Captivity?

You asked for it.... By folks alot smarter than either one of us:

DOESN'T CARBON DATING PROVE THE EARTH IS OLD?
- BTG No. 115b July 1998
by John D. Morris, Ph.D.*

Perhaps no concept in science is as misunderstood as "carbon dating." Almost everyone thinks carbon dating speaks of millions or billions of years. But, carbon dating can't be used to date either rocks or fossils. It is only useful for once-living things which still contain carbon, like flesh or bone or wood. Rocks and fossils, consisting only of inorganic minerals, cannot be dated by this scheme.

Carbon normally occurs as Carbon-12, but radioactive Carbon-14 may sometimes be formed in the outer atmosphere as Nitrogen-14 undergoes cosmic ray bombardment. The resulting C-14 is unstable and decays back to N-14 with a measured half-life of approximately 5,730 years. Thus the ratio of stable C-12 to unstable C-14, which is known in today's open environment, changes over time in an isolated specimen.

Consider the dating of a piece of wood. As long as the tree lives, it absorbs carbon from the atmosphere in the form of carbon dioxide, both C-12 and C-14. Once the tree dies, it ceases to take in new carbon, and any C-14 present begins to decay. The changing ratio of C-12 to C-14 indicates the length of time since the tree stopped absorbing carbon, i.e., the time of its death.

Obviously, if half the C-14 decays in 5,730 years, and half more decays in another 5,730 years, by ten half-lives (57,300 years) there would be essentially no C-14 left. Thus, no one even considers using carbon dating for dates in this range. In theory, it might be useful to archaeology, but not to geology or paleontology. Furthermore, the assumptions on which it is based and the conditions which must be satisfied are questionable, and in practice, no one trusts it beyond about 3,000 or 4,000 years, and then only if it can be checked by some historical means.

The method assumes, among other things, that the earth's age exceeds the time it would take for C-14 production to be in equilibrium with C-14 decay. Since it would only take less than 50,000 years to reach equilibrium from a world with no C-14 at the start, this always seemed like a good assumption.

That is until careful measurements revealed a significant disequalibrium. The production rate still exceeds decay by 30%. All the present C-14 would accumulate, at present rates of production and build up, in less than 30,000 years! Thus the earth's atmosphere couldn't be any older than this.

Efforts to salvage carbon dating are many and varied, with calibration curves attempting to bring the C-14 "dates" in line with historical dates, but these produce predictably unreliable results.

A "Back to Genesis" way of thinking insists that the Flood of Noah's day would have removed a great deal of the world's carbon from the atmosphere and oceans, particularly as limestone (calcium carbonate) was precipitated. Once the Flood processes ceased, C-14 began a slow build-up to equilibrium with C-12—a build-up not yet complete.

Thus carbon dating says nothing at all about millions of years, and often lacks accuracy even with historical specimens, denying as it does the truth of the great Flood. In reality, its measured disequilibrium points to just such a world-altering event, not many years ago.

Carbon dating anomolies

Problems with carbon dating

More simplistic version of the limits of carbon dating

Radiometric dating

This is gonna be fun!!!

First, I'm going to say that after reading all 6 pages TrpnBils and I share a lot of the same beliefs, and I've pretty much agreed with most of what he's written.

I personally dont believe in the whole creationism bit--but that's pretty irrelevant in discussing corn snakes.

Ok, so I see a big problem here. We have not really defined evolution, per say.

mi·cro·ev·o·lu·tion Audio pronunciation of "microevolution" ( P ) Pronunciation Key (mkr-v-lshn, -v-)
n.

Evolution resulting from a succession of relatively small genetic variations that often cause the formation of new subspecies.

mac·ro·ev·o·lu·tion Audio pronunciation of "macroevolution" ( P ) Pronunciation Key (mkr-v-lshn, -v-)
n.

Large-scale evolution occurring over geologic time that results in the formation of new taxonomic groups.


Okay, now that we've got that out of the way, we can debate.

Microevolution most definitely does occur, and there is documented proof of this.

In AP Bio we read pretty extensively about a guppy experiment, but I dont recall where it was.

The situation was that there were two consecutive pools of water that were seperated by a small "waterfall" if you will. The pool up top had guppies in it, as did the pool down below.

It was noticed that for one, these were the same species of guppies, and two, each pool had a different predator in it.

The upper pool I believe had some form of a bass in it, and the bottom pool had a smaller predator in it.

They did several tests and saw that in each pool, there were different rates of maturity, and different sizes of guppies. The upper pool had smaller guppies in it, and the lower pool had bigger guppies in it.

Those in the upper pool reached maturity faster, at a smaller size. Those in the lower pool reached maturity at a slower rate, and grew bigger.

Here is a link to another guppy study in microevolution about guppy specks in a lab, and there are many studies like this around. It shows that microevolution does in fact happen, and you cant refute it.

http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evosit...Inthelab.shtml

If you want to debate Macroevolution, in the sense that humans and apes share a common ancestor, that's fine, but dont try to debate microevolution.


Now about corns.

A blizzard corn is not a normal corn that has evolved. We have taken specific corn traits, and selective bred for them--something that doesn't happen in nature.

A blizzard corn in nature is going to be super easy to spot, and is going to call attention to iteslf, and most likely die at the hands of a predator---thus being selectively breed against.

Us tampering with corn genetics doesn't mean that they've evolved--it's just something that we've done. We've selectively bred for traits that we find appealing, nothing more.

There is potassium-argon dating too.

Every piece of scientific evidence suggests the earth is well over a few thousand years old, which is contrary to what the bible says.

Originally Posted by Joejr14

:If you want to debate Macroevolution, in the sense that humans and apes share a common ancestor, that's fine, but dont try to debate microevolution.

Why not?? Microevolution is still evolution and is still fundamentally flawed, especially since your implication is that adaptation to outside stimuli is the same thing as evolution. It isn't.

Your Blizzard example doesn't represent "microevolution" it describes "selection"; not natural selection since the selective decisions are made by keepers and not by nature. As Dianne pointed out, white snakes would be short lived in the wild and accordingly the mutant genes wouldn't be manifested and subsequently eliminated for successive generations.

Originally Posted by Joejr14

Every piece of scientific evidence suggests the earth is well over a few thousand years old, which is contrary to what the bible says.

To the contrary, valid scientific evidence does support a near biblical timeline, Check out the links I posted.

My thesis in college presented geological evidence which confirmed various events in the Bible. Of course, that was a long time ago - my thesis that is!

Originally Posted by .

Insert CAV's Carbon-14 article here...no sense in wasting space just to quote it again after everybody read it the first time

That all looks good, and I'm not suggesting that I know more about it than this guy, but I have to question the source of a lot of that. At least 3 of the articles you provide come from religious groups set out to prove the existance of Creation. That's fine, because that's what they believe, but you can't tell me they're completely unbiased. Those sites (as well as some of the people that have replied here) have said that Evolutionists conveniently either ignore facts that "disprove evolution" or they just use the "millions of years" thing because it's a big number and hard to argue with. Would you admit that there's a possibility these groups are doing the same thing for Creation?

Like I said, I never heard a Creationist's view of something like this, so I'm glad I have now. It still doesn't change my mind, because even if something would come along to disprove evolution in an unbiased way (which it hasn't), the simple fact remains that no one can prove Creation either...

I personally dont believe in the whole creationism bit--but that's pretty irrelevant in discussing corn snakes.

Why? If you are argueing for evolutionism vs creationism, then why would it be irrelevant to the corn snake?

Large-scale evolution occurring over geologic time that results in the formation of new taxonomic groups.

Where is the concrete proof of this? Where are any of the "missing links" to prove that one species changed into another through evolution? What do scientist have to PROVE irrefutably that we came from apes? So, you are saying that all of the thousands of creatures that live now and that had not been alive, well, let's say during the Jurasic age, they evolved from what??? Where is the proof of the lines that take all these diverse forms back to its beginning?

The situation was that there were two consecutive pools of water that were seperated by a small "waterfall" if you will. The pool up top had guppies in it, as did the pool down below.

It was noticed that for one, these were the same species of guppies, and two, each pool had a different predator in it.

The upper pool I believe had some form of a bass in it, and the bottom pool had a smaller predator in it.

They did several tests and saw that in each pool, there were different rates of maturity, and different sizes of guppies. The upper pool had smaller guppies in it, and the lower pool had bigger guppies in it.

Those in the upper pool reached maturity faster, at a smaller size. Those in the lower pool reached maturity at a slower rate, and grew bigger.

OK. This is just what I was saying, the ones best fit to survive will pass their genes down. BUT they were all still guppies. They did not change into another type of fish. They did not grow feet to "leave the pool" or anything of any drastic change. Yes, I know you are going to say that there wasn't enough time, that if more time passed they could. But are you sure of that? Are there any changes, other than size and maybe color for better hiding, that point in this direction? And if the changes that have occured are allowing the species to survive, would they just not survive as a smaller form of the same fish? Yes, we adapt and change within our limits, but I'm not going to worry about turning into a frog.

Originally Posted by TrpnBils

It still doesn't change my mind, because even if something would come along to disprove evolution in an unbiased way (which it hasn't), the simple fact remains that no one can prove Creation either...

Are you sure it hasn't and your too biased to accept it??? Again I submit to you that creation theory is revalidated at every birth.

Originally Posted by CAV

Are you sure it hasn't and your too biased to accept it???

I could ask you the same thing about why you don't believe in evolution... but I won't, because I'm not asking you to believe in it. If there's no physical proof of either argument, then neither of us should have to believe the other point of view...

Edit: and the source should matter because math is math, science is science, but it doesn't mean a damn thing if it's not all presented in an unbiased way.