| Topic: |
Religions > Bible |
| User: |
"IknowHimDoYou" |
| Date: |
31 Oct 2003 10:08:57 AM |
| Object: |
Carbon 14 Dating |
Carbon 14 Dating
The use of carbon 14 decay used for dating has some serious flaws. W.
Libby in his "Radiocarbon Dating" made several assumptions tha must be
seriously questioned(the way of true science). A review of these
assumptions will shed light on the many problems:
1. IF the intensity of cosmic rays has remained at its present level for
the past 20,000 years or more,; and
2. IF the strength of the magnetic field has remained constant over the
span of time being dated; and
3. IF the decay rate of carbon 14 can be shown to have been constant over
the span of time being dated; and
4. IF the equilibrium in the reservoir was reached, and has stayedn
constant for a period of at least 20,000 to 30,000 years; and
5. IF the sample was not contaminated while living by other carbonates; and
6. IF the sample was not contaminated by C 14 atoms from other materials
of different age after it died; and
7. IF the oceans have remained at relatively the same depth during the
time of measurement; and
8. IF the oceans have remained at relatively the same temperature over the
time period from which the measurements is being taken;
THEN radiocarbon dates back one half-life(5730 years-and those are regular
calander years) may be comparatively correct.
Now, these assumptions must be proven correct before the radiocarbon
dating method can be fully trusted. And this task presently appears to be
improbable.
Some here throw out these measurements as evidence or confirmation of a
long, long past time series of evolutionary events but this is not backed
up by radiocarbon dating method until and unless all of the above
assumptions can be determined.
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| User: "Zachriel" |
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| Title: Re: Carbon 14 Dating |
31 Oct 2003 10:12:05 AM |
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"IknowHimDoYou" <IknowHim@leavingsoon.com> wrote in message
news:IknowHim-3110030808570001@pm1-19.kalama.com...
Carbon 14 Dating
The use of carbon 14 decay used for dating has some serious flaws.
Please write up your results and submit them to peer-review. Thanks!
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| User: "Brian Busse" |
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| Title: Re: Carbon 14 Dating |
31 Oct 2003 06:00:35 AM |
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"IknowHimDoYou" <IknowHim@leavingsoon.com> wrote in message
news:IknowHim-3110030808570001@pm1-19.kalama.com...
Carbon 14 Dating
The use of carbon 14 decay used for dating has some serious flaws. W.
Libby in his "Radiocarbon Dating" made several assumptions tha must be
seriously questioned(the way of true science). A review of these
assumptions will shed light on the many problems:
1. IF the intensity of cosmic rays has remained at its present level for
the past 20,000 years or more,; and
2. IF the strength of the magnetic field has remained constant over the
span of time being dated; and
3. IF the decay rate of carbon 14 can be shown to have been constant over
the span of time being dated; and
Assumptions not included in the use of radiocarbon dating. That C14 production has varied over time
is known and accounted for. Tree ring and lake bottom sediment data have been and are used to
calibrate the process.
4. IF the equilibrium in the reservoir was reached, and has stayedn
constant for a period of at least 20,000 to 30,000 years; and
You're repeating the Hovind/Morris/Clark/Whitelaw arguments, forgetting that they have been
thouroughly discredited long ago.
5. IF the sample was not contaminated while living by other carbonates; and
6. IF the sample was not contaminated by C 14 atoms from other materials
of different age after it died; and
7. IF the oceans have remained at relatively the same depth during the
time of measurement; and
8. IF the oceans have remained at relatively the same temperature over the
time period from which the measurements is being taken;
THEN radiocarbon dates back one half-life(5730 years-and those are regular
calander years) may be comparatively correct.
Now, these assumptions must be proven correct before the radiocarbon
dating method can be fully trusted. And this task presently appears to be
improbable.
Some here throw out these measurements as evidence or confirmation of a
long, long past time series of evolutionary events but this is not backed
up by radiocarbon dating method until and unless all of the above
assumptions can be determined.
The issues you raise are ones that do affect the use of C14 dating. Your mistake is seeing them as
fatal flaws instead of factors that must be accounted for.
If your posts are actually your own handiwork, and not cut and post from other sources, they show a
level of language skills incongruous with the scientific illiteracy shown in their content. Like
others here, I find your claims of engineering/technical/scientific credentials not credible.
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| User: "Tracy Hamilton" |
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| Title: Re: Carbon 14 Dating |
03 Nov 2003 03:22:48 PM |
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(IknowHimDoYou) wrote in message news:<IknowHim-3110030808570001@pm1-19.kalama.com>...
Carbon 14 Dating
The use of carbon 14 decay used for dating has some serious flaws. W.
Libby in his "Radiocarbon Dating" made several assumptions tha must be
seriously questioned(the way of true science). A review of these
assumptions will shed light on the many problems:
1. IF the intensity of cosmic rays has remained at its present level for
the past 20,000 years or more,; and
2. IF the strength of the magnetic field has remained constant over the
span of time being dated; and
Both of which will influence percentage of C-14 in the atmosphere.
A SOLVED problem.
3. IF the decay rate of carbon 14 can be shown to have been constant over
the span of time being dated; and
Did not change, no reason to expect it to.
4. IF the equilibrium in the reservoir was reached, and has stayedn
constant for a period of at least 20,000 to 30,000 years; and
With fluctuating C-14 production rates, there can not be an
"equilibrium" (actually steady state). Anyway, SOLVED.
5. IF the sample was not contaminated while living by other carbonates; and
6. IF the sample was not contaminated by C 14 atoms from other materials
of different age after it died; and
Contamination can be removed. In 5, it cannot be called
contamination, but instead refers to whether the source of carbon
is strictly from the atmosphere at large or not, which can be
determined.
7. IF the oceans have remained at relatively the same depth during the
time of measurement; and
8. IF the oceans have remained at relatively the same temperature over the
time period from which the measurements is being taken;
The last two are total nonsense. How does ocean depth affect C-14
dating?
THEN radiocarbon dates back one half-life(5730 years-and those are regular
calander years) may be comparatively correct.
Now, these assumptions must be proven correct before the radiocarbon
dating method can be fully trusted. And this task presently appears to be
improbable.
It is routine.
Some here throw out these measurements as evidence or confirmation of a
long, long past time series of evolutionary events but this is not backed
up by radiocarbon dating method until and unless all of the above
assumptions can be determined.
They have been determined, and are hence not assumptions anymore.
For only about 33 years, so I can see why you may not have heard about
it yet. The calibration curve goes back about 30,000 years now.
Tracy P. Hamilton
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| User: "Thore Schmechtig" |
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| Title: Re: Carbon 14 Dating |
31 Oct 2003 04:43:36 PM |
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The use of carbon 14 decay used for dating has some serious flaws.
(YAAAAAWN)
UNWRITTEN RULES OF FUNDAMENTALISM
1. "I'm right and you are wrong".
2. Never admit that you are wrong, even if you really are.
3. When you have nothing to say, hurl insults.
4. Regard and portray your own violence, whether physical,
psychological,
or verbal, at all times as defensive
5. Be prepared at all times to lie and bluster, particularly when backed
into a corner in an argument
6. Never accept responsibility for any mess you have personally caused.
7. When you are forced to admit to an error, regard the whole process of
error and correction as part of God's personal plan for you and not as a
something for which you should apologise retract or make amends except
verbally and secretly to God himself
8. Always see yourself and you personal actions as part of God's plans
for
the world. Recognise that even your errors are just part of Gods will
for
the betterment of mankind.
9.Profess humility but avoid the actual experience of it.
10.Refuse to take in information that differs from your own view and
oppose all such information through classification of such information
in
a derogatory and simplistic manner(eg by categorising it as left wing
propaganda)
11.Refuse to accept that truth is not black and white; that reality is
complex and there are shades of grey
12.Refuse to forgive anyone else for anything unless you purport to
forgive on behalf of other people unconnected with you for whom you
don't
have that right anyhow.
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| User: "oz" |
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| Title: Re: Carbon 14 Dating |
31 Oct 2003 09:17:03 PM |
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Father and son by Grosse
So, through my Father's brain, in that year of scientific crisis, I857,
there rushed two kinds of thought, each absorbinig, each convincing, yet
totally irreconcilable. There is a peculiar agony in the paradox that
truth has two forms, each of them indisputable yet each antagonistic to
the other. - It was this discovery, that there were two theories of
physical life, each of which was true, but the truth -of each incompatible
with the truth of the other' which shook the spirit of my Father with
perturbation. It was not really a paradox, it was a fallacy, if he could
only have known it, but he allowed the turbid volume of superstition to
drown the delicate stream of reason. He took one step in the service of
truth, and then he drew back in an agony, and accepted the servitude of
error.
This was the great moment in the history of thought when the theory of the
mutability of species was preparing to throw a flood of light upon all
departments of human speculation and action. It was becoming necessary to
stand emphatically in one army or the other. Lyell was surrounding himself
with disciples, who were making strides in the direction of discovery.
Darwin had long been collecting facts with regard to the variation of
animals and plants. Hooker and Wallace, Asa Grey and even Agassiz, each in
his own sphere, were coming closer and closer to a perception of that
secret which was first to reveal itself clearly to the patient and humble
genius of Darwin. In the year before, in I856, Darwin, under pressure from
Lyell, had begun that modest statement of the new revelation, that
"abstract of an essay," which developed so mightily into "The Origin of
Species." Wollaston's "Variation of Species" had just appeared, and had
been a nine days' wonder in the wilderness.
On the other side, the reactionaries, although never dreaming of the fate
which hung over them, had not been idle. In I857 the astounding question
had for the first time been propounded with contumely, "What, then, did we
come from an orang-outang?" The famous "Vestiges of Creation" had been
supplying a sugar-and-water panacea for those who could not escape from
the trend of evidence, and who yet clung to revelation. Owen was
encouraging reaction by resisting, with all the strength of his prestige,
the theory of the mutability of species.
In this period of intellectual ferment, as when a great political
revolution is being planned, many possible adherents were confidentially
tested with hints and encouraged to reveal their bias in a whisper. It was
the notion of Lyell, himself a great mover of men, that, before the
doctrine of natural selection was given to a world which would be sure to
lift up at it a howl of execration, a certain bodyguard of sound and
exierienced naturalists, expert in the description of species, should be
privately made aware of its tenour. Among those who were thus initiated or
approached with a view towards possible illumination, was my Father. He
was spoken to by Hooker, and later on by Darwin, after meetings of the
Royal Society in thesummer of I857.
My Father's attitude towards the theory of natural selection was critical
in his career, and oddly enough, it exercised an immense influence on my
own experience as a child. Let it be admitted at once, mournful as the
admission is, that every instinct in his intelligence went out at first to
greet the new light. It had hardly done so, when a recollection of the
opening chapter of "Genesis" checked it at the outset. He consulted with
Carpenter, a great investigator, but one who was fully as incapable as
himself of remodelling his ideas with regard to the old, accepted
hypotheses. They both determined, on various grounds, to have nothing to
do with the terrible theory; but to hold steadily to the law of the fixity
of species. It was exactly at this juncture that we left London, and the
slight and occasional, but always extremely salutary personal intercourse
with men of scientific leading which my Father had enjoyed at the British
Museum and at the Royal Society came to an end. His next act was to burn
his ships, down to the last beam and log out of which a raft could have
been made. By a strange act of wilfuness he closed the doors upon himself
for ever.
My Father had never admired Sir Charles Lyell. I think that the famous
"Lord Chancellor manner" of the geologist intimidated him, and we
undervalue the intelligence of those whose conversation puts us at a
disadvantage. For Darwin and Hooker, on the other hand, he had a profound
esteem, and I know not whether this had anything to do with the fact that
he chose, for his impetuous experiment in reaction, the field of geology,
rather than that of zoology or botany. Lyell had been threatening to
publish a book on the geological history of Man, which was to be a
bombshell flung into the camp of the catastrophists. My Father, after long
reflection, prepared a theory of his own which, as he fondly hoped, would
take the wind out of Lyell's sails, and justify geology to godly readers
of "Genesis." It was, very briefly, that there had been no gradual
modification of the surface of the earth, or slow development of organic
forms, but that when the catastrophic act of creation took place, the
world presented instantly, the structural appearance of a plant on which
life had long existed.
The theory, coarsely enough, and to my Father's great indignation, was
defined by a hasty press as being this‹ that God hid the fossils in the
rocks in order to tempt geologists into infidelity. In truth, it was the
logical and inevitable conclusion of accepting, literally, the doctrine of
a sudden act of creation; it emphasised the fact that any breach in the
circular course of nature could be conceived only on the supposition that
the object created bore false witness to past processes, which had never
taken place. For instance, Adam would certainly possess hair and teeth and
bones in a condition which it must have taken many years to accomplish,
yet he was created full-grown yesterday. He would certainly‹though Sir
Thomas Browne denied it -display an omphalos, yet no umbilical cord had
ever attached him to a mother.
Never was a book cast upon the waters with greater anticipations of
success than was this curious, this obstinate, this fanatical volume. My
father lived in a fever of suspense, waiting for the tremendous issue.
This "Omphalos" of his, he thought, was to bring all the turmoil of
scientific speculation to a close, fling geology into the arms of
Scripture, and make the lion eat grass with the lamb. It was not
surprising, he admitted, that there had been experienced an
ever-increasing discord between the facts which geology brings to light
and the direct statements of the early chapters of "Genesis." Nobody was
to blame for that. My Father, and my Father alone, possessed the secret of
the enigma; he alone held the key which could smoothly open the lock of
geological mystery. He offered it, with a glowing gesture, to atheists and
Christians alike. This was to be the universal panacea; this the system of
intellectual therapeutics which could not but heal all the maladies of the
age. But, alas! atheists and Christians alike looked at it and laughed,
and threw it away.
In the course of that dismal winter, as the post began to bring in private
letters, few and chilly, and public reviews, many and scornful, my Father
looked in vain for the approval of the churches, and in vain for the
acqiescence of the scientific societies, and in vain for the gratitude of
those "thousands of thinking persons, which he had rashly assured himself
of receiving. As his reconciliation of Scripture statements and
geological deductions was welcomed nowhere; as Darwin continued silent,
and the youthful Huxley was scornful, and even Charle Kingsley, from whom
my Father had expected the most instant appreciation, wrote that he could
not "give up the painful and slow conclusion of five and twenty years'
study of geology, and believe that God has written on the rocks one
enormous and superfluous lie," -as all this happened or failed to happen,
a gloom, cold and dismal, descended upon our morning teacups. It was what
the poets mean by an "inspissated" gloom; it thickened day by day, as hope
and self-confidence evaporated in thin clouds of disappointment. My Father
was not prepared for such a fate. He had been the spoiled darling of the
public, the constant favourite of the press, and now, like the dark angels
of old,
so huge a rout
Encumbered him with ruin.
He could not recover from amazement at having offended everybody by an
enterprise which had been undertaken in the cause of universal
reconciliation.
.
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| User: "Elmer Bataitis" |
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| Title: Re: Carbon 14 Dating |
31 Oct 2003 10:12:50 AM |
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IknowHimDoYou wrote:
Carbon 14 Dating
http://www.radiocarbon.org/Info/index.html
***************************************************************
Elmer Bataitis “Hot dog! Smooch city here I come!”
Planetech Services -Hobbes
585-442-2884
"...proudly wearing and displaying, as a badge of honor, the
straight jacket of conventional thought."
***************************************************************
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| User: "oz" |
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| Title: Re: Carbon 14 Dating |
31 Oct 2003 09:02:37 PM |
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In article <IknowHim-3110030808570001@pm1-19.kalama.com>,
IknowHim@leavingsoon.com (IknowHimDoYou) wrote:
Carbon 14 Dating
The use of carbon 14 decay used for dating has some serious flaws.
All of which are fully recognised and taken into account in any scientific
dating procedure - generally in the form of a stated margin of error or
information as to why particular results may be inaccurate or contaminated
The Bible however totally fails to give this kind of "margin of error"
warning - even on its more ridiculous claims such as the tower of Babel,
Noahs Flood , God speaking in burning shrubbery and the derisory idea of
Original sin
So to set the Bible as a scientific work against "another" scientific work
is just plain daft - for the Bible is a theological work and not a
scientific one.
Carbon 14 dating has known errors
But not on the scale of confusing 38 million years with 4004 BC
Get real and stop being quite so bloody stupid
You are bringing Christianity into disrepute
+
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| User: "Martin Willett" |
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| Title: Re: Carbon 14 Dating |
03 Nov 2003 08:59:01 AM |
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"oz" <canterbury@england.com> wrote in message
news:canterbury-0111031402380001@ppp122.dyn12.pacific.net.au...
In article <IknowHim-3110030808570001@pm1-19.kalama.com>,
IknowHim@leavingsoon.com (IknowHimDoYou) wrote:
Carbon 14 Dating
The use of carbon 14 decay used for dating has some serious flaws.
All of which are fully recognised and taken into account in any scientific
dating procedure - generally in the form of a stated margin of error or
information as to why particular results may be inaccurate or contaminated
The Bible however totally fails to give this kind of "margin of error"
warning - even on its more ridiculous claims such as the tower of Babel,
Noahs Flood , God speaking in burning shrubbery and the derisory idea of
Original sin
So to set the Bible as a scientific work against "another" scientific work
is just plain daft - for the Bible is a theological work and not a
scientific one.
Carbon 14 dating has known errors
But not on the scale of confusing 38 million years with 4004 BC
Get real and stop being quite so bloody stupid
You are bringing Christianity into disrepute
+
It would be rather difficult to bring Christianity into much more disrepute
than it is already in, surely? Christianity is a religion, a systematic
deception, a faith. What further evidence for disrepute is there?
For a scientist belief with faith is simply gross professional misconduct.
--
Martin Willett
http://mwillett.org/
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| User: "Pastor Dave" |
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| Title: Re: Carbon 14 Dating |
03 Nov 2003 10:48:42 AM |
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On Mon, 3 Nov 2003 14:59:01 -0000, "Martin Willett"
<mwillett_temp_nov03@ntl.com> wrote:
You are bringing Christianity into disrepute
+
It would be rather difficult to bring Christianity into much more disrepute
than it is already in, surely? Christianity is a religion, a systematic
deception, a faith. What further evidence for disrepute is there?
You haven't given any evidence yet. You insult
Christianity and then claim that your insults are
proof.
For a scientist belief with faith is simply gross professional misconduct.
And yet, scientists who believe in evolution proceed by
faith every day.
--
Pastor Dave Raymond
"As for me, I have not hastened from being a pastor
to follow thee: neither have I desired the woeful day;
thou knowest: that which came out of my lips was right
before thee." - Jeremiah 17:16
When Christianity becomes religion,
it leaves the heart hungry.
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| User: "Joe Blow" |
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| Title: Re: Carbon 14 Dating |
05 Nov 2003 05:51:02 PM |
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Pastor Dave <nospam-draymond@minister.com> wrote in message news:<9m1dqvs2q0dhtlvkfqib6sqdbtlcmub3ad@4ax.com>...
On Mon, 3 Nov 2003 14:59:01 -0000, "Martin Willett"
<mwillett_temp_nov03@ntl.com> wrote:
You are bringing Christianity into disrepute
+
It would be rather difficult to bring Christianity into much more disrepute
than it is already in, surely? Christianity is a religion, a systematic
deception, a faith. What further evidence for disrepute is there?
You haven't given any evidence yet. You insult
Christianity and then claim that your insults are
proof.
For a scientist belief with faith is simply gross professional misconduct.
And yet, scientists who believe in evolution proceed by
faith every day.
If I substitute another scientific theory, would you say:
"And yet, scientists who believe in general relativity proceed by faith
every day"? I don't think so. You just act as if the scientific theories
that you dislike are not based on observation. That flies in the face
of the knowledge that you can find in the library of your closest
university. If you can get over the opinion that your faith requires
that science be wrong without any evidence, you would be a happier person.
Joe
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| User: "Pastor Dave" |
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| Title: Re: Carbon 14 Dating |
31 Oct 2003 11:50:04 AM |
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On Fri, 31 Oct 2003 08:08:57 -0800,
IknowHim@leavingsoon.com (IknowHimDoYou) wrote:
Carbon 14 Dating
The use of carbon 14 decay used for dating has some serious flaws. W.
Libby in his "Radiocarbon Dating" made several assumptions tha must be
seriously questioned(the way of true science).
The inventor himself said that it is not accurate.
--
Pastor Dave Raymond
"As for me, I have not hastened from being a pastor
to follow thee: neither have I desired the woeful day;
thou knowest: that which came out of my lips was right
before thee." - Jeremiah 17:16
"One cannot be exposed to the law and order of the
universe without concluding that there must be design
and purpose behind it all... The better we understand
the intracacies of the universe and all it harbors,
the more reason we have found to marvel at the inherent
design upon which it is based... To be forced to
believe only one conclusion --- that everything in the
universe happened by chance --- would violate the very
objectivity of science itself... What random process
could produce the brains of man or the system of the
human eye? They (evolutionists) challenge science to
prove the existence of God. But must we really light
a candle to see the Sun? ... They say they cannot
visualize a designer. Well, can a physicist visualize
an electron? ...What strange rationale makes some
physicists accept the inconceivable electron as real
while refusing to accept the reality of a Designer on
the ground that they cannot conceive Him?"
- Dennis R. Petersen, Unlocking the Mysteries
of Creation, Vol 1
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| User: "John Ings" |
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| Title: Re: Carbon 14 Dating |
31 Oct 2003 12:40:04 PM |
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On Fri, 31 Oct 2003 17:50:04 GMT, Pastor Dave
<nospam-draymond@minister.com> wrote:
The inventor himself said that it is not accurate.
Cite please. We don't believe you.
## His trouble ain't so much ignorance,
## as knowing so many things that ain't so!
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| User: "John Ings" |
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| Title: Re: Carbon 14 Dating |
31 Oct 2003 12:36:39 PM |
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On Fri, 31 Oct 2003 08:08:57 -0800,
(IknowHimDoYou) wrote:
Now, these assumptions must be proven correct before the radiocarbon
dating method can be fully trusted.
Nope. All that's needed is to check C14 dating results against other
standards, by dating artifacts of known age, or calibrating it by
dendrichronology.
## A tragedy of science; the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis
## by an ugly fact
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| User: "oz" |
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| Title: Re: Carbon 14 Dating |
31 Oct 2003 09:04:19 PM |
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QUOTE
"To see human life as fallen from a pristine and good creation
necessitating a divine rescue by the God-man is not to understand the most
elementary aspect of our evolutionary history. To view human life as
depraved or victimized by original sin is to literalize a premodern
anthropology and premodern psychology.
Yet historic Christianity has traditionally been understood in terms of
these categories. Baptism to wash way the stain of Adam's sin in the
newborn child is just one practice that emerges out of that understanding.
To frighten parents into baptism by suggesting that their unbaptized
infants might be damned to an eternity apart from God is insulting
primarily to God. Who among us could worship such a deity?
To traffic in guilt as the church has done, to take the beauty and
life-giving quality of sexual love and distort it with layer after layer
of sexual guilt is simply no longer defensible, if it ever was. Surely the
experience of the Christ in this moment of history would not result in a
use of these words and concepts to give rational form to the reality of
that experience.
If we saw an epileptic person being healed, we would not assume that the
demons had gone out of the victim. If we saw a herd of swine stampeding to
their deaths in a lake, we would not interpret it as the result of demonic
spirits having entered the herd. If we wanted to assert that human life
could not have produced the presence of God that is met in Jesus, we would
not do so by telling a virgin birth story. We do not believe, as the first
century seemed to believe, that the entire genetic makeup of the new life
was carried in the spermatozoon of the male. A virgin birth story that
deletes the male would not result for us in the divine human life of
Jesus.
If we wanted to assert that in Jesus all barriers, including the barrier
of death, have been set aside, we would not do so by turning the parable
of Lazarus and Dives, recorded only in Luke, into a historic account of
the raising of Lazarus from the dead, as the Fourth Gospel seems to do. In
Luke's parable the narrative concludes as Abraham denies the rich man's
request that Lazarus return from the dead to warn his brothers. "If they
do not hear Moses and the prophets," says Abraham, "neither will they be
convinced if someone should rise from the dead" (Luke 16:20ff). that is
exactly what happened, argued the Fourth Gospel. Lazarus was called back
into life and still no one believed. Indeed, the raising of Lazarus
resulted, according to this Gospel, in the crucifixion itself (John
11:1ff).
We could not retell the story of God providing manna in the wilderness by
suggesting that the divine nature of Jesus allowed him to expand loaves
and fish in a supernatural way, as the stories of Jesus feeding the
multitude suggested. We could not talk of resurrection as if it were
physical resuscitation, as some parts of the resurrection narratives
suggest. We would not turn the proclamation "death cannot contain him"
into empty-tomb stories of Easter, complete with angels, earthquakes,
soldiers falling over the dead men, and temple veils that kept human
beings separated from the holy of holies being ripped open. We would not
transform the ecstatic Easter cry of "He has risen," "we have seen the
Lord" into a series of ghostlike appearance stories that fight with each
other as to whether or not this risen Christ is physical or spiritual.
Did this risen Lord ask for and eat food and invite the inspection of his
wounds-suggesting a real physicality that can chew, swallow, digest, and
feel? Or did he appear and disappear at will and enter rooms where the
doors and windows were locked and barred-behavior that would suggest a
nonphysical spirit.
We would never in our day of space travel and knowledge of the vastness of
the universe try to assert that the God experienced in Jesus has been
reunited with the God who was presumed to dwell just beyond the sky by
telling the story of the cosmic ascension. We do not assume either the
flatness of the earth or the centrality of this planet that the ascension
story assumed. Our task is neither to dismiss these narratives as
prescientific and therefore to be without truth, nor to seek to wrap our
twentieth-century brains around a first-century cosmology. Rather, we
probe the story, go beneath the words, and seek to enter the experience
that produced the words.
There is a consistency to the experience of God in every age. The
inconsistency, indeed the fallacy, is in the words used to articulate the
experience, for words are both limited and dated. Literalized words always
distort experience, and if these words are frozen so firmly they cannot
change with the times, then finally literal words will render inaccessible
in another time the meaning they once conveyed.
We today do not think in natural / supernatural categories. God is not for
us a human parent figure. We do not see human life as created good and
then as fallen into sin. Human life is evolving, not always in a straight
line, but evolving nonetheless into higher and higher levels of
consciousness. We do not need the divine rescuer who battles the demonic
forces of a fallen world in the name of the creator God. We are not likely
to turn the Christ story into the mythological tale that begins with a
virgin birth and ends in the cosmic victory over death. None of these
elements of our faith story is wrong, but all of them are sorely limited
by the worldview of the first century.
That worldview has passed away. It no longer lives.
Unless the experience of our faith story can be separated from the words
and concepts of a dead worldview, it will be a dead faith story.
Those who literalize the ancient biblical text guarantee this fate to the
very religious system they think they are fighting to save.
When they try to impose their literalized version of the truth on the
whole church, they violate the integrity of the gospel and the meaning of
Scripture.
They render the experience out of which our faith story rises to be
nonsensical. they thus unwittingly become the enemies of Christ.
But if Christ is to be real for us, we must find words through which that
reality can be articulated. This is not to suggest that our words will
endure forever. Like the words of every age, our words will in time prove
to be limited by age, our ability to apprehend reality, and our
time-orientated language.
The German New Testament theologian Rudolf Bultmann, writing in the
1920's, was wrong, I believe, when he suggested the word demythologize as
the tool for bringing Christian truth out of the past and into the
present. Bultmann seemed to assume that the present is free of
"mythology." This reflects, I believe, the arrogance of modernity. What we
need to do is to demythologize in order that we might remythologize.
We must seek the truth that lies beneath the mythology of the distant past
so that we might experience that truth.
But when we put that experience into words in our day, we will not escape
the use of the subjective, inadequate words in our modern mythological
understanding of reality, for we have no objective words.
We will have succeeded only in remythologizing the truth of the Christ
event. Our efforts will serve us but for a time.
Our remythologizing process will capture truth no more eternally than did
the creators of Scripture of the framers of creeds.
Yet we must do this or we stand to lose forever what we Christians believe
to be an ultimate truth-namely, that somehow in and through the person of
Jesus of Nazareth the reality of God has become an experience in human
history that is universally available."
SPONG
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| User: "Daniel Jetson" |
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| Title: Re: Carbon 14 Dating |
31 Oct 2003 11:16:54 AM |
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IknowHimDoYou wrote:
Carbon 14 Dating
The use of carbon 14 decay used for dating has some serious flaws. W.
Libby in his "Radiocarbon Dating" made several assumptions tha must be
seriously questioned(the way of true science). A review of these
assumptions will shed light on the many problems:
Why is it you have to form the universe in your image, not the
way God made it?
1. IF the intensity of cosmic rays has remained at its present level for
the past 20,000 years or more,; and
2. IF the strength of the magnetic field has remained constant over the
span of time being dated; and
3. IF the decay rate of carbon 14 can be shown to have been constant over
the span of time being dated; and
4. IF the equilibrium in the reservoir was reached, and has stayedn
constant for a period of at least 20,000 to 30,000 years; and
5. IF the sample was not contaminated while living by other carbonates; and
6. IF the sample was not contaminated by C 14 atoms from other materials
of different age after it died; and
7. IF the oceans have remained at relatively the same depth during the
time of measurement; and
8. IF the oceans have remained at relatively the same temperature over the
time period from which the measurements is being taken;
THEN radiocarbon dates back one half-life(5730 years-and those are regular
calander years) may be comparatively correct.
Now, these assumptions must be proven correct before the radiocarbon
dating method can be fully trusted. And this task presently appears to be
improbable.
Some here throw out these measurements as evidence or confirmation of a
long, long past time series of evolutionary events but this is not backed
up by radiocarbon dating method until and unless all of the above
assumptions can be determined.
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