YEC Part 2

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[Thanks to Alan Fox for asking questions about YEC and Elizabeth Liddle for her generosity in hosting this discussion]

YEC part 1 gave some theological and philosophical context to the case for YEC, and part 2 will hopefully focus solely on empirical and scientific considerations. Part 2 challenges the mainstream view that the fossil record is hundreds of millions of years old.

If empirical considerations alone suggest the fossil record is not more than a several million years old, does it matter on balance that the data don’t exactly arrive at 6,000 years old? I think not. As far as I’m concerned, if the fossil record is not anywhere near as old as the mainstream claims, the creationists will have won the essentials of their case independent of whether the universe and Earth are billions of years old. Creationists can afford to lose the issue of the age of the Earth and universe, but Darwinists cannot survive the fossils record being only a few million years old. But as I demonstrated in YEC part 1, time isn’t the friend of evolution anyway, it is an enemy since nature tends to erode complexity, not construct it.

If the age of a skyscraper built with 1 billion year old rocks does not imply the skyscraper was built 1 billion years ago, the age of the fossil record can be formally separated from the age of the universe and age of the Earth and age of rocks. The time of death of someone can be determined forensically and the process doesn’t rely on the age of the Earth or universe or rocks around deceased to make a reasonable inference. The age fossil record is about establishing the time of death of the fossil not the rocks the fossil is buried in. The age of when a strata was formed is independent of the age of the rocks that form the strata.

When I ask geologists how do permineralized or well-preserved fossils form. As a matter of principle, does the entombment happen quickly or slowly? “Quickly” is the usual reply. Why? Rapid burial with minerals and water are the necessary ingredients to effect preservation. If the creature dies and is left out in the open to scavangers and decay processes, it will not fossilize. So as a matter of principle, such fossil bearing formations didn’t take millions of years to form. Thus one can’t argue the fossil record is old because it took millions of years to bury them! In the case of wooly mammoths with undigested tropical vegetation in their stomachs, they’d have to be instantly buried in snow to effect the necessary freezing to preserve the vegetables in their stomachs — not millions of years. That’s the other thing, why are the mammoths in a tropical environment one moment and then buried in a cataclysmic blizzard the next, and then never unfrozen till discovered in Siberia? Hmm…..

So like a detective, we’ve established certain fossils are buried rapidly, not over millions of years. The question remains when it happened, or maybe when it couldn’t have happened.

The mean sea level of the US is here is around 760 meters. Erosion of a mere 10 microns per year would wipe 760 meters into the sea in 76 million years. A sheet of paper, by the way is 100 microns thick. The slowest mean erosion rate I’ve found in literature is 2.5 microns per year, and even that would wipe out the Phanerozoic in many areas.

I point to this empirical study by Princeton geologists Judson and Ritter: Judson and Ritter

Taking the average height of the United States above sea level as 2300 feet and assuming that the rates of erosion reported here are representative, we find that it would take 11 to 12 million years to move to the oceans a volume equivalent to that of the United States lying above sea level. At this rate there has been enough time since the Cretaceous to destroy such a land mass six times. Accepting this figure creates the problem of maintaining a continental mass above high elevations. A problem beyond the intent of this report

Granted, that may only be a mean value for now, but one can’t fight gravity, sediments will tend to move toward the oceans, erasing the fossil record in the process. Even if Judson and Ritter are off by a factor of 50, that would still wipe out the fossil record all the way to the beginning of the Cambrian.

But even more to the point, we have forensic clocks that may put an upper limit to the time of death of the fossil in question. There is the very embarrassing fact that the supposed carboniferous era of 300 million years ago has ubiquitious traces of C14, and this is acknowledged in peer-reviewed literature. 0.1% present day concentration of C14 will yield a presumed age of 57,000 years. That is 1 part in 1000. We have frequent detections of comparable levels, so much so many won’t even try to date with C14 beyond that presumed age because there seems to be a persistent amount in fossils!

Some claim contamination, but this explanation is not as credible as one might suppose.

First consider in-site contamination. To maintain a background persistent concentration of C14, one needs to keep adding more carbon from atmospheric sources into the fossil to maintain 0.1% concentraion. The problem with this scenario however is that the added C14 will decay away, and one needs to add even more carbon contaminants the next iteration to maintain a background C14 level of 0.1%. One ends up with something analogous to the compounding interest rate problem. Say I added a mere 0.1% contaminant every 50,000 years, over 300,000,000 years, the fossil will either gain 402 times in mass or be diluted from the original material by that factor. Maybe in-site contamination might work as an explanation for isolated cases, but not for repeated discoveries in diverse geographical locations, otherwise one would have to argue nature conspired to fool us by contaminating the entire world recently for no good reason.

Consider contamination during processing of the fossil. 1 part in 1000 might seem like very little, but consider contaminating a hard piece of fossil marble or shell or bone. Just to illustrate, take a 1 gallon (not quite 4 liters) sample of something hard. A little less than a small teaspoon (4 milliliters) of contaminant to 1 gallon would be 1 part in 1000. Do you think you can force that much contaminant into something relatively hard? 🙂 Even 1 teaspoon into 10 gallons wouldn’t exactly be easy (1 part in 10,000). So this is not as credible an explanation as would be supposed either. Are experiments and analysis actually done to determine the source of contamination? No, because the fossils C14 is primarily due to contamination, it is due to the fact the fossils are young. And few are willing to stick there neck out to point out they can’t demonstrate the source of supposed contamination.

Radioactive decay chains have be also ruled out unless of course one assumes 99% Uranium and less than 1% of fossil!

See:
Problems using Coal as a C14 free source

Lowe points out:

Many (super 14) C dating laboratories have established that coal samples exhibit a finite (super 14) C age, apparently caused by contamination of the specimens before any laboratory preparation is undertaken.

He then points out the contamination cannot be due to radioactive decay of other products:

Because coal is formed over geological time scales at depths providing excellent shielding from cosmic rays, its 14C content should be insignificant in comparison to the 14C introduced by even the most careful sample preparation techniques used in 14C dating laboratories. How is it then, that a material, which should show a14C age indistinguishable from that produced by a combination of machine background and contamination during careful sample preparation, routinely produces a finite 14C age?

One suggestion is that radium, which is present in some coals at the sub pm level, as a decay product of the uranium/thorium series, may produce 4C during an extremely rare decay event (Rose & Jones, 1984). Jull,Barker and Donahue (1987) have detected 14C from this process in uranium/ thorium ores. Blendowski, Fliessbach and Walliser (1987) however, have shown that the 14( decay mode of 226Ra is only of the order of 10-11 of the preferred a decay channel to 222Rn. Thus, the amount of 14C produced by such events derived from radium in coal must be considered as insignificant.

and finally capitulation at the ubiquity of the problem

There are many other unpublished accounts by 14C laboratories in which the use of coal as a background test material has been investigated. In many cases, the samples were found to contain 14C, and further studies were discontinued. The AMS and gas counting facilities, DSIR, in Lower Hutt, New Zealand, eg, have observed apparent ages for coal specimens ranging from 25-40 kyr, and the NSF Accelerator Facility at Tucson, Arizona has determined ages of anthracite samples ranging from 30-40 kyr (AJT Jull, pers commun, 1988).

Lowe invokes bacterial contamination, but I pointed out why such in site contamination is contradicted by the “compounding interest” problem, not to mention, bacteria in deep parts of the Earth would be feasting off C14 depleted carbon, not atmospheric carbon!

Next is the fact of biological materials with half-lives that preclude their persistence in fossils. DNA has a half life 521 years give or take, homochiral amino acids have half-lives on the order of hundreds or a few thousand years. The state of these biological materials in fossils is inconsistent with the time of death hundreds of millions of years ago.

Additionally, we have ancient fossil DNA that looks like modern DNA, breaking the biological molecular clock hypothesis. See: Pardox of Ancient Bacterium. But detractors bring up the contamination complaint yet again.

The actual forensic clocks refute old age fossils in the fossils themselves (C14, DNA, homochiral amino acids, inconsistency with biological molecular clock). The well preserved variety of fossils could not have been buried in a process taking millions of years as a matter of principle, and there should be serious doubt the fossil record would still be around after hundred million years, maybe not even 11 million years.

Finally, I keep hearing assertions about all the mounds of data that prove the fossils are old. Actually it’s mounds of publication not mounds of actual facts. The amount of words dumped out does not necessarily make claims any more credible than Kairos Focus being verbose proves Kairos Focus’ FYI/FTR are correct. It’s the physical facts that count. The tons of fossilized material themselves do not indicate an age that is as old as most presume.

336 thoughts on “YEC Part 2”

  1. I suggest, though, that tempers may remain better unfrayed, if the thread focuses on a single set of phenomena at a time.

    The stratified order in which fossils are found is a good start maybe. Including dating methods of the strata, and the debunking of the notion that strata are dated from the fossils they bear.

    Sal: the reason that “index fossils” are even ABLE to be used as a dating method NOW, is because of two things:

    1. They are fossils unique to a specific layer, world wide
    2. The layer in which they are found has been independently dated by reference to igneous layers found above and below.

    A is inconsistent with a global flood. B is inconsistent with a young earth.

  2. Elizabeth:

    But assume he is posting in good faith. Which, frankly, I’m sure he is.

    You are?

  3. keiths:
    Elizabeth:

    You are?

    Yes. I think he is wrong, muddled, and misinformed. But I’m confident that he really does think the earth is young, and that there is evidence to support this.

  5. Elizabeth:

    Yes. I think he is wrong, muddled, and misinformed. But I’m confident that he really does think the earth is young, and that there is evidence to support this.

    Oh, I agree that he thinks that the earth is young (though perhaps ‘hopes’ is a better word). But I thought you were speaking about his posts generally, in which case ‘good faith’ is not the phrase that comes to mind.

  6. I’m also confident that he’s smart enough to see the problem. So keep pointing it out 🙂

    There are some hopeful signs of cognitive dissonance on his part. One day the dam may break. 🙂

  7. stcordova: So do you guys want a ground water contamination discussion or not?

    Not me. Focussing on issues like why sometimes you get anomalous readings is fiddling while Rome burns. If most of the data fit one model, and massively don’t fit another, the data points that don’t fit the first model are not evidence for the second.

    Almost every measuring technique has background noise. First fit your model, then find out why you still have an error term. What you are doing, Sal, is looking at the error term on the old earth model and using it as evidence for yours.

    Yours is definitely wrong, because the data don’t fit your model AT ALL.

    The fossils are exquisitely and consistently sorted by exactly the order predicted if the earth was old, and living things had been evolving since the biosphere begun (whether in a guided or unguided way). No Flood model can explain this sorting: specifically, no Flood model can explain why sedimentary strata are dominated by marine organisms, while terrestrial organisms are found in strata that indicate littoral, or river, or desert environments.

    And no YEC model can explain the consistency of radiometric dating of igneous rock.

  8. keiths:
    Elizabeth:

    Oh, I agree that he thinks that the earth is young (though perhaps ‘hopes’ is a better word). But I thought you were speaking about his posts generally, in which case ‘good faith’ is not the phrase that comes to mind.

    In that case keep your mind to yourself on this site 🙂

  9. stcordova,

    Thank you for your response. I’m willing to try to address your requests on specific topics as much as I am able. Apologies in advance if I miss some of your queries, because as you can see, I’m being swarmed.

    Understood. I almost feel like apologising for Gish-Galloping, which is kind of ironic! 🙂

  10. I have moved a post to guano.

    Please read the rules, and note that they are not moral imperatives, simply the rules of the game here at TSZ.

  11. Elizabeth: Not me.Focussing on issues like why sometimes you get anomalous readings is fiddling while Rome burns.If most of the data fit one model, and massively don’t fit another, the data points that don’t fit the first model are not evidence for the second.

    Almost every measuring technique has background noise.First fit your model, then find out why you still have an error term. What you are doing, Sal, is looking at the error term on the old earth model and using it as evidence for yours.

    Yours is definitely wrong, because the data don’t fit your model AT ALL.

    Exactly this.

    Remember my two cartoon plots:


    Salvador homes in on the red points whilst ignoring the green trend. That is bad enough, but even if the green trend wasn’t there, the red points still indicate precisely nothing because they are scattered about randomly.

    He hasn’t got a model apart from pointing to the noise in the standard model. I have watched this YEC debate for more than a decade, and I have actually never seen a comprehensive model that tries to explain all of the data. It is always only little snippets taken in isolation, without any regard for the need for consistency across all models and observations. The weird thing is that they don’t seem to notice this, or care about it.

    I posted a shortlist of topics in the YEC 1 thread that Salvador would need to address, and have an explanation for, before he can claim to even have model of what happened in the history of the Earth in the last half a billion years:


    You will have to explain how all the sedimentary rocks containing fossils are young, even when they are at times intersected, or even covered, by much older igneous rocks.

    You will have to explain how very young sedimentary rocks deposited in wildly varying depositional environments (deep marine, shallow marine, continental, aeolian, glacial, in no specific order) can be found stacked on top of each other over large areas, often virtually undeformed over hundreds of kilometers.

    Given the continuity of sedimentary formations across oceans, you will have to explain continental drift in 10,000 years – not just the latest phase, but all of it, including the formation of the Atlantic ocean twice.

    You will have to explain how continental drift was so fast, yet slow enough to clearly influence the sediments deposited at each stage of the way.

    You will have to explain the sedimentation rates of deep sea oozes like chalks, which can be hundreds of meters thick and made up virtually entirely of the fossil remains of microscopic algae.

    You will have to explain where the hundreds of meters thick and aerially extensive salt layers found in many of the world’s seas and oceans come from, in the time you have available (seeing that they lay on top of fossil bearing strata).

    You will have to explain why the fossil record shows such a distinctive stratification, which is correlatable (and predictable!) all across the globe (if not continuously, then at least via well documented jump correlations). Why are the fossil species not all mixed up, if they all lived and died at the same time?

    So far, crickets.

    fG

    [images reinserted by Lizzie]

  13. Elizabeth:
    I’m also confident that he’s smart enough to see the problem.So keep pointing it out

    I’m sure it will succeed just as well as it did with Dave Hawkins on talkrational. :[

  15. stcordova:
    JonF,

    What was the requisite ratio of Uranium and Coal needed to get a 1 part in 1000 pmc ratio?

    Alan Fox doesn’t accept the figures I linked to, perhaps you can state clearly what the ratio or percent Uranium is.0.1% …..99%.

    Sorry, I missed you’re reply in all your fuming spam.

    I already made it clear that I don’t know. I also made it clear that you have not posted any relevant response to the issue of uranium deposited in coal from groundwater. I eviscerated the “calculations” to which you linked. What more do you want?

    Anyone who claims to have proven that the 14C measured in coal is remnants from the original formation bears the responsibility of exploring and eliminating all reasonable other possibilities that they can think of. I’ve raised a reasonable possibility: 14C generated from 14N by radiation from uranium deposited by groundwater. Until someone has investigated that (and possibly others, I don’t know) ther is no credible evidence for young coal.

  16. Neil Rickert: By contrast, I see them as laughing at your folly.

    This has been an entertaining thread.You seem to be trying hard to persuade yourself that the evidence supports YEC, but you don’t seem to be succeeding.

    I’m actually disappointed. I though Sal was at least a little better educated than the average 14 year old homeschooled by YEC fanatics. Alas, he’s right on par with his ignorance and illogic.

  17. Elizabeth:
    I’ve moved one post to guano, but a few others are skirting the line.Remember: assume other posters are posting in good faith.

    If you think Sal has forgotten what he’s said on previous occasions, or hasn’t noticed the contradiction, or has missed the point, or is misinformed, it’s fine to say so.

    But assume he is posting in good faith.Which, frankly, I’m sure he is.

    Perhaps he is. If so, he doesn’t know what “good faith” means.

    I’ll get me hat.

  18. Elizabeth: Yes.I think he is wrong, muddled, and misinformed.But I’m confident that he really does think the earth is young, and that there is evidence to support this.

    Posting in good faith means a lot more to me than just believing what you post. I’m positive Sal believes what he writes. But engagement in the discussion and acknowledging and addressing issues just aren’t there. I realize there’s a certain amount of such problems in many online discussions including here, but Sal’s taken it to a whole new level.

  19. I think it is quite possible to be wrong and still post in good faith. I draw a line at quote mining. That is not honest.

  20. I think even quote mining can be done in good faith.

    I’m really not sure why Sal attracts such opprobrium. There are plenty of people I could take a dislike to (in the rarefied world of one-topic debating – I bet we could still have a beer with a few of them as long as evolution did not come up!) but Sal isn’t one. I’m not opening the floodgates for reasons here – plenty others obviously have history, and this isn’t the place to rehash it. Just my 2c.

  21. Alan, Sal still seems to be talking to you, sort of… Pick a topic?

    My personal favorites include arguments from The Privileged Planet that depend on an old earth/universe.

  23. Guys, read the rules please. There are plenty of places on the internet for discussing the perceived personal failings of people you disagree with. This isn’t one of them. In fact, it’s to serve as a place that isn’t one of them that I started it in the first place.

  24. Any chance of a resurrection of this thread? It’s been three days.

    Salvador, do you need someone to roll away the stone?

  25. So far, crickets.

    fG

    I thank you for your list of problems, and they are problems, but the greater problem is the physical age of the fossil is not in agreement with the mainstream model, further, the erosion problem of a mere 2.5 microns erasing the fossil record is problematic.

    How can you argue the fossil record is being built up slowly while it is being eroded away? For the time of land based fossils (plants and animals) how does the accumulation take place and where do the sediments come from?

    You keep suggesting I have to solve every problem before I can accept YEC as true, yet you never complain evolutionists and OOL advocates insist their hypotheses are FACT FACT FACT and yet they haven’t even solved basics.

    I’m posting here at TSZ to be appraised of the problems that need to be solved.

    There isn’t much of straight answer of how the well preserved fossils are buried. Quickly or slowly. I’ve already pointed out as a matter of principle for certain creatures it has to be fast. How would you say flying type creatures got well preserved? Do you see any mechanism in the present day that nicely entombs insects in amber?

    I thank you for pointing out problems in the position I’m defending. I wish we could agree since you’re one of the more pleasant personalities I’ve encountered, but I can’t minimize the thing issues raised in the OP. They take priority over supposed methods of dating strata, strata that should have been erased in geological time. If one says the sediments were originated by erosion, then that says erosion can also erode fossil layers. I can find believable some kinds fossils building up in the bottom of gigantic lake, but not those including flying creatures or even most land based plants and animals.

    I don’t think either side has a slam dunk case. You raise legitimate problems, and though you dismiss the issues I raise, those are issues I can’t run away from. Otherwise, I’d still be an Old Earth Creationist.

    I do appreciate your input. It’s far more informative than someone who doesn’t seem to understand inorganic compounds don’t have carbon.

  26. stcordova: It’s far more informative than someone who doesn’t seem to understand inorganic compounds don’t have carbon.

    I can only imagine what the folks here must think about you Salvador.

    I simple google search reveals that you are wrong.

  27. I have to give you credit for one thing, though. Among your silliest ideas was the notion that an exploding ice planet in the asteroid belt would have bombarded Earth with great chunks of ice, and been responsible for Noah’s deluge.

    I didn’t say an exploding planet cased the deluge! I argued for underground water as in “fountains of the great deep burst forth”.

    I only pointed out the possibility suggested by van Flandern of an exploding planet since it had some bearing on the age of the solar system and we were talking about the age of comets.

    Again you show your lack of sharpness in debate and memory that you resort to revising in your own mind what was actually discussed.

    And by the way, trajectory of comments seem to possibly converge on one point of origin. That might be confirmable with better observation and back fitting the orbits….

  28. This is a “to do” list which originated in this thread, which I put together in the
    Wytch Farm thread but decided to pursue here after further consideration. I didn’t like leaving this thread and giving the impression my opponents actually won the exchange.

    The following are links to some faded_glory’s comments which I deem to be pointed objections to the YEC model and which must be addressed.

    I paraphrase them in the interest of succinctness, but the faded_glorys exact description are linked:

    1. older igneous rocks over supposedly younger strata

    2. long undeformed sedimentary strata stacked on top of each other going for hundreds of kilometers

    3. uniformity of sedimentary strata across oceans

    4. how fast continental drift can be reconciled with apparent influence on sedimentary layers

    5. reconciling chalk sedimentation rates in short YEC timeframes

    6. origin of salt layers hundreds of meters thick in seas and oceans that are on top of fossil bearing strata

    7. stratification of fossils into groups rather than mixing

    YEC Part 2

    read up on Eustacy and Orogeny.

    8. fossils are not dated directly. They are dated by the rocks they are included in, but by surrounding igneous and metamorphic rocks that contain minerals suitable for radiometric dating.

    9. look up cratons

    YEC Part 2

    10. millions and millions of young fossils managed to find their way many kilometers below the earth’s surface

    11. sedimentary rock columns thousands of meters thick full of fossil from top to bottom.

    YEC Part 2

    YEC Part 2

    YEC part 1

    12. microfossils accumulate in seabeds, takes time to form deep layers, not randomly distributed

    YEC Part 2

    13.

    YEC Part 2

    YEC Part 2

  29. Question 1: older igneous rocks over supposedly younger strata

    Answer: the igneous rocks may also be young, the K-Ar dates are subject to more contamination issues than the C14 dates of fossils and certainly the racemization and DNA dates of fossils.

    Igneous rocks are formed by magma or lava. One of the principle method igneous rocks are dated is via Potassium-Argon dating.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%E2%80%93Ar_dating

    Potassium–argon dating, abbreviated K–Ar dating, is a radiometric dating method used in geochronology and archaeology. It is based on measurement of the product of the radioactive decay of an isotope of potassium (K) into argon (Ar). Potassium is a common element found in many materials, such as micas, clay minerals, tephra, and evaporites. In these materials, the decay product 40Ar is able to escape the liquid (molten) rock, but starts to accumulate when the rock solidifies (recrystallizes). Time since recrystallization is calculated by measuring the ratio of the amount of 40Ar accumulated to the amount of 40K remaining. The long half-life of 40K allows the method to be used to calculate the absolute age of samples from 200,000 to 5 million years ago.

    Here is a non-YEC, well written website on a number of physics topics.
    http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/nuclear/clkroc.html

    However, there are two obvious problems with radioactive dating for geological purposes: 1) uncertainty about the composition of the original sample and 2) possible losses of material during the time span of the decay.

    earlier

    Potassium-Argon dating has the advantage that the argon is an inert gas that does not react chemically and would not be expected to be included in the solidification of a rock, so any found inside a rock is very likely the result of radioactive decay of potassium. Since the argon will escape if the rock is melted, the dates obtained are to the last molten time for the rock. The radioactive transition which produces the argon is electron capture.

    One thing to note about K/Ar dating is that it will never give an overestimate of the age, so it is a good tool for determining lower bounds.

    Let me compare and contrast this with C14 dating. In C14 dating, there is no measurement made of the daughter product, so the assigned C14 dates are not dependent on the ratios of C14 to daughter products in the fossil. The presences of C14 establishes the relative youth of a fossil.

    There is also racemization dating for amino acids, this too establishes relative youth of a fossil. Though not as precise as C14, it has the benefit of being immune to large contamination issues.

    There is also dating based on DNA discovery inside the cells of fossils. DNA has a half life of 521 years give or take based on the environment.

    So the fossil it self has at least 1 radiometric clock (C14), 2 chemical clocks. We have these 3 clocks against a dubious K/Ar clock for the igneous rocks above the fossils.

    Further, the K/Ar age is dependent on the amount of non-radioactive substance, namely Ar of which there is plenty in the atmosphere. Contaminating a rock sample with Ar increases the supposed age whereas contaminating a fossil with C14 decreases the supposed age.

    So the issue is which contamination story is more believable, and which clocks would we trust to give a consilience?

    How easy is it for Ar to seep into a rock and give false ages? 🙂 If the rocks have cracks and little pockets for atmospheric Ar to seep in, not too hard.

    But there is another subtlety. For C14 young dates to be sustained, C14 has to be continuously added, whereas for Ar, which is stable, a one time contamination will suffice.

    I will address the K/Ar dating method in detail subsequently.

  31. From the prestigious scientific journal Nature which shows that on the assumption of an Old Earth, there should be lots of helium in the atmosphere unless there is a mechanism to push it out.

    When there is alpha decay from all those supposed alpha-decays over billions of years, there should be a resulting amount of helium in the atmosphere.

    So why is there an absence of it?

    Where is the Earth’s Radiogenic Helium?

    MELVIN A. COOK

    Department of Metallurgy, University of Utah, Salt Lake City. Oct. 10.

    AT the estimated 2 × 10^20 gm. uranium and 5 × 10^20 gm. thorium in the lithosphere, helium should be generated radiogenically at a rate of about 3 × 10^9 gm./year. Moreover, the (secondary) cosmic-ray source of helium has been estimated to be of comparable magnitude. Apparently nearly all the helium from sedimentary rocks and, according to Keevil1 and Hurley2, about 0.8 of the radiogenic helium from igneous rocks, have been released into the atmosphere during geological times (currently taken to be about 5 × 10^9 yr.). Hence more than 10^20 gm. of helium should have passed into the atmosphere since the ‘beginning’. Because the atmosphere contains only 3.5 × 10^15 gm. helium-4, the common assumption is therefore that about 10^20 gm. of helium-4 must also have passed out through the exosphere, and that its present rate of loss through the exosphere balances the rate of exudation from the lithosphere.

    Cook points out the anomaly which has not been solved. Walker attempts a solution, but has to appeal to past GLOBAL WARMING to save evolutionary theory.

    Walker realizes that the influx of helium into the atmosphere vastly outweighs the loss to space by means of Jeans escape.

    Helium in the Earth’s Atmosphere

    In this section we have referenced 11 papers in technical publications involving 13 different authors, who are trying to explain the “discrepancy” in the “helium budget.” Perhaps, they haven’t even considered the possibility that there is no problem with the helium figures because the earth is just not 4.5 billion years old.

    Conclusion
    It certainly seems that the creationist position is correct, on the basis of the latest observational evidence. As Chamberlain and Hunten admitted30 as recently as 1987, the helium escape problem “will not go away, and it is unsolved.”

  32. That’s great Sal! But people here really want to believe that you are posting in good faith. It’s hard to believe that you are posting on good faith when you are caught contradicting yourself.

    Please answer this rather simple question:

    Do you now believe that there is a positive case for Special Creation?

    Why did you change your mind?

  33. stcordova:
    From the prestigious scientific journal Nature which shows that on the assumption of an Old Earth, there should be lots of helium in the atmosphere unless there is a mechanism to push it out.

    That steaming pile of horsecrap isn’t from Nature Sal. It’s from AIG.

    If you have to lie try to make your lies not so blatant.

  34. Jesus Christ, Sal. Try googling these turds before dumping them in our punchbowl.

  35. I guess reducing the time for the disappearance of radiogenic helium to a few thousand years helps to explain the problem. Or whatever Sal’s position is, as well (old rocks? Same problem).

    Or is magic the “explanation” yet again?

    Glen Davidson

  36. Question 1: older igneous rocks over supposedly younger strata

    Answer: the igneous rocks may also be young, the K-Ar dates are subject to more contamination issues than the C14 dates of fossils and certainly the racemization and DNA dates of fossils.

    From the prestigous scientific journal Nature of diamonds older than the Earth found in Zaire!

    Nature 323, 710 – 712 (23 October 1986); doi:10.1038/323710a0

    K–Ar isochron dating of Zaire cubic diamonds

    S. ZASHU*, M. OZIMA* & O. NITOH†

    *Geophysical Institute, University of Tokyo, Tokyo 113, Japan
    †Faculty of Engineering, Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology, Tokyo 184, Japan

    U–Pb, Rb–Sr (ref. 1) and Sm–Nd systematics2 in inclusions in diamonds suggest strongly that some diamonds are at least 2.0 Gyr old. Such antiquity is also inferred for some diamonds from their very primitive helium isotopic composition3. However, there has been almost no direct radiometric dating of diamonds, except for conventional K–Ar dating4,5, the results of which are questionable due to the possible presence of excess 40Ar. To avoid this problem, we have applied a K–Ar isochron dating method6 to ten diamonds from Zaire. The experimental data show good linear correlations in both the 40Ar–K and 40Ar/36Ar–K/36Ar diagrams. These correlations must reflect either an isochron-type relationship or the trapping of an unknown component in the diamonds. In the former case the anomalously high age (6.0 Gyr) casts doubt on the assumption of uniformity in the isotopic abundance of 40K.

    Oops!

  38. Salvador was too lazy to Google inorganic carbon. Does that answer your question?

  39. petrushka: K–Ar isochron dating of Zaire cubic diamonds

    He’s just regurgitating Snelling’s BS he found on ICR. It’s not like Sal understands or can defend any of the YECkery he posts.

  40. Adapa: He’s just regurgitating Snelling’s BS he found on ICR.It’s not like Sal understands or can defend any of the YECkery he posts.

    Somebody understands it, or they wouldn’t go to the trouble of mining and altering quotes.

  41. From PLOS peer reviewed journals

    http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0019445

    Likewise, the amount of finite carbon was exceedingly small, corresponding to 4.68%±0.1 of modern 14C activity (yielding an age of 24 600 BP), and most likely reflect bacterial activity near the outer surface of the bone

    And where do bacteria near the surface of the bone get their carbon14, from the surrounding c14 dead carbon? Absurdity. This was clearly a CYA (cover your tail) spinning of results.

    Uh, if the researchers have 100 ml of bone, the researchers had a problem scraping off that 4.68 ml of bacteria on the surface of the bone? Why didn’t those guys remove the surface bone do the test right? CYA, but thanks for doing a C14 test. No one else wants to touch this one.

    Now creationists have gotten the code word of how to publish C14 dates, just say “there were c14 traces corresponding to 24,000 year dates which is consistent with other findings. The cause has been customarily attributed to bacterial contamination on the surface.” [ahem, contaminants which the researchers could have easily scraped off but didn’t or which the researchers could have dispensed with by cutting away the surface layers but didn’t].

    They also found miraculously preserved proteins.

    Low concentrations of the structural protein collagen have recently been reported in dinosaur fossils based primarily on mass spectrometric analyses of whole bone extracts. However, direct spectroscopic characterization of isolated fibrous bone tissues, a crucial test of hypotheses of biomolecular preservation over deep time, has not been performed. Here, we demonstrate that endogenous proteinaceous molecules are retained in a humerus from a Late Cretaceous mosasaur (an extinct giant marine lizard). In situ immunofluorescence of demineralized bone extracts shows reactivity to antibodies raised against type I collagen, and amino acid analyses of soluble proteins extracted from the bone exhibit a composition indicative of structural proteins or their breakdown products. These data are corroborated by synchrotron radiation-based infrared microspectroscopic studies demonstrating that amino acid containing matter is located in bone matrix fibrils that express imprints of the characteristic 67 nm D-periodicity typical of collagen. Moreover, the fibrils differ significantly in spectral signature from those of potential modern bacterial contaminants, such as biofilms and collagen-like proteins. Thus, the preservation of primary soft tissues and biomolecules is not limited to large-sized bones buried in fluvial sandstone environments, but also occurs in relatively small-sized skeletal elements deposited in marine sediments.

    Dinosaur bones in marine environments?

    Reminds me of marine microfossils in tree resins.

    http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2582268/

    Amber usually contains inclusions of terrestrial and rarely limnetic organisms that were embedded in the places were they lived in the amber forests. Therefore, it has been supposed that amber could not have preserved marine organisms. Here, we report the discovery amber-preserved marine microfossils. Diverse marine diatoms as well as radiolarians, sponge spicules, a foraminifer, and a spine of a larval echinoderm were found in Late Albian and Early Cenomanian amber samples of southwestern France. The highly fossiliferous resin samples solidified ≈100 million years ago on the floor of coastal mixed forests dominated by conifers.

    They say high tides got into the resin flows that made ambers. Anyone been on the beach seeing ambers form in high tide? 🙂

    Ambers are not easily formed.

    We don’t have marine microfossils accumulating for millions of years on the sea floor, we have them being involved in the rapid burial of land-based plants and animals.

    Heard from creationists friends, marine fossils almost always mixed in with those rapidly buried land fossils. Recall the OP said well-preserved fossils must be rapidly buried. Apparently they are buried not by landslides but by big movements of water that can put marine fossils in the same vicinity.

    There does not appear to be a slow gradual formation of the fossil record, but rapid cataclysmic death.

  42. Well well well, Dinosaurs in marine sediments world wide.

    Did dino take a swim and die and then get blanketed by marine sediments over millions of years? No, since burial to prevent decomposition and scavenging is necessary. The marine sediments came up with the water that buried them.

    http://www.icr.org/article/dinosaurs-marine-sediments-worldwide/

    It is now becoming obvious that the mixing of terrestrial and marine environments is not a rare occurrence in the rock record. Recent discoveries in Morocco and Europe have shown that most dinosaurs are found with marine fossils or buried in marine sediments.

    Nizar Ibrahim et al. reported that sharks, sawfish, ray-finned fishes, and coelocanths were found in the same rock layers as a Spinosaurus dinosaur in Morocco.5 How can this be? Today’s coelocanths live about 500 feet below the ocean surface and not in freshwater rivers as many paleontologists have proposed. They dismiss the blatant physiological evidence from living specimens and insist that ancient coelocanths must have lived in fresh water simply because they are found in strata with dinosaurs. Where is the logic in this conclusion?

    ….
    Their survey of the upper two stages of the Cretaceous also showed nearly all dinosaur fossils were located in marine rocks. Here, too, the paleontologists reported numerous discoveries of dinosaur remains in open marine chalk beds that are difficult to explain in a uniformitarian context. “Although these are isolated skeletal elements [individual bones] that washed out to sea, they are remarkably common and have been reported in surprisingly large numbers since the early discoveries.”6

  43. Hi Salvador,

    Do you now believe that there is a positive case for Special Creation?

    Do you now retract your prior claim that there is no positive case for Special Creation?

  44. Sal,

    Suppose you became convinced that YEC was wrong and that the Genesis account was scientifically inaccurate.

    How would that affect your assessment of the Bible’s reliability in general? How would it affect your Christian faith?

  45. Question:
    5. reconciling chalk sedimentation rates in short YEC timeframes

    Answer:
    Chalk sedimentation rates are a worse problem from Old Fossil Record assumptions since dinosaurs were rapidly buried in them. One can’t always assume the chalk layers formed slowly since dinosaurs found buried in chalk layers, and presumed to have been buried rapidly at that.

    I had a chuckle regarding the Oceans of Kansas (there is no ocean in Kansas):

    http://oceansofkansas.com/New-dino.html

    Dinosaurs found in Chalk, but sharks feastin on dinosaurs!

    The newest dinosaur specimen (FHSM VP-15824) comes from the lower Smoky Hill Chalk in southeastern Gove County and consists of nine articulated caudal (tail) vertebrae from an adult hadrosaur (credit for the ID goes to Ken Carpenter). The vertebrae were laying on their right side. The most anterior vertebrae (#1 and #2) of the series had partially eroded out and were exposed on the surface of the chalk. The other seven vertebrae were still completely enclosed in the matrix. The specimen is 22 in (55 cm) in length, is from the distal part of the tail and represents an adult animal that was about 10 m in length. There are non-serrated bite marks on both sides of the last vertebrae (#9, see pictures below). The bone surface at both ends of the articulated series are severely eroded and appear to have been partially digested. Consistent with many other specimens of large vertebrates (mosasaurs, plesiosaurs, turtles, etc) from this time period during the deposition of the Smoky Hill Chalk, these remains appear to have been consumed by a large shark, partially digested and then regurgitated. See Everhart and Ewell (2006) for additional information.

    So we have some dinosaur walking on land, and then gets stuck in chalk and then a shark (that can operate on land) eats it. Not likely.

    Neither is it likely the dinosaur falls to the bottom of the ocean and slowly gets buried in chalk. Did the Sharks just decide to have mercy on the rest of the dino and let it’s vertebrae get buried slowly over millions of years in chalk. Sharks gotta eat you know…

  46. Hi Sal, are these posts of yours supposed to convince people that there is in fact a positive case for special creation even after you denied that there is any positive case for special creation?

    Just asking.

  47. This PDF from a NASA website has something amusing.
    http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19980202342.pdf

    Note the T-rex has the following amino acid D/L ratios:

    .23 for Aspartic Acid

    Now compare these “65 million year old fossils” to the human bones that are only 4.5 thousand years old:

    .29 for Aspartic Acid

    Now, after a few million years the aspartic acid D/L ratio should be .99, so why is about the same for the T-Rex as it is for the human. The paper argues contamination! The problem is by contaminating a fossil with amino acids, the amino acids themselves will racemize to .99.

    A test: if fossils supposedly hundreds of millions of years ago have similar racemization profiles as the same class of fossil 20 million years ago, it indicates the fossil record is young, much younger than claimed by the mainstream.

    In this article:
    http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0033589406000627
    .
    Holocene brachiopods (last few thousand years) had D/L Aspartic acid ratios approaching 0.6. Now what will we do when we find brachiopods with D/L ratios that are less than that but are supposedly tens of millions ore hundreds of millions of years old?

    http://www.creation-science-prophecy.com/amino/survive.htm

    Silurian graptolites, which are estimated to be 400-430 million years old by the usual evolutionary conventional age, has been found to contain detectable levels of amino acids that are indeed residual in nature (Florkin 1969). They come from the original proteins when the fossil was buried.

    Another group have looked at shells as old as Jurassic, 135-180 million year by conventional age, and found that they contain amino acids that are bound as protein and peptides (Akiyama and Wyckoff 1970). So, since the amino acids are part of the protein and peptide structure of the fossil itself, it is clear that the amino acids are residual in nature. The amino acids came from the fossil when it was buried, not by some contamination process later on when the fossil was buried in the ground.

    The papers referenced:

    Akyama and Wykoff:
    http://www.pnas.org/content/67/3/1097.full.pdf

    Florkin:
    http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0024320565900950

    And here is an additional one I found which mentioned discovery of a protein 500 million years old!

    http://www.jstor.org/stable/2396007?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

    Amusingly, they insist contamination must be the explanation for unracemized shells. They argue hardened objects could have been contaminated by modern proteins, and yet, these proteins also can racemize. Did they every figure out how there could be a steady flow of foreign proteins in and out of hardened shells?

  48. Sal, just a specific point on racemization. You seem to make reference to racemization of protein and amino-acids as if they were the same thing. Amino acid residues in a protein sequence do not racemize [at anything like the same rate as]* only free amino-acids in solution.

    ETA correction of over-statement.

  49. Sal, as I understand it from your link, what was found of the hadrosaur was a some vertebrae, with evidence of having been eaten by a shark.

    And it was found buried in chalk, which is what formed from the detritus that falls to the sea-bed – including the regurgitated remains of shark meals.

    There seems nothing problematic about that at all – except what is interesting is that it’s a relatively rare example of a terrestrial fossil in an oceanic deposit.

    That would be problematic, were it not for the evidence you actually cite – that it was previously eaten by a shark!

    And, as the article states, sharks do sometimes eat terrestrial animals, including horses, cows and humans.

  50. PDF of a paper discussing aspartate racemization as a dating tool. There is a table in the appendix summarizing results from a number of different researchers for the rate of aspartate racemization. The rates vary over nine orders of magnitude. Perhaps methods have improved since 2002.

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