Re: [asa] Denver RATE Conference (Thousands...Not Billions)_Part 2

I find I agree with George. When I first read YEC stuff on radiometric age dating in 1971 I was appalled at their misrepresentation, nothing has changed in the following 36 years and YEC writers on radiometric age-dating still misrepresent and continue to use untruthful arguments which have been criticised many many times.

Is that honest?

However I have valeued the contributions of Steve and others

Michael
  ----- Original Message -----
  From: George Murphy
  To: asa@calvin.edu ; Steven M Smith
  Sent: Friday, September 28, 2007 10:07 PM
  Subject: Re: [asa] Denver RATE Conference (Thousands...Not Billions)_Part 2

  You ignore the fact that in addition to increased decay rates during the creation week there were also changes in various reaction cross sections. In particular, the reaction N14 + n --> C12 + H3 was greatly favored relative to N14 + n --> C14 + p. The tritium produced by the former reaction of course decayed quite quickly.

  <Turning off sarcasm generator>

  I appreciate the knowledgeable analysis of the RATE claims by Steve & others here but the whole thing is quite sad because we know that Baumgardner et al are possessed of invincible ignorance in this area & short of a genuine conversion experience will never be convinced that their whole program is spurious.

  Shalom
  George
  http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
    ----- Original Message -----
    From: Steven M Smith
    To: asa@calvin.edu
    Sent: Friday, September 28, 2007 3:40 PM
    Subject: Re: [asa] Denver RATE Conference (Thousands...Not Billions)_Part 2

    David Campbell wrote in response to Jon Tandy ...
    (http://www.calvin.edu/archive/asa/200709/0616.html)

>> On another subject, does anyone has any technical response
>> to Baumgardner's comment on the "excess carbon may have
>> diluted the C14 in the pre-flood world such that the initial C14/C12
>> ratio would be a lot smaller; perhaps by a factor of 100 - 500
>> times" ? This sounds to me like pure hand-waving, like "theory"
>> in the common sense of "speculation" rather than the scientific
>> sense of the word, simply to make a rhetorical argument that
>> agrees with what the audience wants to hear, i.e., that a 5000 year
>> old earth might have some scientific plausibility. Does anyone
>> know what he's talking about, and what (if any) basis it has in fact
>> or evidence?
>
> This would work only if the excess carbon was supplied by a
> source depleted in 14C, e.g., a large reservoir of carbon that
> was over 50000 years old at the time.

    Excellent point. As I understood it, Baumgardner inferred that the original primordial carbon was essentially carbon 'dead' at Creation. Therefore in his scenario, all of the C14 before the flood had been formed by atmospheric processes between Creation & the Flood. This, however, ignores their own proposal that there was a tremendous amount of accelerated nuclear decay ('AND') during the first part of the creation week. This 'AND' would have produced a huge flux of neutrons that would have reacted with any available nitrogen-14 to produce a lot of C14. Using their proposal, I would predict that C14 rates would be higher before the Flood.
    ..........................

To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@calvin.edu with
"unsubscribe asa" (no quotes) as the body of the message.
Received on Sat Sep 29 02:04:54 2007