Tuesday, March 22, 2022

Gideon and Jimmy came to exchange on carbon dating


Extract of Lazar - Akin : Where is the Authority? · Gideon and Jimmy came to exchange on carbon dating

Does Carbon Dating Disprove Young Earth Creationism? w/ Jimmy Akin & Gideon Lazar
21st March 2022 | Pints With Aquinas
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ry4BBHK2AE


Someone else started thread:

I
Augustus Autumn*
The age of the Earth is not important at all. It's obviously very, very old, but Christians picking young Earth as a hill to die on makes everyone look bad. Catholics were dumbfounded when Protestants began to spout Young Earth - the Church never believed that.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
You are in fact lying about Catholic history.

Augustus Autumn
@Hans-Georg Lundahl I am not. Everyone knew that civilizations had existed for thousands of years. Most people knew the legends of Atlantis, for example, which existed 12,000 years ago, twice as long as the Young Earth types say is the total age of earth. They don't even know where they get their 6000 number from. Its from a bishop in the 1800s that added up the ages of the people in the Old Testament, ignoring the great spans of time between stories.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
@Augustus Autumn You have more than one problem in your historiography.

"Everyone knew that civilizations had existed for thousands of years."

Well, Church Fathers and Scholastics believed Adam had been a civilised man, at least as far as farming goes, and his son founded a city. The creation of Adam was in 5199 or 5500 BC, so, in a sense, yes.

Now, what we did not know and have no historic knowledge of is, for instance, Ur being there in 4000 BC or Early Dynastic Egypt in 3000 BC.

"Most people knew the legends of Atlantis, for example, which existed 12,000 years ago,"

I'd dispute "most people" on that one, and those who did know it would normally not have agreed with Plato's dating of it.

"twice as long as the Young Earth types say is the total age of earth. They don't even know where they get their 6000 number from."

1) Masoretic timeline up to end of Hebrew books
2) Christian rather than Jewish chronology for "intertestamental period"
3) giving Ussher (pseudo-bishop in the Anglican establishment on Ireland) the date 4004 BC for creation, which he published in 1648.

"Its from a bishop in the 1800s"

1648 is not in the 1800's.

"that added up the ages of the people in the Old Testament,"

Adam to Noah, with his three sons born when he was 500, in Genesis 5, adding King James = Vulgate = Masoretic age of father when relevant son was born. Noah's son Shem to Abraham, in Genesis 11.

"ignoring the great spans of time between stories."

How do you insert a great timespan between Noah in Genesis 5 and Noah's son Shem in Genesis 11?

There is no such thing as a great timespan after Abraham either, St. Stephen Protomartyr said that the Exodus under Moses was 430 years after God had made His promise to Abraham, when he was 75 years old. And while there are some doubts for me on the timeline of Judges (in order to get the total mentioned in III Kings, one needs overlapping timelines), the timespan between Exodus and Temple of Solomon is mentioned in III Kings 6:1 as 480 years. Far from there being a great timespan between these, this actually tends to cram what we see if Judges is taken as one serial timeline, but if you stretch it out like that, whether you go with another text or consider the total only counts "clean years" and ignores periods of occupation, you won't get another 200 years out of that either.

So, how about checking out the facts before you open your moth or move the fingers on the keyboard?

* It seems he is a very devout Catholic on his youtube profile:
https://www.youtube.com/user/elitetroop12345/community


II
femaleKCRoyalsFan
Carbon dating is not always accurate just look at the shroud of Turin

Hans-Georg Lundahl
There seems to be some evidence for that one the computer was hacked.


I commented on specific time signatures, sometimes resulting in discussions:

0:50 Fit in all before Egyptian civilisation.

With a little help from Roman martyrology for Christmas Day (tradtional version, since late 1400's, when Rome had an edition of Usuardus, before there was even a Martyrologium romanum:

Flood : 2957 BC, carbon 14 level in the atmosphere 1.4 pmC and samples from then date 40 000 BP.
Ice Age - between previous and next. Human spread (but all still speaking Hebrew, all being one people) occurs. Mungo woman, with thermoluminiscence dating to 40 000 BP actually carbon dates to 20 000 BP, which means 123 years after the Flood.
Beginning of Babel (aka Göbekli Tepe): 350 years after the Flood, 2607 BC, carbon level at around 43 pmC, dates as 9600 BC
End of Babel: 401 years after the Flood, 2556 BC, carbon level at around 49 pmC, dates as 8600 BC
Abraham born and Ur looks Sumerian: 942 years after the Flood, 2015 BC, have to look on this one, 2019 BC has a level of 77.8962 pmC, carbon dates to 4069 BC.
Abraham 80 and En-Geddi gets attacked from Mesopotamia (Genesis 14), 1935 BC, 82.73 pmC, dates as 3500 BC.

For the second last, no actual archaeological node, but calculated by portions between prior and last, and otherwise, each item has a node. A Biblical date tied to a piece of archaeology.

The last node, please note, Abraham was 75 some time before Genesis 14 and was 86 some (perhaps short) time after Genesis 14, so the reed mats from En-Geddi carbon dated to 3500 BC must fit a fairly narrow space of time 1940 to 1929 BC (with Abraham's birth at 2015).

You could do a similar table for LXX text with second Cainan and using George Syncellus instead of Roman martyrology.

YAJUN YUAN
I haven't heard of Göbekli Tepe being the Tower of Babel before?

Hans-Georg Lundahl
@YAJUN YUAN Well, in that case you haven't been following my blogs the last 5 years or so.

YAJUN YUAN
@Hans-Georg Lundahl where do I find your blog?

Hans-Georg Lundahl
@YAJUN YUAN They would be on blogspot and the main one for this question would be "creavsevolu" but there is also stuff on "filolohika" and "assortedretorts".


0:58 The actual work with Egyptian chronology, please do note, the King Lists, while sometimes literally set in stone, are very far from being proverbially "set in stone" since all are from New Kingdom (possible exception Palermo stone, but some consider it 25th dynasty), so, let's go by carbon dated items that can be compared to Biblical events.

Djoser is (by burial ship or coffin lid) carbon dated to 2800 BC, but the Biblical and true date would be c. 1700, as Joseph's pharao survived the arrival in Egypt some while. Sesostris III (by coffin lid or burial ship) carbon dated to 1838 BC, I'd say 1590, birth of Moses, he was the guy who died soon after ordering the Israelite firstborn slain.

Here are a few bids on these two, since I have seen Sesostris as Joseph's pharao, and I have seen Amenemhet IV (who has a cenotaph, but no coffin with mummy) as in the roles both of Moses (co-pharao with his "father" Amenemhet III up to age 40, obviously had no Egyptian burial, since lived two thirds of his life outside Egypt) and the Exodus pharao (if you die drowning along with thousands of others, it can be difficult to get your body retrieved for burial).

Personally, I hold Djoser as Joseph's pharao, and consider Joseph was recalled as Imhotep, and Sesostris III as dead when Moses died, and Moses as Amenemhet IV.

YAJUN YUAN
Have you heard of David Downs?

Loreman72
That's wrong, 1700 BC was the late Iron Age, if you want Djoser at that time you have 15-20 dynasties to squeeze into the 1500 years between then and Alexander the Great, which even going by the number of kings is nonsense!

Hans-Georg Lundahl
@YAJUN YUAN It rings a bell, I am not sure we would agree.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
@Loreman72 You pretend that Egyptian King Lists is well documented history? I don't.


1:58 radioactive decay is not one of those things

For C14, I agree even to the halflife, 5730 years.

Please note, the halflife means, not that 50 pmC will remain whatever there was as level when the sample started out, but that 50 % will remain of the original pmC, whatever it was.

From Babel / Göbekli Tepe to us, it's c. 5000, approaching a halflife. With an original pmC less than 50 pmC, this means we now get around 25 pmC, not 50 pmC.

Please note also, 716 years is a time span that can be checked historically, its 5730 / 8 and so it should have the 8th root of 0.5 or 0.5 to the power of 1/8, which is 91.7 % and as the atmosphere has had c. 100 pmC since the fall of Troy, 1772 years after the Flood, c. 3000 years ago, the items from 1950 - 716 = 1234 do show close to 91.7 pmC. Hence, carbon halflife can be even checked.

It's not the decay that's in question, it's the original content.

2:04 Bc we use it to make nuclear ... no, we don't use C14 for that, and what we do use for that is decaying much quicker by the fact of being so used (usually Uranium or Plutonium, sometimes Thorium too).

As to the decay rate calculated for them, we can't check it as with C14 against historical times being significant fractions of the halflife. Before we checked, Libby had calculated the halflife of C14 to just 5568 years.

With those methods, as with C14, there is a question of how much of the parent isotope there was to start with, and unlike C14 the stability of the atmosphere doesn't provide one check on how that could vary. With these methods there is usually a pretence a daughter isotope tells us how much, and this poses the question how much of the daughter isotope there was to start with.

James Moore
@JamesMoore-uq5oi
@hglundahl Mostly valid however, what are your critiques of Isochron dating?

Hans-Georg Lundahl
@hglundahl
@JamesMoore-uq5oi I'm too unfamiliar with it to have a personal opinion, a certain Tas Walker said that it becomes meaningless if the material has heated and recooled more than once, whatever that's supposed to be relevant for.

@JamesMoore-uq5oi One more thing. If you, or a priest who was involved in your commenting, prayed for me to answer at once, that was an atrocity.

It is 1:54 AM, I was leaving a cyber, and am back, after washing my nose in the sink downstairs. I came back because my nose bled.


2:04 bis. The idea that we know how something ultimately works just because we know "how it works" when we work with it is patently ridiculous.

When the Duke of York (future King James VII and II) and whoever it was on behalf of Lewis XIV of France were competing about the North Atlantic with each other and the Dutch, they certainly did use compasses.

Their theory of why certain pieces of iron are magnets went sth like this:
  • the element earth
  • is influenced by the planet Mars and so becomes iron, which in turn
  • is influenced by the planet Venus to be magnetite. (With Venus directly on, it would have become copper).


Their reason why a bar of magnetite, when freely suspended (like on a string or floating on water) turns one end to the North would have struck Jimmy Akin as equally "out of court".

And obviously they did not know that an either magnetite or induced magnet turning around itself quickly within copper coils will produce an electric current in these had not occurred to them either.

Equally, seeds will grow to edible plants (or plants with edible seeds, some of which are eaten) whether you believe certain genes determine the seed starts to grow when subjected to soil, water and sufficient sunlight or you prefer attributing this to Ceres having a deal with subterranean daughter Persephone.

2:32 It so happens, there is such a thing as "calibration" with C14. For instance, the Hallstatt plateau, all actual dates from 750 to 450 BC carbon date close on 550 BC.

This means, scientists have by archaeology or more probably dendro-chronology only, decided, these objects are safer to date to for instance 750 BC or 450 BC than to the 550 BC that the raw carbon date says.

Church Fathers and Bible text are also a thing which can be used to override the raw carbon date, and in this case it will also have implications that could in principle be falsified, but haven't been.

  • 1) part of the time C14 has had to form faster (my max has been 10 to 11 times faster, up to end of Babel, then six times faster Babel to Abraham)
  • 2) the faster production would involve more radioactivity from cosmos -> other effects like shortened life spans, ice age
  • 3) all archaeological facts can fit within the model. I don't get Akkadian or Sumerian (post-Babel languages) in writing before my date for Babel ...
  • 4) I can't have thousands of human skeleta from a carbon date span which I attribute to the first twenty years after the Flood
  • ... and a few more.


3:11 First of all, they - meaning we - are definitely listening to the magisterium up to very recent, and 1909 with 1950 were not the least definitions to prefer Old Earth. The more recent one of 1992, 1996 and so on is not magisterium. Once Pope Michael was elected, the fake popes in Rome became not just heretic (which is why they were fake popes) but formally schismatic (in rebellion against a real Pope) and therefore their "magisterium" needed no safeguard from God, since God had provided another means for getting Catholic dogma correctly. If "Pope Francis" tries his hand at "infallibly defining" the Earth is old and the Bible should be read with no literal truth attached to Genesis 1 to 11, at least in details, he will provoke people like Gideon Lazar and Robert Sungenis to take a little better look at whether someone else is Pope.

Second, it is neither the role of the magisterium nor of Jimmy Akin to provide an "authoritative" reading of science or determine whether Creation Ministries International, Answers in Genesis, or on a more amateur level Kent Hovind or myself are scientifically acceptable. Therefore the charge of not listening to science is moot.

Third, it is not even relevant. You can't get a Patristic unanimity that "we should listen to science". You can't get a Biblical proof text for it either. It's like asking for a Biblical proof text on whether to use electric light or prefer candles, or a Patristic unanimity on keeping or releasing your slaves. For those who, like Robert E. Lee antebellum lived in countries where you could have such. Science in the modern sense was not a thing. The closest you got in Patristic times were not the "experience and reason" a certain quote from Augustine makes appeal to, but the schools of philosophy. And we certainly have different attitudes to these. So did the Church Fathers.

St. Augustine on one occasion says "I'll believe the philosophers [on their reasoning] that the earth is round, but not that there are antipodes" (antipodes in his vocabulary meaning people who walk with the feet the direction of our heads and their heads the direction of our feet) and his reason was that of a land lubber, who didn't foresee it could be easier to leave the Old World for the Americas than to come back (incidentally, unlike St. Isodore who said no such thing, St. Augustine lived in a place wherefrom, crossing the centre of the earth, there are no antipode land places, so materially he wasn't wrong - see how God safeguards the Church Fathers!)

3:18 "scientifically unfalsifiable position " ... you can falsify mine if you prove we have 1000 skeleta carbon dated to between 38 957 and 29 635 BC. This is on my view the carbon dates for the Flood itself and for 22 years later (2957 and 2935 BC).

3:27 No, I'm not going with some unknown, I am going with testable alternative explanations.

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