God hides earrings which look 8000 years old in ground, to test our faith

[Robyn Banks]

July 27, 2004
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/07/26/1090693898741.html?oneclick=true

Chinese archaeologists have discovered earrings they believe are the oldest found in the world.

The jade earrings, which date to between 7500 and 8200 years ago, were unearthed at the Xinglongwa culture site in Chifeng city in Inner Mongolia, the Xinhua news agency said yesterday.

...

jade ornaments emerged on the Inner Mongolia prairie about 8000 years ago and in the Yangtze River valley 6000 to 7000 years ago.


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"I find that every sect, as far as reason will help them, makes use of it gladly; and where reason fails them, they cry out, 'It is a matter of faith and above reason'."
- John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding 2:281
RWBYN GDWTYW
Robin Banx

[Berean Todd]

jade ornaments emerged on the Inner Mongolia prairie about 8000 years ago and in the Yangtze River valley 6000 to 7000 years ago.
If you are trying to punch at the "6000 year old YEC" position, this is not much of a strike against Christian faith. Yes, many preachers have held onto the 6000 year old earth, but in fact it is impossible from the Bible to get an exact age of the earth, there are holes in the record in too many spots. Generally speaking many Hebrew scholars have come to the conclusion that from the Biblical record the earth could range anywhere in age from 6,000 - 35,000 years old.

But beyond that much larger variable in possible YEC age there, the fact is even YEC isn't nescacary to be held to for a Christian worldview ... it is entirely possible that the earth is old and that the Christian God is still God.

[Robyn Banks]

... it is impossible from the Bible to get an exact age of the earth, there are holes in the record in too many spots.... many Hebrew scholars have come to the conclusion that from the Biblical record the earth could range anywhere in age from 6,000 - 35,000 years old...

:rofl: :haha: "many Hebrew scholars". Fantastic! Literally.

Given that the years from Adam to Abraham are quite unequivocal, I wonder how you manage to get much more than 6,000 years, let alone your imaginary 35,000. Perhaps you would care to explain.

Of course, 35,000 years doesn't explain the 40,000 years old lion-man ivory-carving. So it doesn't even account for humanity's activities on the Earth, let alone the Earth itself.




even YEC isn't nescacary to be held to for a Christian worldview ... it is entirely possible that the earth is old and that the Christian God is still God.

I quite agree. But some YECs would call you a "compromiser". See Sarfati's insults to Christians who don't agree with him, in his numerous works of fiction.

Robyn Banks

[Berean Todd]

Of course, 35,000 years doesn't explain the 40,000 years old lion-man ivory-carving. So it doesn't even account for humanity's activities on the Earth, let alone the Earth itself.

When water is introduced to the equation, dating methods become very spurious, in fact fairly unreliable. Since there was the whole world-wide flood, I have no problem at all with "old dates" of various things. There are too many variables that could affect dating methods and to assume that none of them play(ed) an effect and thus accept these dates blindly just doesn't seem too logical to me frankly.

[Berean Todd]

And since you seem so keen on an old earth, go ahead and add this into your equation; excerted from an artilce from several years ago:

Does the size of the sun change over the years? Recently, "John A. Eddy (Harvard -Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and High Altitude Observatory in Boulder) and Aram A. Boornazian (a mathematician with S. Ross and Co. in Boston) have found evidence that the sun has been contracting about 0.1% per century…corresponding to a shrinkage rate of about 5 feet per hour."1 The diameter of the sun is close to one million miles, so that this shrinkage of the sun goes unnoticed over hundreds or even thousands of years. There is no cause for alarm for us or for any of our descendants for centuries to come because the sun shrinks so slowly. Yet the sun does actually appear to shrink. The data Eddy and Boornazian examined spanned a 400-year period of solar observation, so that this shrinkage of the sun, though small, is apparently continual.

INTERPRETATION

What does the shrinkage of the sun have to do with creation and evolution? The sun was larger in the past than it is now by 0.1% per century. A creationist, who may believe that the world was created approximately 6 thousand years ago, has very little to worry about. The sun would have been only 6% larger at creation than it is now. However, if the rate of change of the solar radius remained constant, 100 thousand years ago the sun would be twice the size it is now. One could hardly imagine that any life could exist under such altered conditions. Yet 100 thousand years is a minute amount of time when dealing with evolutionary time scales.2

How far back in the past must one go to have a sun so large that its surface touches the surface of the earth? The solar radius changes at 2.5 feet per hour, half the 5 feet per hour change of the solar diameter. The distance from the sun to the earth is 93 million miles, and there are 5,280 feet in one mile. Assuming (by uniformitarian-type reasoning) that the rate of shrinkage has not changed with time, then the surface of the sun would touch the surface of the earth at a time in the past equal to

t = (93,000,000 miles) (5,280 ft/mile)
(2.5 ft/hr) (24 hr/da) (365 day/yr)

or approximately 20 million B.C.

[{Tim}]

The jade earrings ... date to between 7500 and 8200 years agoI think a YEC's first response would be, "How were these dates obtained?" Since you seem somewhat familiar with YEC writings, you would know that they frequently point to weak assumptions in dating methods.

As to the argument that 'God put them there to test our faith', it's a stupid idea and anyone who believes it deserves to be shot (maybe with a water gun). :wink:


even YEC isn't nescacary to be held to for a Christian worldview ... it is entirely possible that the earth is old and that the Christian God is still God. I quite agree. But some YECs would call you a "compromiser". Note however that many (most?) YECs, although calling this a compromise view, do not claim that you cannot be a christian if you believe it, only that it makes you "inconsistent".
See for example "Do I have to believe in a literal creation to be a Christian?" (www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/Magazines/docs/v23n3_literal_creation.asp) :Conclusion

Do you have to believe in a literal Creation to be a Christian? The short answer is ‘No’. The long answer is ‘No, but …’.


See Sarfati's insults to Christians who don't agree with him, in his numerous works of fiction.I consider this to be an unnecessarily inflammatory comment. It is quite possible to state that you disagree with someone without calling him a liar (and you are implying that he is one, if he is trying to pass off 'fiction' as truth).

Given that the years from Adam to Abraham are quite unequivocal, I wonder how you manage to get much more than 6,000 years, let alone your imaginary 35,000. This I can agree with you on. The Bible clearly does not agree with an old earth (one of the reasons YECs accuse old-earth Christians of being inconsistent). Dismissing the Bible as false is one possible solution to that.

{Tim}

[{Tim}]

"However, if the rate of change of the solar radius remained constant, 100 thousand years ago the sun would be twice the size it is now. One could hardly imagine that any life could exist under such altered conditions. Yet 100 thousand years is a minute amount of time when dealing with evolutionary time scales."
...
"The solar radius changes at 2.5 feet per hour, half the 5 feet per hour change of the solar diameter. "
I suppose I'm being overly picky, but the quoted article makes some questionable assumptions about the rate of expansion. It's rather unlikely that the linear rate of shrinkage has remained constant; quite possibly it could be the volumumetric rate is constant. This would increase the time constraint somewhat. On the other hand, if the percentage rate of shrinking was constant, it would decrease the time limit.
Unfortunately we don't have a long enough observation history to determine which is the case (though astrophysics may have some suggestions). What this does do, is highlight the weakness of uniformitarian assumptions, especially over such large periods of time (and yes, 20 million years *is* a long time!).

I should also note that I agree with your comments about dating and the flood.


{Tim}


Edit: btw, What do rates of stellar expansion have to do with "Archaeology 201"? :wink:

[Berean Todd]

Edit: btw, What do rates of stellar expansion have to do with "Archaeology 201"? :wink:
The original poster was basically trying to debunk YEC dating of history by the dating of an archaeological find; I addressed the issue of dating problems, but gave a counter evidence to the root of his post, which was that YEC dating is spurious.

[Nicholas]

I know that this is off topic but I can't help but to reply to the shrinking sun post.
There is no evidence that the sun is shrinking that I have heard of, it has been debunked by the Talk Origins site, but I will explain it in a simple way, in my own words.
The Sun is balanced by the force of gravity which tries to squeeze it into a tiny ball and the Fusion reactions going on in it's core which try to cause it to expand. Now, at this moment the sun is fairly well balanced between these forces, but when the hydrogen fuel runs out the sun wil have to fuse helium and this will cause it to expand. If the forces were not in balance the sun would expand in a super nova, incinerating everything in the solar system, or it would be compressed into a super dense ball (I can't remember if it would be a white dwarf, but I cannot be sure if that is formed from the remnants of a supernova).

[{Tim}]

The original poster was basically trying to debunk YEC dating of history by the dating of an archaeological find; I addressed the issue of dating problems, but gave a counter evidence to the root of his post, which was that YEC dating is spurious.Fair enough. I was half-joking anyway.

There is no evidence that the sun is shrinking that I have heard of, it has been debunked by the Talk Origins site, but I will explain it in a simple way, in my own words.So they refuted the observations by talking about them? :huh: :argue:
And how can they debunk what you just said was non-existent evidence, anyway? :doh:
-- Yes I am making fun of you, but don't take it personally. :smile: I'm going to be serious for the rest of this post, now.

OK, so the current solar model does not include any solar expansin/shrinkage (from what you've said - I haven't studied it in detail myself). But, remember, this is a theory created to describe reality. If we *do* discover operational evidence that the sun is shrinking or expanding, the theory can no doubt be updated to reflect this. This is how science works, remember. So arguing that "the sun cannot be shrinking because the theory says it won't happen" is therefore not a valid argument.

However, I still don't think the solar expansion argument is very strong. As I said in my earlier post, the current data is simply insufficient for extrapolating to such long time-scales. (btw, this is not to say that I necessarily oppose YEC, only that I don't think this particular argument is a very good one.)

Comments?

{Tim}

[Maimonides]

When water is introduced to the equation, dating methods become very spurious, in fact fairly unreliable. Since there was the whole world-wide flood, I have no problem at all with "old dates" of various things. There are too many variables that could affect dating methods and to assume that none of them play(ed) an effect and thus accept these dates blindly just doesn't seem too logical to me frankly.
Really? I think somebody tried to tell me this before. Archaeology happens to be something of an old hobby of mine, so let's try to clear this one up.
Water can be an issue in Carbon dating, if it carries contaminants that could alter the amount of undecayed Carbon-14. So if you have (for example) an eleven-thousand year old artifact in a cave, and water carrying dissolved limestone enters it and saturates it, it may make the date appear older or younger (say eight thousand years instead of eleven). Don't take my word on this, of course, but it's well-documented: contamination frequently skews dates to give younger ages. In our hypothetical situation, the limestone altered the date because it is carrying calcium carbonates with differing quantities of C-14. When the excess C-14 and C-12 are added to our hypothetical artifact, we get a different date because the ratio has changed.
As to the claim (so often repeated), that radiometric dates are a matter of faith, I can say quite confidently that they are not. Radiometric dating is based on the scientific principles of radioisotopic decay, where unstable isotopes decay to become more stable elements. As long as we know how much we started with and how much is there, we're on firm ground.
www.talk.origins.com (http://www.talk.origins.com) has good information on this; I might also recommend:
http://web.archive.org/web/20001109133000/www.infidels.org/library/modern/dave_matson/young-earth/

[Maimonides]

Fair enough. I was half-joking anyway.

So they refuted the observations by talking about them? :huh: :argue:
And how can they debunk what you just said was non-existent evidence, anyway? :doh:
-- Yes I am making fun of you, but don't take it personally. :smile: I'm going to be serious for the rest of this post, now.

OK, so the current solar model does not include any solar expansin/shrinkage (from what you've said - I haven't studied it in detail myself). But, remember, this is a theory created to describe reality. If we *do* discover operational evidence that the sun is shrinking or expanding, the theory can no doubt be updated to reflect this. This is how science works, remember. So arguing that "the sun cannot be shrinking because the theory says it won't happen" is therefore not a valid argument.

However, I still don't think the solar expansion argument is very strong. As I said in my earlier post, the current data is simply insufficient for extrapolating to such long time-scales. (btw, this is not to say that I necessarily oppose YEC, only that I don't think this particular argument is a very good one.)

Comments?

{Tim}
Good point in that last. As for the rest... get thee hither, hie unto these websites: http://www.religioustolerance.org/ev_young.htm some good stuff here, debunks a number of YEC arguments. Sun should be on the list.
http://web.archive.org/web/20001117214800/www.infidels.org/library/modern/dave_matson/young-earth/specific_arguments/sun_shrinking.html
This is a long URL, but it will take you directly to an article thoroughly debunking the shrinking sun. Frankly, this is one of a laundry-list of claims still postulated by YECs that have all been thoroughly refuted long ago.