On Thu, 28 Mar 1996 17:42:41 GMT you wrote:
DT>Abstract: Follow-on discussion of presuppositions in "science"
>
>Steve Jones wrote on 25th March:
SJ>"We can `accept' the Bible" and "We can `accept' science".
>I was only giving "basic" positions - I did not pretend to give
>every nuance of accepting science and the Bible.
DT>Yes - I knew it really :-) I wanted to make a point - that
>"accepting the Bible" and "accepting science" means different
>things to different people.
Of course.
DT>I'll skip some threads where it seems to me that we are in
>essential agreement, and move to your evidences for an Old Earth.
OK.
>SJ "1. Evidence for ordinary rate processes 100 years before
>Darwin were sufficient to establish that the earth was millions
>of years old."
>
>DT: "There are a few cases of theorists speculating about millions
>of years - but 100 years before Darwin most people who had a
>contribution in earth science did not adopt long chronologies."
>
>SJ: "I was following Hayward:
>"...It is important to note that it was in the eighteenth century
>that this first happened - well before Darwin was born. The
>pioneer geologist James Hutton, for instance, wrote that he could
>see 'no vestige of a beginning' to the earth's history - and he
>died in 1797."
>While "100 years" may be an overstatement, the fact is that
>scientific belief in an old Earth pre-dated Darwin."
DT>I suppose I was reacting to the overstatement. Long geological
>ages were beginning to be proposed 100 years before Darwin, and
>I accept that by the time of Hutton, most of the active
>geological writers accepted long geological timescales.
>
>SJ " ... even the catastrophists believed in an old Earth:
>"...Lyell...set up a straw man to demolish. By 1830, no serious
>scientific catastrophist believed that cataclysms had a
>supernatural cause or that the earth was 6,000 years old ...
>(Gould S.J., "Ever Since Darwin", Penguin: London, 1977, p149)
DT>This is not correct. I could point to Young: who wrote the first
>serious geological memoir of the Yorkshire coast rocks in England
>(now regarded as a "classic" sequence). He published the first
>edition in 1822 and the second in 1828. Also, to Brande at the
>Royal Institution and a colleague of Michael Faraday. He was a
>geochemist and wrote a textbook on rocks in 1829. These were
>serious scientific catastrophists who considered that the Earth
>was young and accepted the Genesis account as narrative/history.
>There are quite a few others in this period - they've had a bad
>press over the years because they were "wrong", but the history
>of science needs to be re-examined to evaluate these men in
>context.
No doubt Gould is exaggerating as usual! :-) I am always a bit
dubious when I read things like "no serious scientific...". In
such cases "serious" means people who agree with the writer! :-)
But nevertheless, Gould's main point is that the leading
catastrophists like Cuvier and Agassiz did not believe in a young
Earth.
DT>Regarding radiometric dating, you responded to my comments:
SJ>"Again, all this is very interesting and no doubt the radiometric
>dating may be "partly wrong" as I said above. But even if it's
>99% wrong, that would be no comfort to a YEC. The remaining 1%
>would still be 46 million years!"
DT>My objective was to point out the way presuppositions operate,
>and to give a couple of examples of it in geo-chronology. Your
>comment presupposes that the presuppositions of these radiometric
>dating methods are valid. But if the isotopic data is better
>understood in terms of geochemical or non-radiogenic geophysical
>causes, the data is not meaningful in a chronological sense. My
>concern is that the academic world is NOT alert to, or even
>looking for, such alternative perspectives on the data.
No doubt. I would not be surprised if radiometric dating was out by a
factor of 2 or even 10. But that it is out by a factor of 1 million,
is IMHO out of the question.
DT>Regarding the arguments from cosmology, I suggested an
>alternative to the following presupposition:
>DT: "For example, instead of thinking that the universe is
>infinite and it appears the same from every perspective within
>it, try developing the idea that the universe is finite."
>
>You replied:
>SJ: "Who argues that "the universe is infinite"? If it's
>"between 8 and 20 billion years old", then it's by definition
>"finite"!"
DT>ALL modern mathematical representations of the cosmos use the
>Copernican Principle: our position in space is not special in any
>way and so we can consider the universe spatially homogeneous.
>This means that, as far as the maths is concerned, the universe
>is unbounded and infinite.
Well, so much the worse for "maths"! :-)
DT>Your fourth line of evidence was that there are no sustainable
>evidences for a young earth, and I concurred, adding:
>DT>In my view, all "clocks" have been so disrupted by
>catastrophes in the past that we cannot be sure of the accuracy
>of any dating method."
>SJ: "I do not claim that "all `clocks' have been so disrupted by
>catastrophes in the past", although I once thought this was
>possible. However my agnostic evolutionist fidonet former
>sparring partner Derek Mclarnen (a lurker on the Reflector) has
>pointed out that neutron fluxes from supernovae cannot penetrate
>more than a few metres and neutrinos have little or no effect.
>There seems to be no other known mechanisms AFAIK to effect the
>drastic resetting of radiometric clocks required by YEC."
DT>To my knowledge, this mechanism has been invoked only by Melvin
>Cook in "Prehistory and Earth Models" (1966) - in the context of
>the U-Th-Pb decay series. (He claims it is relevant also to Rb-
>Sr and K-Ar dating, but does not develop this significantly).
>I have to acknowledge that I am open-minded about its relevance
>at present. However, I think that it needs more serious
>discussion than it has been given.
>
>In his "Scientific Prehistory" (1993), Melvin Cook writes:
>"Fast neutron physics seems to provide the explanation for the
>neutron flux seen in U-Th minerals showing the effects of alpha-
>recoil from fission reactions. The theory given in PEM, while
>fundamentally sound, need not be repeated here except for the
>following summary: ..."
>I note that he is still enthusiastic about this mechanism after
>30 years. He provides examples of data emerging over this period
>which suggest that this transmutation mechanism is more
>defensible now than it was in 1966. Very low neutron fluxes are
>suggested to be all that's needed. Melvin Cook is a serious
>writer and deserves more attention than he's been given.
I don't know who "Melvin Cook" is, but I understand it is an
established fact that neutrons are absorbed by matter. But again,
even non-radiometric dating suggests the Earth is hundreds of
millions of years old, as even Creation-Science literature admits:
"Salt is continually being washed into the sea. It has been
calculated that, even allowing for the formation of rock salt by
evaporation and making the unlikely assumption that no salt was there
in the first place, an absolute maximum of 200 million years would
give the amount now found. Again, this is far short of the 1,000
million years required by evolution." (Baker S., "Bone of Contention"
Evangelical Press: Hertfordshire, Creation Science Foundation
reprint, 1976, p26).
DT>I indicated that I thought some dating methods (giving C-14 as
>an example) could provide relative dates, although "our general
>desire to define accurately a chronology of the earth will always
>meet insurmountable problems."
>
>SJ: "There seems to a little bit of YEC-style verbal sleight of
>hand here? :-) (I am not claiming you are a YEC David, but this
>type of argument is common in YEC literature). It is not enough
>that "`clocks" have been so disrupted...in the past that we
>cannot be sure of the accuracy of any dating method". YEC
>depends not on "clocks" being merely "disrupted" but being
>continually reset back to zero! YEC needs not merely that "we
>cannot be sure of the accuracy of any dating method", but the
>radiometric dating method must be wrong to a fantastic degree
>that is quite unprecedented in science."
DT>How do I respond to this! Please bear in mind that the exchange
>is about PRESUPPOSITIONS. I am suggesting that, in general, the
>various methods do not provide evidence for age without these
>presuppositions (which are inseparably linked to the assumption
>of great ages). Radiocarbon is different because it can be
>calibrated with samples of known age. This reveals that although
>variations in atmospheric C-14 concentration have occurred, a
>pattern is still present and meaningful.
OK. Sorry. But my point is that a lot of YEC literature claims that
radiometric dating is wrong in a few selected cases (eg. lava flows
in Hawaii, etc), but they do not point out that it has to be
everywhere *totally* and *utterly* wrong, such that an apparent age
of billions of years becomes thousands.
I agree that "presuppositions" may be a factor in claims for an
extreme age of the Earth (eg. 4.6 billion years old), but even
granting such "presuppositions", the age of the Earth is still far too
old for YEC.
DT>To conclude by returning to the beginning of this response: to
>say we "believe science" is over-simplistic. Science cannot be
>separated from its presuppositions. The big debates in science
>are all over presuppositions - whether it be over the role of DNA
>or the meaning of isotopic variations found in rocks. I think that
>everyone participating in this Reflector is committed to the
>scientific enterprise - but much of where we differ concerns
>underlying presuppositions.
Agreed. "Presuppositions" are a major factor where there is little or
no experimental testing, eg. chemical evolution and Darwinist
macro-evolution. But I doubt if they are material to the YEC cause in
the case of geology.
God bless.
Steve
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