Friday, August 01, 2008

How Many Fallacies/Errors Can You Spot?

Over at Jacob Da Jew's blog, we're discussing the Age of the Universe. One of the commentators on that blog came up with this:

Also please keep in mind that a short while after the world was created there was a worldwide flood and for 40 days and nights (to represent a mikvah and to clean the world) everything was submerged in water (acc. to some opinions this water was actually burning sulfur [this is an answer to the "scientists" who believe we started as a sulfur world]). Have you ever put your hand or anything for that matter in water for a few hours? what happens? it shrivels up looks much older! now try it for 40 days and nights! Now try it with burning sulfur! this is another explanation as to why the world looks so much older than it actually is.

and

As a side point, I pointed out that according to some opinions the world was submerged in sulfur for 40 days and nights. According to college level science when things are submerged for extended times in liquids especially if those liquids are hot (and especially boiling) they take on properties of being appearing to be older. This can help explain why there are fossils that carbon date to millions of years ago!
All of this about things looking older is not an answer to the question at hand i.e. why the world was created developed, this is an answer as to how "scientists" can carbon date things back millions of years!

OK, without looking at my comments on Jacob's blog, how many fallacies and/or errors can you spot in those 231 words?

The Wolf

7 comments:

DAG said...

Wolfie...from what i see, The Kohain genetic project used the same technology, but was conducted as a study seperate and distinct from the Genographic study

Larry Lennhoff said...

Science errors: One biggie is that we don't judge how old things are by looks, we use radioactive dating that wouldn't be affected by submersion in burning sulfur.
Carbon dating, btw is only good for a few thousand years and is not the form of radioactive dating used for the age of rocks and the like.

Furthermore unless we assume an unmentioned miracle there are none of the traces you would expect to be left by the residue of the burning sulfur water after it receded.

What the heck are "the properties of appearing to be older" anyway?

Also, the genetics of humanity don't work if you assume a bottleneck of 9 people 5000 years ago. And how did animals get to Australia and the Pacific islands post flood anyway? Humanity is explained by the dispersion after the tower of Babel, but not the animals, and especially not their diversity by location.

Biblical: The Earth was submerged for a long time - 40 days and 40 nights was how long the rain lasted. It was nearly a year, IIRC, before the ark landed.

Eretz Yisrael was not covered by the flood according to some sources, but the world does not appear to be younger there.

If Hashem wanted to purify the world, he'd need to flood it with some of the red heifer liquid - corpses immersed in a mikveh remain tamei.


OK, bored now. Shabbat Shalom

Anonymous said...

Ok, I'll try.
The fossils don't just look older, they show different forms of life than we have now.
If it was hot sulfur, what would have happened to the ark? The smell would have done them in, even if the structure was solid.
On the other hand, if it was water, then the rocks would have become a bit smoother, but I don't see how they would have shriveled up and looked older. We can look at rocks now that have been underwater for years--we can tell roughly how old they are.
What was the need for a worldwide flood if the problems were just in the Mid-east?
If it was sulfur and it had the effects the author claimed, we'd expect to see abrupt changes occurring around the time of the flood. The author doesn't describe any such changes.


Ichabod Chrain

ProfK said...

The author states "Have you ever put your hand or anything for that matter in water for a few hours?" Analogy does not apply to "non-living matter" such as rocks and dirt. What we would look like after a a 40-day submersion is not what the physical world might look like. You can't argue from one to the other.

Anonymous said...

Nevermind scientific theory. Didn't this guy ever pick a rock up off the bottom of a lake or at the beach? If he had, he would have known that rocks don't shrivel up in water. Even a scientific illerterate should no that.

-suitepotato- said...

mike s. : "Even a scientific illerterate should no that"

You mean, even a scientific ILLITERATE should KNOW that.

I point this out at to why the person at hand is ignoring it. We have blinders on as we go through life, discriminating between what is important to our mentality, personality, beliefs, and even just task at hand.

In your case, you were flying along and just didn't spell it correctly, even though in between fingers hitting keyboard, there was probably a level of your mind that noted the mistake, but forged ahead anyhow without the uppermost part paying any attention.

In this man's case, he's flying along with what he thinks is a good idea that salvages the literal inerrancy of the Torah which otherwise his world would become not so nice a place, and ignores what that part of him which would tell him that rocks don't shrivel, flying on to wherever he's headed for the moment.

Reasons differ every time, but they all come down to trying to leap the potholes and not smash the suspension.

Anonymous said...

why do you even bother with this stuff? he puts the word scientists in " ". that tells you all you need to know, which is that the writer is a jerk. ignore him and his ilk and move on ...