Dear 6days,
The norm is for TOL conversations to quickly branch off in so many directions some of the essential points often are lost in the resulting morass. I want to maintain a focus on whether or not R. H. Brown’s paper shows scientific support for YEC timelines. Peripheral issues can be picked up later.
Uh.....
I should have used a online article that is free. I mentioned that article since it suggests the 40,000 year old dates from C14 testing could actually be closer to 4,000 allowing for the global flood.*
The article I found is online and free (I linked to it). It is written by the author you named, and specifically deals with how 40,000 year old dates can mathematically made into 5,000 years. If you are willing to declare that your CRS article has crucial data missing from the one I found, then I will tender a subscription to CRS and look at it. Point remains, the article I found by your guy on your subject is a farcical parody of science.
My position is that the Bible is true....there was a global flood which wiped out all vegetation on earth....and that has drastically affected the ratio of C14 to C12, giving us exaggerated dates. That explanation, or that interpretation, better fits the evidence than the old earth explanations. Finding C14 in coal, dino soft tissue and diamonds is expected in the young earth model.*
And that is R. H. Brown’s view as well. But that is not science. You don’t get to define the conditions that are guaranteed to give the answers you want at the end. If you want to do science, you take what nature shows, and see where it leads. If it doesn’t fit with your dogma, tough, then abandon the claim that science proves the Bible.
Laughing... not at you...but how we both look at evidence from our own biased worldviews. Let me ask...If "in the world of real science this C-14 age is close to the real honest-to-gosh valid truthful on-the-spot correct age" then is coal really just 40,000 years old?
You should be laughing at me, because I am laughing at myself. I was focused on the C-14 date in the coal to the exclusion of remembering why science thinks that C-14 dating of coal is pretty much silly.
Well.... I think you have been reasonably fair in summing up how C14 dating is consistent with the Bible. He starts with the 'assumption' that God's Word is absolute truth. He then shows how C14 dating of preflood organic matter is consistent with what the preflood world may have been like.
So then we agree that in R. H. Brown’s paper at GRI, and likely his paper that you mentioned at CRS, he starts with a set of assumptions favored by YEC folks, and then goes on to do nothing more meaningful than show that the mathematics supports YEC conclusions. And you honestly view that as science?
You realize that is almost a classic example of undisguised academic circular reasoning. Any bloke with a religious timeline he believes in can do exactly the same thing.
...show how science is consistent with our (yours / mine) worldview.
…
No matter what conclusions we arrive at... we base it on a priori beliefs.
The issue I have with YEC use of “worldviews” is shown in this exchange. If you are right, science can’t be depended on to be truly impartial much at all, since every conclusion must be made by someone with an agenda. But in many decades (too many) in science, I have worked side by side with literally thousands of scientists, coming from almost every country, and of widely different religious persuasions, and not a single time have I ever seen one of them pull out the trump card you are trying to play: “We get different answers to the same problem, but I think mine is right to me because I have my prior beliefs.” I wonder how that would have played out when I worked on projects that had to work, or lives were endangered. If someone disagreed with the fundamental ideas we were working with, those ideas were mercilessly examined until there was no divergence of opinion. No allowance was made for “my worldview” or “your worldview”. And, the most convincing part was that even had I (or anyone else there), had a secret “worldview” that differed significantly from the consensus, nature had the final vote. Nature didn’t know and didn’t care about anyone’s “a priori beliefs”. It would have been a bit problematic if, as in your 40,000 years really means 5,000 years case, there was a huge discrepancy. I will let you imagine what would happen if a nuclear test exploded with 8 times the expected yield, just because the scientists involved refused to agree with YEC ideas.
I imagine an anthropomorphic version of nature as the arbiter in how science works. No concerns for feelings, dreams, dogmas, loves, desires – just an absolutely undeviating allegiance to the way nature does in fact work. That’s the world I live in. In the lab, it is cold and impersonal, but I always know where I stand. To the degree that I can’t divest myself of personal biases, my experiments fail. Yours do too. Badly.