Skeptoid Episode #65

[Mad Badger]

The age that i quoted was the age of the universe, not the age of Earth. Wikipedia says that the age of the Earth is 4.54 billion years (before you trash me for using Wikipedia as a source, first check out the source that Wikipedia uses for that number; they use a website from the United States Geological Survey as the source and I hope that we can agree that the USGS is a reputable source). I'm more comfortable with how the age of the universe is determined (in that I have a better understanding of the physics involved) hence I went to that first. I bring that up because it shows the upper limit as to how much time evolution had to take place. Even with the Earth 4.54 billion years old, this is still a very long time. Hence, it doesn't make sense to claim that there isn't enough time for evolution to take place. In order to make that claim, you would need to provide some sort of calculation that shows how long it should take for some evolutionary process to take place and show that this calculation is orders of magnitude higher than the Earth (saying, "I simply don't believe that there's enough time for evolution to occur" is the logical fallacy of an argument from personal incredulity). If you're going to claim that there isn't enough time for evolution to happen, then I would like to hear your evidence that supports that claim.

What are your reasons for not trusting any type of radiometric dating? I find it difficult to believe that you have found a flaw in this basic physical behavior that has eluded thousands of physicists, paleontologists, and geologists who have been utilizing this technique for decades. Can the technique be mis-used? Of course. However, all that proves is that the person administering the tests does not know how to use the test.

I know what the difference is between the terms macro- and micro-evolution. It's important to note, however, that these terms are (to the best of my knowledge, please provide evidence to the contrary if I'm mistaken) purely constructs of people who don't accept the theory of evolution. Macro and micro are not truly scientific terms and have no meaning within the scientific community. They indicate that there is some type of fundamental different between changes within a species and changes from one species to another. I ask, what presents small incremental changes within one species to accumulate over time and eventually lead to so many changes that we can now say this now a new species?

For example, suppose you have two ducks from the same mother (Hence we can assume that the two ducks are the same species and nearly identical). Now we'll keep one duck where it naturally occurs and move the other one to an isolated region thick with trees(and enough other ducks to produce a stable breeding population). The isolated ducks aren't exposed to lakes as much, and thus the webbing in their feet disappear. This is micro-evolution. The dense forests prevent the birds from flying, thus their wings get smaller and their chest muscles weaken. This is still micro-evolution. They start eating more bugs than weeds, and thus their bills get smaller and more pointy. They also get thick and stronger feet so they can chase after smaller bugs more easily. Again, this is micro-evolution.

Let's take this new 'duck' and compare to the duck we started with. The new duck doesn't have webbed feet, can't fly for long periods of times, and has a pointy beak. This creature more closely resembles a chicken than a duck. In fact, it may be better described as a chicken than a duck. Thus (if you agree that the previous paragraph consists of only micro evolution and that chickens and ducks are separate species), I have shown how micro-evolution can lead to macro-evolution. This illustrates that there is no difference between micro- and marco-evolution; they are the same thing. Also, please take the above scenario as a thought-experiment only and I do not suggest that a duck can turn into a chicken if a duck is placed in a dense forest. I only use it to illustrate that the dichotomy between micro and marco evolution is meaningless. Evolution happens with tiny changes within a species. Over time, these changes accumulate and eventually lead to enough morphological changes such that the organism is considered to be a different species.

[hereisjoe]

I don't trust any type of radiometric dating for a couple of basic reasons. First, the alleged decay rate of radiations has been assumed to be constant. There is no proof or evidence for this assumption - it's just a bold assumption. Second, if you look at, say, carbon-14 to carbon-12 changes, you have to look at a tiny speck of time within the decay period and speculate and guestimate it's total span. Carbon-14 is one of the shorter decay rates, at 5730 years half-life, right? Now, there is virtually no scientific evidence to suggest that carbon-14 proportions in the atmosphere are the same now as they were 4.5 billion years ago etc. That's important, because the carbon-14 atom (the radioactive one) is extremely rare in nature, yet it is absorbed by living things at the same rate as carbon-12 atoms (the normal ones ) are. However (and this is critically important) if the ratio of the two carbons in the atmosphere were different even by a slight amount back then, it would upset the whole formula of dating. It is quite possible that there was more carbon-14 millennia ago, and this would appear to give older ages than actually existed. A great cataclysm on the planet could upset and destroy much of the flora and fauna, allowing such increases of ratio of carbon-14 to carbon-12. I am not saying that this has happened for sure - but then no scientist can safely say it has not happened either. A huge flood similar to the Bibli9cal deluge would put formidable amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, diluting the ratio of carbon atoms. Less carb0n-14, you get an older age, but it's artificially old, when you assume there was a constant decay rate, which itself was based on no changes between those carbon atom ratios. Get it? New carbon-14 dating now uses atomic accelerators to count the atoms. When they compare millions-of-years old coal specimens, for example, to more modern specimens, they found atoms in the coal even though evolutionary theory and older dating methods would say that there should be no carbon-14 left in something that old. Willard Libby published findings back in 1952 about how he suspected that decay rates aren't constant, basing it on di9fferent rates of formation and decaying of the element. Since then, more experiments have proven that radiocarbon is forming at least 30% faster than it is decaying. Check out one Melvin A. Cook and his findings...

Furthermore, consider the other dating methods like cesium, where astronomically long periods are predicted, on that still tiny window of observation. If you’re looking at just a few years into an occurrence of almost 6,000 years you have to be really bold to predict that it changes its radiation level that exactly over that period of time. So far, the evolutionist theory is just a theory and not a very good one either, because it’s based on highly doubtful “science”.

As for your isolated ducks theory (yes, Theory!) it isn’t evolution. You insist on calling extended microevolution by the name of macroevolution. They are never the same thing. In order for you to show me their links, you have to prove (not theorize) the existence of those tremendously long time periods, which I doubt you can ever do. Your duck with the weak wings, pointy beak and un-webbed feet are still ducks, and you are still preaching a theory, not a fact. Thought experiment be what it may, I can’t accept a theory that needs tons and tons of time in order to speculate within that time that tons and tons of big changes maybe happened! There is simply no evidence that one species has become another species, ad infinitum. I’m not talking one bird species into another bird species either.

Oh, I do accept a lot of stuff from both Wikipedia and the USGS. They simply have fallen into the same old same old of evolutionary thinking. Theory is fine, but it is not by any sort of imagination the only theory out there. Scientific evidence backs up a very young universe, not an extremely old one. That is something you should be willing to contemplate and look into. I have studied evolution theories all my life – I still can’t see it fitting any observed patterns in the real world around us.

[briandunning]

hereisjoe - Your information about carbon dating is incomplete. Carbon dating, due to its short half-life, is only good up to about 55,000 years old; nobody uses it for rocks or other non-organic substances, and certainly not to date the earth. And you're correct that the amount of C-14 in the environment is not constant. It changes all the time, most significantly with the onset of the industrial age, volcanism, and the atomic age. For this reason its use depends on calibration scales. Primary sources for these calibration scales -- all of which agree with one another, by the way -- are dendochronology, ice cores, deep sea cores, and speleotherms. These combine to give us an extremely detailed and accurate picture of environmental levels of various compounds going back 150,000 years and more.

[hereisjoe]

Brian (or anybody) answer this: can you say for a CERTAINTY that dating methods have not had their decay rates changing over the observable past? Explain to me how you can be absolutely certain that radioactive decay rates (half lifes) are based on uncontrovertible evidence of such half-lifes..? I await with unbated breath... If you are off by even one ten-thousandth of a percent, you are off by a whole theory...

[briandunning]

Before anyone spends a significant amount of their time to educate you on a matter for which you've given every indication that you're unwilling to be educated, can you tell us what steps you've already taken to educate yourself?

[hereisjoe]

"...a matter for which you've given every indication that you're unwilling to be educated..."

Well, Brian, what is YOUR education in this matter? You respond like the proverbial teakettle arguing about the 'blackness' of the teapot. What are you basing your assumptions on regarding the alleged infallibility of dating methods? Why are my credentials more suspect than yours? What is the reason for your unwillingness to be educated?

[politas]

What indication do we have that decay rates have changed or could change over time, apart from the desire to adhere to an arbitrary timeline written by pre-scientific people?

[arthwollipot]

I agree. The most parsimonious assumption - the one that works - is that decay rates have not varied over time. If they have, it would cast doubt on most of known nuclear physics, because it would indicate that we really don't understand the behaviour of atoms the way we thought we did. And we think we understand them pretty well. Well enough to sustainably provide power for hundreds of cities, anyway. If our understanding of nuclear decay is so far wrong, how on earth do we get the nuclear power industry to work?

Anyway, regardless of that, if our dating method is so wrong, why does it correlate so well with non-radiometric dating techniques?

[hereisjoe]

What indication do we have that decay rates have changed or could change over time, apart from the desire to adhere to an arbitrary timeline written by pre-scientific people?

You might want to look at all recent developments in quantum theory. Also, red-shift in viewing the galaxy.

[hereisjoe]

Do you really understand atomic theory? Decay rates do not affect the nuclaer power industry. Now, where do you have the evidence that decay rates have not altered? You better be very sure on this one...

[hereisjoe]

What indication do we have that decay rates have changed or could change over time, apart from the desire to adhere to an arbitrary timeline written by pre-scientific people?

What do you mean by "the desire to adhere to an arbitrary timeline written by pre-scientific people?"

Is not the whole evolutionary movement adhering to a specific timeline?

Red-shifts in cosmic radiation indicates that radiation is changing. In fact, this is a basic understanding of evolutionary theory: that the universe is supposedly expanding. Creationists often agree with this expanding idea. They just don't agree with the rate. Think about that.

[politas]

What do you mean by "the desire to adhere to an arbitrary timeline written by pre-scientific people?"I mean that there is no reason to try to match, for instance, a 6000 year age of the universe timeline apart from an attempt to show the Bible as being literally correct.

Is not the whole evolutionary movement adhering to a specific timeline?First off, what is the "evolutionary movement" you refer to?

Evolution fits into a specific timeline, yes, but it is not an arbitrary one! Science has determined the age of the Earth, and the time when life first appeared, through rigorous observation and experimentation.

Red-shifts in cosmic radiation indicates that radiation is changing. In fact, this is a basic understanding of evolutionary theory: that the universe is supposedly expanding. Please explain. An expanding universe does not require a change in radiation. The acceleration of the universe's expansion seems to indicate that the speed of light has changed slowly over time. This has lead to revised estimates of how far away things are, and how large the observable universe is. None of this would affect radiometric dating of things on the Earth more than the existing error bars on dating results.

Creationists often agree with this expanding idea. They just don't agree with the rate. Think about that.So they accept some scientific findings, but ignore others? Under what justification do they think that some of the things scientists have discovered are correct, but others are incorrect, even though the scientists are using the exact same methods?

[politas]

You might want to look at all recent developments in quantum theory. Also, red-shift in viewing the galaxy.

From what you have written so far, I have serious doubts that you understand anything about quantum theory and the impact it has on our understanding of the universe.

[politas]

Do you really understand atomic theory? Decay rates do not affect the nuclaer power industry. Now, where do you have the evidence that decay rates have not altered? You better be very sure on this one...Decay rates that are not predictable and constant would make sustained nuclear reactions wildly unpredictable. A power plant could not be utilised with such a reaction. Nuclear reactions in power plants are initiated by predictable nuclear decay. Perhaps you need to bone up on your atomic theory.

[Tatyana]

Brian (or anybody) answer this: can you say for a CERTAINTY that dating methods have not had their decay rates changing over the observable past? Explain to me how you can be absolutely certain that radioactive decay rates (half lifes) are based on uncontrovertible evidence of such half-lifes..? I await with unbated breath... If you are off by even one ten-thousandth of a percent, you are off by a whole theory...

The nucleus is so small, and the forces acting upon it are so strong, it is impervious to the external world.

Nuclear forces are some of the strongest forces in nature, as evidenced by the atomic bomb, nuclear power plants, and the huge amount of energy and effort that is required to smash atoms in a particle accelerator.

Being 1/10, 000 off isn't going to make that much of a difference over a huge amount of time.

Every measurement has an inherent error in it, it is illogical to think that how humans measure things is going to be perfect, which is why everything you find in a scientific paper is often expressed as the mean (x) with a standard deviation (SD), and a correlation of coefficient (CV%).