Ignorance, pt. 1
I drove to school yesterday morning and saw this written in University of Akron type on a University of Akron sign on the side of the road: "Scientific Evidence for Creation"
It took all of my self-control not to run the damn thing over.
In any case, my colleagues and I quickly learned that the University is hosting a series of lectures this week (sponsored by a church, btw) by "Dr." Don Patton. I use his title loosely, because his accredation is under serious scrutiny, even by fellow creationists. The problem here isn't that he's a creationist (depending on your definition of the term, it can fit nicely with scientific evidence for evolution). The problem is that he is a young earth creationist. This is problematic because it literally dismisses everything I do.
For those of you who are unfamiliar with the idea, young earth creationists believe that the earth is only 6-10,000 years old. They base this on genealogy in the Bible. They teach that radiometric dating is hopelessly flawed and that sedimentation rates must be very rapid. In some aspects, this is corrrect. Unfortunately, they don't tell you the whole story. This guy sure as hell didn't.
He gave examples of radiocarbon dating done on dinosaur bones. The dates came back at anywhere from 980 to 19,000 years. This, he says, proves radiocarbon dating is not accurate. What he failed to mention is that radiocarbon dating is only good for organic material less than fifty thousand years old. Of course the dinosaur dates are going to come back wrong, considering they were one hundred and ten MILLION years old!
He also mentioned that a rock from the lava dome of Mt. St. Helens, known to be only 11 years old at the time (the rock, not the mountain!), was Potassium-Argon dated to be millions of years old. Any working geologist (certainly geochronologists) knows that K-Ar dating doesn't work on rocks that are only 20-30 years old. Again, what the hell?! Are they purposely selecting material that won't provide an accurate date?
Anyway, I got to run to work. To be continued...
It took all of my self-control not to run the damn thing over.
In any case, my colleagues and I quickly learned that the University is hosting a series of lectures this week (sponsored by a church, btw) by "Dr." Don Patton. I use his title loosely, because his accredation is under serious scrutiny, even by fellow creationists. The problem here isn't that he's a creationist (depending on your definition of the term, it can fit nicely with scientific evidence for evolution). The problem is that he is a young earth creationist. This is problematic because it literally dismisses everything I do.
For those of you who are unfamiliar with the idea, young earth creationists believe that the earth is only 6-10,000 years old. They base this on genealogy in the Bible. They teach that radiometric dating is hopelessly flawed and that sedimentation rates must be very rapid. In some aspects, this is corrrect. Unfortunately, they don't tell you the whole story. This guy sure as hell didn't.
He gave examples of radiocarbon dating done on dinosaur bones. The dates came back at anywhere from 980 to 19,000 years. This, he says, proves radiocarbon dating is not accurate. What he failed to mention is that radiocarbon dating is only good for organic material less than fifty thousand years old. Of course the dinosaur dates are going to come back wrong, considering they were one hundred and ten MILLION years old!
He also mentioned that a rock from the lava dome of Mt. St. Helens, known to be only 11 years old at the time (the rock, not the mountain!), was Potassium-Argon dated to be millions of years old. Any working geologist (certainly geochronologists) knows that K-Ar dating doesn't work on rocks that are only 20-30 years old. Again, what the hell?! Are they purposely selecting material that won't provide an accurate date?
Anyway, I got to run to work. To be continued...