Throwing science under the bus

[ElfLord]

Ceeboo:

As with ANY science or other human endeavor ages of now dead plants and animals are all measured within known tolerances. Try building a automobile without tolerances. It can't be done. The tolerances in building a functioning car are greater than that of C-14 dating.

Over 39 Billions of years ago? That would give even me pause.

You call a profoundly downplayed 700 year possible margin of error, acceptable tolerances?

[FutureTwitBlog]

You call a profoundly downplayed 700 year possible margin of error, acceptable tolerances?

Science depends upon the relative error, not the absolute error. For example, if you had an error of 700 years in when the first world series was played, that would be a problem. However, if you had an error of 700 in the number of stars in the universe, that would be pretty good.

[Ceeboo]

39,004,367,334 years ago would have been about 26 billion years before the big bang. But who counting? Not you apparently.

Hi Tarski,

Just in case it was over your head (Given the picture that Tarski paints of Tarski, I can't imagine it ), I chose a silly number by design.

It wasn't really intended to be "tested for accuracy or corrected" (But thanks all the same)

Peace,

Ceeboo

[ElfLord]

Science depends upon the relative error, not the absolute error. For example, if you had an error of 700 years in when the first world series was played, that would be a problem. However, if you had an error of 700 in the number of stars in the universe, that would be pretty good.

Very correct. However, when one is trying to estimate when a boat was built that was burried in a tomb in Egypt by such mechanisms 700 years is quite important.

[Ceeboo]

Right, so you only have to toss out:

That's a slightly smaller list, I'll grant you that.

Progress!

Perhaps small steps but progress indeed!

Peace,

Ceeboo

[MorningStar]

Personally, I believe the creation took a long, long, long time and required a lot of care and work vs. using a wand and saying, "Bibbity bobbety boo!" I believe God made the earth so beautiful and wonderful because he loves us. One of the things I look forward to in the afterlife is understanding better how it was formed. Life is such a miracle to me.

[thesometimesaint]

ElfLord:

Lots depends on context. C-14 is accurate to about 60,000 years. Plus or minus 700 years is less than a 2% error.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiocarbon_dating

[Jason]

Personally, I believe the creation took a long, long, long time and required a lot of care and work vs. using a wand and saying, "Bibbity bobbety boo!" I believe God made the earth so beautiful and wonderful because he loves us. One of the things I look forward to in the afterlife is understanding better how it was formed. Life is such a miracle to me.

My aunt believes that we assisted in the creation. She believes she helped to design some seashells (that is, came up with how seashells would be grown by the creatures that live in them).

[MorningStar]

My aunt believes that we assisted in the creation. She believes she helped to design some seashells (that is, came up with how seashells would be grown by the creatures that live in them).

If that's true, I'm sure I helped with the green areas that have lots of water. I don't feel at home without lots of green trees, lakes, rivers, etc. It's rainy today. My daughter wants more hot schlocate.

[zelder]

Science is great, conspiracy is real and the scriptures are true.

[ElfLord]

ElfLord:

Lots depends on context. C-14 is accurate to about 60,000 years. Plus or minus 700 years is less than a 2% error.

http://en.wikipedia....iocarbon_dating

Yet when building cars a 2% error makes a huge difference.

[thesometimesaint]

ElfLord:

Not when it comes to tolerances.

[BCSpace]

Perhaps you should rephrase it. There is a basic misunderstanding by some in the scientific community that hard line LDS reject the entirety of the sciences. This is false- absolutely false!

Indeed. I think science will prove to be one of the greatest defenders of the Church and that includes evolution. We should embrace it as the scriptures encourage us to.

[zelder]

Indeed. I think science will prove to be one of the greatest defenders of the Church and that includes evolution. We should embrace it as the scriptures encourage us to.

Interesting. What do you mean and what scriptures are you referring to?

[ElfLord]

ElfLord:

Not when it comes to tolerances.

So what your saying is "alls fair in horse shoes and hand gernades"?

Combustion engines have WAY less than a 2% tolerance!

This was pretty enlightening read...

C-14 dating problems:

Dr. Libby once expressed his shock when he found that radio carbon dates for human artifacts extended back only 5000 years and older dates were found to be unreliable.[110]

By this time tens of thousands of C-14 dates have been published from tests performed by various laboratories around the world. In the annual volumes in which the dates are published, concerns have been expressed about many relatively young dates that violate established geological age notions. One example given was Ice-Age materials that were dated by C-14 to fall within the Christian era [120] In his book Ceram notes a classic case of difficulties that befall C-14 dating. Bones 30,000 years old were found lying above wood dated at 16,000 years. [180]

Archaeology and C-14 dating:

Basically, it is surprising that all organically derived material on earth can be dated by the C-14 method even though it shouldn't be. If some material is really the many millions of years old, no C-14 should remain in it. This, scientists find now, is not the case.

It is already known that samples from certain periods thought to be fixed on the BC time scale are expected to have measurements falling in that range. When samples are measured and dates fall outside this range, unless it is published how often this happens, and the good plus the bad dates [results] are published, under strict `blind' conditions, we may not have conclusive data.

It may be of interest for the reader to learn what already has been done in the past with regard to obtaining C-14 dates for Egyptian artifacts. Here is that information.

Velikovski on Radio Carbon Dating

"To check on the method before applying it on various historical and paleontological material, Libby chose material of Egyptian archaeology, under the assumption that no other historical material from over 2,000 years ago is so secure as to its absolute dating. When objects of the Old Kingdom and Middle Kingdom of Egypt yielded carbon dates that appeared roughly comparable with the historical dates, Libby made his method known.

From some correspondence that originated at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, I have concluded that when Libby first asked for specimens, he received not only those dating from the Old and Middle Kingdoms, but also from the New Kingdom-but nothing ever was published of those early tries on New Kingdom specimens. A similar situation concerns more recently tested short-living organic material from the tomb of Tutankhamen.

After many efforts (from 1952 to 1963) to have the New Kingdom of Egypt tested in a systematic way I succeeded in having three little pieces of wood from the tomb of Tutankhamen handed over by the Laboratory Director of the Cairo Museum to Mrs. Ilse Fuhr of Munich, who was directed by me to send them to Dr. Elizabeth Ralph of the University of Pennsylvania Laboratory. Two of the pieces were from the comparatively short-lived thorn plant, Spina Christi, and one from the long-living Cedar of Lebanon. The three small pieces were processed together, since a test requires ca. 30 grams (1 ounce) of material. The result was -1120

[thesometimesaint]

ElfLord:

Close is relative. Horseshoes pretty darn close counts, hand-grenades not so much. C-14 dating pretty darn close, cars not so much. The earth is rounder and smoother than a basketball, but still not perfectly round or smooth(it is slightly pear shaped, and we do have mountains) pretty darn close though. We still generally say that the earth is round like a ball, as opposed to being flat or even circular.

In math the average of 3 and 5 is 4. But 4 is not represented in either 3 or 5. In C-14 dating it is an average concentration that is measured. So there is inherent variation. It is still close enough that you will still be required in school to know how to calculate the decay rates of various radioactive elements.

[Rob Osborn]

Semlogo,

Why do you suppose I think that your beliefs are satanic?

Why do you lie?

[ElfLord]

ElfLord:

Close is relative. Horseshoes pretty darn close counts, hand-grenades not so much. C-14 dating pretty darn close, cars not so much. The earth is rounder and smoother than a basketball, but still not perfectly round or smooth(it is slightly pear shaped, and we do have mountains) pretty darn close though. We still generally say that the earth is round like a ball, as opposed to being flat or even circular.

In math the average of 3 and 5 is 4. But 4 is not represented in either 3 or 5. In C-14 dating it is an average concentration that is measured. So there is inherent variation. It is still close enough that you will still be required in school to know how to calculate the decay rates of various radioactive elements.

Car Engines have a much tighter tolerance than 2%.

RE: School... I agree.

But can you answer why ALL organically testable material has C14 in it yet according to the Law of Half-Life NONE should be there?

[semlogo]

Semlogo,

Why do you suppose I think that your beliefs are satanic?

Why do you lie?

You've repeatedly accused me of being an atheist for accepting science - which is a lie. But I never said that every fundamentalist was a carbon copy of the other. Some of you accept geology but not biology. Some of you think science is satanic, others a conspiracy and others think it's simply wrong.

[BCSpace]

Indeed. I think science will prove to be one of the greatest defenders of the Church and that includes evolution. We should embrace it as the scriptures encourage us to.

Interesting. What do you mean and what scriptures are you referring to?

Well, it could be something like BoM evidences; metals, horses, things like that, some of which have already been vindicated. The WoW is vindicated by science. The Law of Chastity also. I personally think we will see through evolution more evidence of a Creator. Etc. As for verses, there are ones like D&C 88:78-79.

[thesometimesaint]

ElfLord:

Actually car engines works because there is a greater tolerance than 2% measured in hundredth/thousandths of an inch. But I wasn't limiting cars to just car engines.

I don't understand your last statement. In the case of C-14 it is constantly being produced in the upper atmosphere. Living organisms constantly take it up. When the organism dies it no longer takes in C-14. That is how we can tell when that organism died, +/- allowed for in the tolerances.

[ElfLord]

ElfLord:

Actually car engines works because there is a greater tolerance than 2% measured in hundredth/thousandths of an inch. But I wasn't limiting cars to just car engines.

I don't understand your last statement.

It was in reference to this from my previous link...

Archaeology and C-14 dating:

Basically, it is surprising that all organically derived material on earth can be dated by the C-14 method even though it shouldn't be. If some material is really the many millions of years old, no C-14 should remain in it. This, scientists find now, is not the case.

It is already known that samples from certain periods thought to be fixed on the BC time scale are expected to have measurements falling in that range. When samples are measured and dates fall outside this range, unless it is published how often this happens, and the good plus the bad dates [results] are published, under strict `blind' conditions, we may not have conclusive data.

It may be of interest for the reader to learn what already has been done in the past with regard to obtaining C-14 dates for Egyptian artifacts. Here is that information:

You continued...

In the case of C-14 it is constantly being produced in the upper atmosphere. Living organisms constantly take it up. When the organism dies it no longer takes in C-14. That is how we can tell when that organism died, +/- allowed for in the tolerances.

This does not account for decays happening while the organism is alive, and it assumes that all the carbon being incorporated into the organism is of the same age.

This is similar to the corespondance of the scientists in my previous post...

Your kind letter of March 5 made it clear to me that we need to subtract from the date 1030 + 50 B.C., or resp. 1120 + 52 B.C., not only the years that have passed from the day the trees were cut to the day they were used for the tomb but, what is even more significant, also the years from the formation of the rings in the examined samples till the cutting of the trees. In the case of Lebanese cedar, famous for its longevity, no saplings would have been cut for export.

Theres a lot of assuming going on that tolerances do not take care of.

NOTE: I edited so you may not get the final edit. Sorry.

[thesometimesaint]

Elflord:

C-14 dating is accurate to about 60,000 years, after which time there is not enough C-14 to accurately measure, but it is still technically there. I don't know where your are getting this millions of years from. It decays at a known rate. All that is being discussed is in establishing uptake rates in anomalous readings. Even those are so close as you needn't worry about throwing your nuclear science books out the window.

Ps. I might be retired, but housework doesn't do itself. So I will probably be back later today or maybe even tomorrow.

[ElfLord]

Elflord:

C-14 dating is accurate to about 60,000 years, after which time there is not enough C-14 to accurately measure, but it is still technically there.

Thats intresting that you would claim that. That accuracy level has only been reached in 2001 and that was with a 1220 Quantulus

[zelder]

Well, it could be something like BoM evidences; metals, horses, things like that, some of which have already been vindicated. The WoW is vindicated by science. The Law of Chastity also. I personally think we will see through evolution more evidence of a Creator. Etc. As for verses, there are ones like D&C 88:78-79.

Thats a good scripture. I believe in science and in learning but I don't believe in evolution as a means by which an animal can (given enough time) morph into a totally different animal. Like say...a turtle evolving into a giraff.