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No. You are misinterpreting the data. The geologic column would be incorrect if the species has no way to survive in multiple layers. Trees can be incredibly old. They are capable of being found in different layers.
The upright fossil trees of the Gallatin Petrified Forest in the Gallatin Range and the Yellowstone Petrified Forest at Amethyst Mountain and Specimen Ridge in Yellowstone National Park, occur buried within the lahars and other volcanic deposits comprising the Eocene Lamar River Formation as the result of periods of rapid sedimentation associated with explosive volcanism. This type of volcanism generates and deposits large quantities of loose volcanic material as a blanket over the slope of a volcano, as happened during the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo. Both during and for years after a period of volcanism, lahars and normal stream activity wash this loose volcanic material downslope. These processes result in the rapid burial of large areas of the surrounding countryside beneath several meters of sediment, as directly observed during the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo. As with modern lahar deposits, the sedimentary layers containing upright trees of the Yellowstone petrified forest are discontinuous and very limited in areal extent. Individual layers containing upright trees and individual buried forests occupy only a very small fraction of the total area of Yellowstone National Park.
Active volcanoes disrupt the geological layers that the magma comes through. It causes the trees to settle into the vacant area. That doesn't show a flood happened. That's why it is only a very small fraction of the total area. If there was a flood it should be everywhere.
Make up your mind. You wrote "Individual layers containing upright trees and individual buried forests occupy only a very small fraction of the total area of Yellowstone National Park."
You aren't discussing evolution by posting anything to do with Hovind. Would you like me to start arguing against my version of Creation that is just as accurate as his version of evolution?
An argument from complexity is ridiculous. He is taking a DNA strand that has evolved over millions of years and tried to claim that the chances of it coming about are slim. But, the real probability to consider is the chance of any DNA molecule existing. Evolution states that it can work with any life. If you have any DNA, life can proliferate. A specific sequence is inconsequential.
First, he points out that DNA is too complicated to design. Slips it by you to make you think it is an argument against evolution. Very sneaky.
Second, evolution says nothing about the number of chromosomes being the key to progress. You would never know that listening to Hovind.
Third, Hovind tells you to your face that he is making strawman arguments. He is poisoning the well.
Nothing Hovind teaches has anything to do with evolution. He is a fraud.
Charles Darwin once wrote to his good friend Joseph Hooker about the possibility of life arising spontaneously from “some warm little pond.”
During his day, some scientists still believed in “spontaneous generation,” the idea that life can arise from nonlife—which was Darwin's hope. Later, the famous French scientist Louis Pasteur decisively refuted the idea, and 150 years of observation and experimentation have confirmed these results.
It turns out life is supremely more complex than Darwin could have ever imagined.
Several decades ago, the famous Miller-Urey experiment was supposed to shed light on the origins of life. By running a mixture of gases through heat and electricity, they produced a tarlike substance that formed some amino acids. But we now know that the experiment was rigged, since oxygen, which was excluded, would have ruined the results. And scientists have concluded that oxygen was present when life first appeared.
Even with this rigged experiment, however, there was no assembly of amino acids so as to reach the next level of the building blocks of life—the enormously complex proteins, which themselves must be precisely integrated into sophisticated systems.
While the Miller-Urey experiment yielded the artificial chemical production of some crude organic building blocks, no building came of it. How do you get the loose blocks to form an elegant and functional house—with all the blocks in the right places?
This comparable house would also include a foundation, walls, doors, windows, roof, electrical power and a sewer system. Additionally, it needs to create a variety of materials besides the blocks that have to be precisely formed and fitted, and then it must have the ability to reproduce itself.
We are referring, of course, to a living cell, the staggering complexity of which defies the imagination. Indeed, the most primitive cell is far more complex than even the most sophisticated of houses, as pointed out in the next section of this article.
When scientists do the math, Darwinism just doesn't add up to anything probable or possible.
Sir Fred Hoyle, the late British astronomer and mathematician who was knighted for his scientific accomplishments, observed about the Miller-Urey experiment: “The…building blocks of proteins can therefore be produced by natural means. But this is far from proving that life could have evolved in this way. No one has shown that the correct arrangements of amino acids, like the orderings in enzymes, can be produced by this method…
“A junkyard contains all the bits and pieces of a Boeing 747, dismembered and in disarray. A whirlwind happens to blow through the yard. What is the chance that after its passage a fully assembled 747, ready to fly, will be found standing there? So small as to be negligible, even if a tornado were to blow through enough junkyards to fill the whole Universe” ( The Intelligent Universe, 1983, pp. 18-19, emphasis added throughout).
The scientific evidence indicates that life did not and could not somehow arise spontaneously from some warm little pond, as Darwin thought. What we find from the evidence around us and from the fossil record is that, as the law of biogenesis states, life can only arise from life.
Charles Darwin once wrote to his good friend Joseph Hooker about the possibility of life arising spontaneously from “some warm little pond.”
He was speculating about abiogenesis. Evolution doesn't cover that part.
During his day, some scientists still believed in “spontaneous generation,” the idea that life can arise from nonlife—which was Darwin's hope. Later, the famous French scientist Louis Pasteur decisively refuted the idea, and 150 years of observation and experimentation have confirmed these results.
False. The Miller Urey experiment proves that life has the possibility of arising from non life.
It turns out life is supremely more complex than Darwin could have ever imagined.
This statement is just dumb.
Several decades ago, the famous Miller-Urey experiment was supposed to shed light on the origins of life. By running a mixture of gases through heat and electricity, they produced a tarlike substance that formed some amino acids. But we now know that the experiment was rigged, since oxygen, which was excluded, would have ruined the results. And scientists have concluded that oxygen was present when life first appeared.
The experiment proved that life came from non life. It is a proof of concept.
Even with this rigged experiment, however, there was no assembly of amino acids so as to reach the next level of the building blocks of life—the enormously complex proteins, which themselves must be precisely integrated into sophisticated systems.
The building blocks of life had millions of years to form. The experiment can't come close to lasting long enough for that.
While the Miller-Urey experiment yielded the artificial chemical production of some crude organic building blocks, no building came of it. How do you get the loose blocks to form an elegant and functional house—with all the blocks in the right places?
Millions of years of the building blocks coming together.
When scientists do the math, Darwinism just doesn't add up to anything probable or possible.
You have described abiogenesis, not Darwinism.
“A junkyard contains all the bits and pieces of a Boeing 747, dismembered and in disarray. A whirlwind happens to blow through the yard. What is the chance that after its passage a fully assembled 747, ready to fly, will be found standing there? So small as to be negligible, even if a tornado were to blow through enough junkyards to fill the whole Universe” ( The Intelligent Universe, 1983, pp. 18-19, emphasis added throughout).
No one is suggesting that is how it happened. The more likely "scenario" is a whirlwind that comes in every day and blows the parts, but the parts actually stick to each other if they are supposed to be together and the whirlwind causes them to come together. Eventually you get bigger and bigger pieces each day and the whirlwind can do this every day for a million years. What is the probability then?
The scientific evidence indicates that life did not and could not somehow arise spontaneously from some warm little pond, as Darwin thought.
As Darwin pondered apart from his evolution theory. You are talking about abiogenesis, not evolution.
What we find from the evidence around us and from the fossil record is that, as the law of biogenesis states, life can only arise from life.
Congratulations. Even you recognize you aren't talking about evolution.
Why is time essential to the concept of small changes over TIME? Time is essential because changes happen when the next generation is born. Also, these changes aren't guaranteed every time a new thing is born. There need to be many generations for changes that evolution acts upon to happen.
Give me one accurate way to measure the age of the earth other than carbon dating since we are disputing that.
Uranium dating. Compared data from Earth, the moon, and meteorites.
The main point at issue is fractionation and its relationship to U/Pb and Th/Pb dating. Jon Covey cited some references about this, and it will take a lot of work to understand what is going on from a creationist viewpoint. But this is another factor that could be causing trouble for radiometric dating. If there is a proof that this could not be so, then I have missed it. I would not want to use a scale that might be right and might be wrong. This looks like the situation with U/Pb and Th/Pb dating so far. Another issue is selective reporting, and also an uncertainty as to how often U/Pb and Th/Pb dates agree with the expected ages of their geologic periods. And I'm curious to see how discordia relate to the possibility of fractionation -- I did look into them at one time. But this point is sufficiently complicated that I can't see the implications right away. In general, when an area is so complicated that I can just barely understand it, then there may be problems with the area that are more complicated still. But my inclination is to think that the same kinds of mixing processes that produce isochrons can also produce discordia.
Furthermore, if there are special circumstances that invalidate the method, then this raises questions about the method in general. It's been an eye opener to me to see all the processes that lead to segregation of different minerals in the magma. We have gold appearing pure at times, silver pure at times, etc., and no one says this is due to radiometric decay. The geological processes at work have a tremendous ability to separate different kinds of elements and minerals. And yet we expect that uranium-lead ratios are determined by radiometric decay alone (or at least sometimes)!
There are so many complicated phenomena to consider like this that it calls the whole radiometric dating scheme into question.
We haven't even considered the fact that uranium is highly water soluble and lead is not, which could make the dates too old, too. Another factor to consider.
We now have so many things that can make radiometric dating go wrong, and isochrons don't remedy the situation at all, that I think the weight of evidence of radiometric dating is nullified.
I really feel ``bullish'' about the creationist model now. Evolution has always been in trouble. I now have a good explanation for where the flood water came from and where it went, based on water trapped inside the crust (however the planet formed or was created). And now radiometric dating has had its foundation removed from under it. I suspect that a number of geologists now realize the implications of what they know about the lead and uranium content of subducted oceanic plate versus crustal material and the mechanics of magma solidification. What it means is that radiometric dates have no necessary relation to true ages! (For this I'm mainly concerned with the geologic column of Cambrian and above.) At least, there are so many variables to consider that the relationship between radiometric ages and true ages is too complicated to disentangle at present, isochrons or no isochrons.
We have seen many ways in which radiometric dates can be affected by what is going on in the magma. I think this is really the weak spot of radiometric dating. It takes a long time to get to the bottom of things, and I think we have finally hit it.
Still, the creationist task is not finished by proposing all of these mechanisms for invalidating radiometric dating. We can explain many dates away, but a question creationists need to face is which is the best explanation of the data. Can we find evidence that shows that an explanation of radiometric dates in terms of a young geologic column is more plausible than an explanation in terms of an old geologic column? I'm not speaking of evidences based on erosion or the lack of it, or other kinds of evidence, but rather on evidences relating to the radiometric dates and the concentrations of isotopes themselves.
I already pointed out that there is no evidence from Creation. You decided to talk about Carbon dating.
The biggest problem with Creation is that it really isn't a formed story. Are we talking about young Earth Creation? Are we talking about Intelligent Design? Are we talking about God starting everything and being mostly hands off after that? Creation is so unsupported there isn't a unified narrative for it.
In 1953, when Sir Edmund Hillary climbed Mt. Everest, he found millions of petrified clams (again, in the closed position) and sea shells at the 26,000 foot level. Quite a distance from any body of water.
Also, the best sea salt (Pink Himalayan) comes from that area. Better than ocean sea salt, due to pollution. By the way, none of the clam flood fossils had legs. More evidence of a global flood.
I never heard that, so I googled sun shrinking. It says the sun shrinks 74 centimeters per year. That's about 30 inches per year. That's .08 inches every day. That's .003 inches per hour. That's .00028 feet per hour. That would be 17,520 times slower than you are suggesting. So, if you go with the numbers scientists calculate there can be 17,520 times as many years as you think. So, how did creationists come up with this 5 foot number?
Since publication of this article in 1980, studies of the sun’s size have yielded different results. Currently, scientists are not united enough concerning any broadscale trends to support age estimates based on the size of the sun. In his 1998 article "The Young Faint Sun Paradox and the Age of the Solar System," Dr. Danny Faulkner provided an updated perspective that is more consistent with the relevant solar data. Other studies do provide ample evidence for the youth of the solar system and earth, such as the studies cited in the Evidence section Many Earth Clocks Indicate Recent Creation.
graphic
OBSERVATIONS
Does the size of the sun change over the years? Recently, "John A. Eddy (Harvard -Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and High Altitude Observatory in Boulder) and Aram A. Boornazian (a mathematician with S. Ross and Co. in Boston) have found evidence that the sun has been contracting about 0.1% per century…corresponding to a shrinkage rate of about 5 feet per hour."1 The diameter of the sun is close to one million miles, so that this shrinkage of the sun goes unnoticed over hundreds or even thousands of years. There is no cause for alarm for us or for any of our descendants for centuries to come because the sun shrinks so slowly. Yet the sun does actually appear to shrink. The data Eddy and Boornazian examined spanned a 400-year period of solar observation, so that this shrinkage of the sun, though small, is apparently continual.
INTERPRETATION
What does the shrinkage of the sun have to do with creation and evolution? The sun was larger in the past than it is now by 0.1% per century. A creationist, who may believe that the world was created approximately 6 thousand years ago, has very little to worry about. The sun would have been only 6% larger at creation than it is now. However, if the rate of change of the solar radius remained constant, 100 thousand years ago the sun would be twice the size it is now. One could hardly imagine that any life could exist under such altered conditions. Yet 100 thousand years is a minute amount of time when dealing with evolutionary time scales.2
How far back in the past must one go to have a sun so large that its surface touches the surface of the earth? The solar radius changes at 2.5 feet per hour, half the 5 feet per hour change of the solar diameter. The distance from the sun to the earth is 93 million miles, and there are 5,280 feet in one mile. Assuming (by uniformitarian-type reasoning) that the rate of shrinkage has not changed with time, then the surface of the sun would touch the surface of the earth at a time in the past equal to
t = (93,000,000 miles) (5,280 ft/mile)
(2.5 ft/hr) (24 hr/da) (365 day/yr)
or approximately 20 million B.C. However, the time scales required for organic evolution range from 500 million years to 2,000 million years.3 It is amazing that all of this evolutionary development, except the last 20 million years, took place on a planet that was inside the sun. By 20 million B.C., all of evolution had occurred except the final stage, the evolution of the primate into man.
One must remember that the 20 million year B.C. date is the extreme limit on the time scale for the earth's existence. The time at which the earth first emerged from the shrinking sun is 20 million B.C. A more reasonable limit is the 100 thousand year B.C. limit set by the time at which the size of the sun should have been double its present size.
A further word of explanation is needed about the assumption that the rate of shrinkage of the sun is constant over 100 thousand years or over 20 million years. The shrinkage rate centuries ago would be determined by the balance of solar forces. Since the potential energy of a homogeneous spherical sun varies inversely with the solar radius, the rate of shrinkage would have been greater in the past than it is now. The time at which the sun was twice its present size is less than 100 thousand B.C. The time at which the surface of the sun would touch the earth is much less than 20 million B.C. Therefore, the assumption of a constant shrinkage rate is a conservative assumption.
SOLAR ENERGY
The shrinkage of the sun greatly alters what we believe to be the energy source within the sun. The sun shrinks because of its own self-gravitational attraction. As it compresses itself, it heats itself. This heat is then liberated in the form of solar radiation, i.e., sunlight.
Would a 2.5 feet per hour contraction of the solar surface be sufficient to liberate all of the energy that comes from the sun? A crude estimate can be made by assuming the interior of the sun is uniform. The known formula4 for the gravitational potential energy of two masses m and M a distance r apart is U = - GmM/r, where G = 6.6 x 10-11jm /kg2. The gravitational potential energy of the sun's mass Ms interacting with its own mass Ms is U= - Gms2/R, where R is the radius of the sun. The solar power produced as the sun shrinks at the rate of v = R/t is5 P = U/t = (Gms2/R2) . (R/t) = GMs2v/R2. The mass of the sun is 2 x 1030kg, the radius of the sun is 7 x 108 m, and the 2.5 feet/hour rate of shrinkage in the radius of the sun is 2 x 10 -4 m/sec. in metric units. The power formula gives a potential solar power of 1 x 1029 watts. This potential gravitational power is hundreds of times more than the 4 x 1026 watts of power actually produced by the sun. This figure is an overestimate because the sun is actually far from uniform. The massive interior of the sun is protected by the outer layers of the sun. Only those low density outer layers are thought to contract. Even so, there is plenty of gravitational contraction energy potentially available to account for all or a large part of the sun's energy.
STELLAR EVOLUTION SHAKEN
One thing is certain. Some of the sun's energy comes from its gravitational self-collapse. Therefore, not all of this energy comes from thermonuclear fusion. This discovery greatly alters all calculations on the evolution of the sun, because all of those calculations attribute practically 100% of the sun's energy over the past 5 billion years to thermonuclear fusion. The discovery that the sun is shrinking may prove to be the downfall of the accepted theory of solar evolution. All accepted theories of the evolution of the stars are based on the assumption that thermonuclear fusion is the energy source for the stars. If this assumption is unjustified for our own star, the sun, it is unjustified for the other stars too. The entire theoretical description of the evolution of the universe may be at stake. With the stakes that high, it is no wonder that the experimental evidence for the shrinkage of the sun is "explained away" by evolutionists. Evolutionists claim that the sun probably undergoes temporary shrinkages and expansions as small fluctuating oscillations on its overall regular evolutionary development.6 They point to other cyclic solar occurrences such as the 11-year sunspot cycle on the surface of the sun. This claim is made in spite of the evidence that the shrinkage rate of the sun has remained essentially constant over the past 100 years when very accurate measurements have been made on the size of the sun. Less accurate astronomical records spanning the past 400 years indicate the shrinkage rate has remained the same for the past 400 years.
HISTORICALLY SPEAKING
Scientists have not always attributed the energy source of the sun to thermonuclear fusion. Prior to the discovery of thermonuclear fusion, Helmholtz predicted that the energy of the sun was supplied by the gravitational collapse of the sun.7 This model was accepted until the theory of evolution began to dominate the scientific scene. Then Helmholtz's explanation was discarded because it did not provide the vast time span demanded by the theory of organic evolution on the earth. The substitute theory was introduced by Bethe in the 1930's precisely because thermonuclear fusion was the only known energy source that would last over the vast times required by evolution. Science may now be on the verge of disproving the substitute evolutionary model of the sun.
CONCLUSION
The change in the size of the sun over the past 400 years is important in the study of origins. Over 100 thousand years these changes would have accumulated so much that life of any kind on the earth would have been very difficult, if not impossible. Thus, all life on the earth must be less than 100 thousand years old. The sun, 20 million years ago, would have been so large that it would have engulfed the earth. The earth cannot be more than 20 million years old. Those dates as upper limits rule out any possibility of evolution requiring hundreds of millions of years. However, the tiny change that would have occurred in the sun during the Biblical time since creation would be so small as to go almost unnoticed. Thus, the changes in the sun are consistent with recent creation.
The changes detected in the sun call into question the accepted thermonuclear fusion energy source for the sun. This, in turn, questions the entire theoretical structure upon which the evolutionary theory of astrophysics is built.
There have been claims over the years that the Sun is contracting slowly over time. Here, we examine that claim.
Let us assume that the Sun is shrinking is by gravity. Then from the equation that scientists have for the change of the Sun's luminosity (luminosity is an energy output) versus its radius, the Sun would be shrinking in its radius 74 centimeters per year. We would have detected such a noticeable change over the past history (over 500 years this would be a 0.005 arc seconds difference in the radius of the Sun from our viewing position on the Earth), and we haven't detected such a change. So our observations don't show the Sun to be shrinking by gravitational contraction.
What about the Sun's mass becoming less by its process of producing energy (fusion)?
The Sun actually does lose mass in the process of producing energy. Let us see how much.
We can use the following numbers from Kenneth R. Lang's book: Astrophysical Data:
Solar Mass = 1.989 x 1033 g
Absolute luminosity = 3.86 x 1033 erg/sec
Speed of light c = 2.99 x 1010 cm/sec
Start with Einstein's famous equation: "E = mass times c2" and rearrange the terms to solve for the mass M:
M = E/c2
And after inputting our numbers:
= 3.86x1033/(2.99x1010)2
= 4.289x1012 g/sec
we find that the Sun loses mass 4.289x1012 g every second to energy. Or, in other units, the Sun loses mass 1.353x1020 g every year to energy.
The Sun is thought to have a remaining lifetime of about 5x109 years. If we assume that the Sun's rate of fuel consumption (the luminosity value given above) remains constant (it won't, but it isn't a bad assumption) in the remaining time of 5x109 years, then let us see how much mass the Sun will convert to energy in its remaining lifetime.
Mass = (1.353x1020 g/year) * 5x109 years = 6.8 x 1029 g
In units of tons, every second, the Sun's fusion processes are converting about 700 million tons of hydrogen into helium "ashes". In doing so, 0.7 percent of the hydrogen matter (5 million tons) disappears as pure energy. (My reference for this paragraph is "The Sun" chapter in The New Solar System editor: Beatty and Chaikin, Sky Publishing Press.)
Since the Sun's current mass is 1.989 x 1033 g, the percentage of its current mass that will be converted to energy is:
6.8 x 1029 g / 1.989 x 1033 g = 0.00034 of its current mass or .034 percent.
In other words, the Sun's mass at the end of its lifetime is 99.966% of its current mass. See.. nothing to worry about!
Note that our Solar System is a very active place. Comets fall into the Sun often (the SOHO spacecraft has detected many these "sun grazing and sun-colliding comets"). And dust generated by asteroids hitting each other and comets coming into the inner Solar System and releasing dust, creates tons of very fine dust particles that fall into the Sun every second. So you see, the Sun doesn't always "lose."
In 1987, several astronomers from Paris Observatory made an announcement regarding the size of the Sun that astonished their colleagues (Kippenhahn, R., 1994, pg. 163). They claimed that solar eclipse data from 1666 to 1719 showed that the Sun was 2000 kilometers larger than it is today. This amounts to a 0.3 percent reduction; and the time period, which roughly corresponds to the Maunder Minimum, seemed to be more than coincidental. However, this data was found to contain an error regarding the 1715 solar eclipse path of totality. Consequently, the Sun was the same size in 1716 as it is today, and astronomers were reassured.
Parasites makes more sense through evolution than creation. How do you explain parasites. How could God create a species that causes pain to the species it gets nutrients from before sin existed?
For symbiosis, in evolution the 2 beings start as independentand aren't as efficient. Both things are trying to do the same process to get nutrients but neither is optimal. Each being gets better at specializing at one part of the process. Over time one can't live without the other because half the process is being done by the other.
Some creation zoologists suggest that free-living creatures (in other words, non-parasites) became parasitic after the Fall. This is hardly far-fetched. As some evolutionists recently stated, “Free-living species could become parasitic without substantial anatomical or physiological changes.”4 So the step from a beautiful role to a parasitic one after the Fall could have been a small one.
There is absolutely no evidence of Creation. Creation isn't even a well formed story. There isn't even a fully defined narrative that can be discussed.
On the other hand, there is evidence from many different scientific studies that verifies evolution is true.
New carbon 14 is produced every day. It is recirculated in the air and taken in by living things. When the thing dies it no longer takes in new carbon and it can start to decay at a detectable rate.
The rate of production in the dead thing goes to 0 because it can't take in any more carbon. Then the decay is the only rate that applies. The dead thing will have less carbon 14 and it's age can be determined.
The point is that fluctuations in the rate of C-14 production mean that at times the production rate will exceed the decay rate, while at other times the decay rate will be the larger.