways in which the ice layer can be dated and how these different methods have agreed with each other.
Status: Deliberately deceptive!
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Later additions: Talk origins briefly discussed the subject on their feedback page in march '99.  I suggest visiting the page and using the 'find' option in the 'edit' button of your browser to find it.

Talk Origins has another page on the subject with a copyright date of 2007 and an information page on ice core dating.