Sunday, August 03, 2014

Was I There?

I was asked "Was I there?" in a Youtube comment on the following video. He covered a lot more in the comment including C14 dating, observing the creation of stars and many others. It sounded like he was jumping from one piece of science to another because he had heard from someone they were areas of science that were in doubt. 





Comments section here.


https://www.youtube.com/all_comments?v=mjQtqg3yyjk



Was I there?

What a disingenouous question. You know I wasn't there. Perhaps you should use that inquisitive brain to ask "how do we know"?

We know in precisely the way we know you are related to your cousins from DNA alone. Or related to me for that matter.

How do you think forensic science works? Forensic scientists were "never there" at the crime scene.

That is how almost all science works. Not by direct observation but by observation of the effects.

By the way, C14 dating isn't used for fossils or anything else that is evidence for evolution. You know why? Because the half life of C14 is only 5000 years. That means the ratio of C14 to C12 is too small to be able to measure accurately. Yes, C14 is in everything. We can measure it, but in older objects we can't measure it anywhere near accurately enough.

The reason C14 is in the air is because it is created from the decay of N14. Living things take up the C14 but when they die, there is no longer any exchange of atoms with the environment (part of the definition of "life" is exchanging atoms with the environment).

Instead we use numerous other forms of radiometric dating (which have longer half lives) Such as K-Ar dating. Potassium has a half life of around 1 billion years. As do the others that are used.

"We can measure and deduce many predictions all pf which repeatedly work and be tested...EVERY TIME....WITH ZERO SPECULATION."

No, we can't. Even Newtons laws are wrong for extreme speed or high gravity fields. Only until Einstein came along, could we explain this. We have to change the GPS satellites by 11 seconds every day to account for Newton's laws not being right.

And, if new evidence comes along that Einstein's equations aren't quite right for some specific cases then science will update too.

We can and do observe the formation of stars. The 2nd law of thermodynamics is not broken by evolution (the earth isn't a closed system).

The reason we don't see life "coming from pond scum", as you put it, is because life has already taken hold here. The original life forms were very delicate and any competition (such as bacteria/algae) that currently live in ponds would out-compete them.

But, even given all that. Let's say you disproved evolution (your Nobel prize would be  a certainty) You would be no closer to demonstrating that a "god did it".

If you have evidence that evolution is untrue then take that evidence, test your hypothesis and write a scientific paper on the topic