Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site utastro.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!gamma!epsilon!zeta!sabre!bellcore!decvax!mcnc!philabs!cmcl2!seismo!ut-sally!utastro!bill From: bill@utastro.UUCP (William H. Jefferys) Newsgroups: net.origins Subject: Re: The Scientific Case for Creation: (Part 31) Message-ID: <322@utastro.UUCP> Date: Tue, 9-Jul-85 09:29:16 EDT Article-I.D.: utastro.322 Posted: Tue Jul 9 09:29:16 1985 Date-Received: Fri, 12-Jul-85 04:22:41 EDT References: <385@iham1.UUCP> <537@psivax.UUCP> Distribution: net Organization: U. Texas, Astronomy, Austin, TX Lines: 41 > > 58. A major assumption that underlies all radioactive dating > > techniques is that the rates of decay, which have been > > essentially constant over the past 70 years, have also > > been constant over the past 4,600,000,000 years. This > > bold, critical, and untestable assumption is made even > > though no one knows what causes radioactive decay. > > Furthermore, there is conflicting evidence that suggests > > that radioactive decay has not always been constant but > > has varied by many orders of magnitude from that observed > > today [a,b]. This reminds me of the advice they are said to give to new lawyers: When the facts contradict you, argue the law. When the law contradicts you, argue the facts. And when both the facts and the law contradict you, argue as loudly as you can. The plain fact is that if beta-decay constants had varied even a small amount from the values we observe today, the consistencies we observe between one radiochronometer and another would not be possible. Even if we accepted for the sake of argument the hypothesis that radioactive decay rates have varied, the variation would have to take place at a very small rate for Carbon-14 dating to agree as well as it does with historically validated dates (of tree rings and Egyptian dynasties) over the past few thousand years. If you admit the possibility of the *same* variation affecting dating methods that are valid for longer periods of time (such as U-Pb dating), you still cannot avoid the conclusion that the Earth is still hundreds of millions of years old, if not older. In any case, what are we to think of people who claim to be putting forward a *scientific* case, yet when the scientific facts are plainly against them, argue that one should ignore them on the grounds that we have only been observing them for 70 years? -- "Men never do evil so cheerfully and so completely as when they do so from religious conviction." -- Blaise Pascal Bill Jefferys 8-% Astronomy Dept, University of Texas, Austin TX 78712 (USnail) {allegra,ihnp4}!{ut-sally,noao}!utastro!bill (uucp) bill%utastro.UTEXAS@ut-sally.ARPA (ARPANET)