On Mon, 22 Jul 2002 06:20:09 GMT, "John Knight" <johnknight at usa.com>
wrote:
>"Angilion" <angilion at ypical.fsnet.co.uk> wrote in message
>news:3d376b53.12592074 at news.freeserve.net...>> On Thu, 18 Jul 2002 18:41:39 GMT, JDay123 at BellSouth.com (Jd) wrote:
>>>> [..]
>>>> >Thanks. I'd hate to see Angilion left without any hope of resolving
>> >the rumor of someone finding a "7 *million*" year old skeleton!
>>>> It's not a rumour. Look it up for yourself.
>>>> And it's a 7 million year old *humanoid* skeleton. There are
>> older skeletons.
>>>> They could be wrong. It might only be a couple of million
>> years old.
>>Or it might be a few centuries old.
>>If he didn't have a note in his pocket dated "7,000,000 BC", there's
>literally no way to know the difference. Carbon dating is the best chance
>of dating something, but only for a few thousand years--and not even that is
>without serious flaws.
You are showing your ignorance of science again, in two ways:
1) Carbon dating can go back 40,000 years, not "a few thousand years".
2) Carbon dating is obviously not the "best chance of dating something"
millions of years old. I suggest you do some research on other methods,
such as radiometric dating.
Get back to me when you have some evidence as to why dating
technques are all out by five or six orders of magnitude. The
techniques used do have flaws. That's why scientists (as opposed
to the media) do not give exact ages that far back. You will see
things like "1.0 +- 0.2 billion", i.e. 800 million to 1.2 billion years.
A 20% margin of error is within the flaws. A 10000% error is not.
N.B. The a priori assumption of the age of the Earth does not
constitute evidence of the age of the Earth.
YEC scientists have to resort to some strange fudge factors to
explain away the evidence. For example, it is necessary to
assume that God has slowed light light down a great deal in
the last 6000 years, from over ten million times as fast as it
currently is. Only by making that secondary assumption can
the data be forced to match the primary assumption, i.e. that
the Earth is ~6000 years old.
See, for example, here: http://www.aaronc.com/timefun.html
Another potential explanation is based on relativity, postulating
that the 6000 years is from God's perspective. Since God created
the world, they are not part of it. Not being part of it, their frame
of reference is different to a frame of reference from Earth, i.e.
a human frame of reference. This can be expanded beyond
Earth, if you assume that God created the universe. That may
sound odd, but a little thought makes it clear that measurements
do depend on the frame of reference. For example, when I walk
I perceive myself to be moving at about 3 mph, i.e. from my frame
of reference my speed is about 3mph. However, I am on a surface
that is moving at about 1000mph. If my speed is measured from
a point above the Earth that is not moving at the same speed, my
speed will be measured as ~1000 +- ~3 mph (depending on what direction
I am walking in relative to the surface of the Earth. Change the
frame of reference again and you get the movement of the Earth
around Sol too, increasing my speed by as much as 67,000mph.
Change the perspective again and you get the movement of the
solar system relative to...well, relative to what? The centre of
the galaxy? The centre of the universe, wherever that is? What
if the entire universe is moving relative to God? That *would* affect
perceived time in the manner referred to as time dilation. If God
is moving relative to the Earth at a significant proportion of the
speed of light, 6000 years could pass for God while hundreds of
millions of years pass on Earth.
--
Always remember you're unique.
Just like everyone else. (Anon)
