BTGBullseye

Well, seeing as we're on to topics that can't be discussed comprehensively without bringing religion into it, I thought this might be a good controversy to debate...

Most public schools are teaching the Evolution theory as fact... It doesn't have even one single shred of supporting evidence, which is why it's still theory; however as I went through public school, I know that they portray it as a fact of life. Linked with this is the carbon dating method.

Carbon has a weight of twelve atomic mass units (AMU’s), and is the building block of all organic matter (plants and animals). A small percentage of carbon atoms have an atomic weight of 14 AMU’s. This is carbon-14. Carbon-14 is an unstable, radioactive isotope of carbon 12. As with any radioactive isotope, carbon-14 decays over time. The half-life of carbon 14 is approximate 5,730 years. That means if you took one pound of 100 percent carbon-14, in 5,730 years, you would only have half a pound left.

 

Carbon-14 is created in the upper atmosphere as nitrogen atoms are bombarded by cosmic radiation. For every one trillion carbon-12 atoms, you will find one carbon-14 atoms. The carbon-14 that results from the reaction caused by cosmic radiation quickly changes to carbon dioxide, just like normal carbon-12. Plants utilize, or “breath in” carbon dioxide, then ultimately release oxygen for animals to inhale. The carbon-14 dioxide is utilized by plants in the same way normal carbon dioxide is. This carbon-14 dioxide then ends up in humans and other animals as it moves up the food chain.

 

There is then a ratio of carbon-14 to carbon-12 in the bodies of plants, humans, and other animals that can fluctuate, but will be fixed at the time of death. After death, the carbon-14 would begin to decay at the rate stated above. In 1948, Dr. W.F. Libby introduced the carbon-14 dating method at the University of Chicago. The premise behind the method is to determine the ratio of carbon-14 left in organic matter, and by doing so, estimate how long ago death occurred by running the ratio backwards. The accuracy of this method, however, relies on several faulty assumptions.

First, for carbon-14 dating to be accurate, one must assume the rate of decay of carbon-14 has remained constant over the years. However, evidence indicates that the opposite is true. Experiments have been performed using the radioactive isotopes of uranium-238 and iron-57, and have shown that rates can and do vary. In fact, changing the environments surrounding the samples can alter decay rates.

 

The second faulty assumption is that the rate of carbon-14 formation has remained constant over the years. There are a few reasons to believe this assumption is erroneous. The industrial revolution greatly increased the amount of carbon-12 released into the atmosphere through the burning of coal. Also, the atomic bomb testing around 1950 caused a rise in neutrons, which increased carbon-14 concentrations. The great flood which Noah and his family survived would have uprooted and/or buried entire forests. This would decrease the release of carbon-12 to the atmosphere through the decay of vegetation.

 

Third, for carbon-14 dating to be accurate, the concentrations of carbon-14 and carbon-12 must have remained constant in the atmosphere. In addition to the reasons mentioned in the previous paragraph, the flood provides more evidence that this is a faulty assumption. During the flood, subterranean water chambers that were under great pressure would have been breached. This would have resulted in an enormous amount of carbon-12 being released into the oceans and atmosphere. The effect would be not unlike opening a can of soda and having the carbon dioxide fizzing out. The water in these subterranean chambers would not have contained carbon-14, as the water was shielded from cosmic radiation. This would have upset the ratio of carbon-14 to carbon-12.

 

To make carbon-14 dating work, Dr. Libby also assumed that the amount of carbon-14 being presently produced had equaled the amount of carbon-12 – he assumed that they had reached a balance. The formation of carbon-14 increases with time, and at the time of creation was probably at or near zero. Since carbon-14 is radioactive, it begins to decay immediately as it’s formed. If you start with no carbon-14 in the atmosphere, it would take over 50,000 years for the amount being produced to reach equilibrium with the amount decaying. One of the reasons we know that the earth is less than 50,000 years old is because of the biblical record. Another is that the amount of carbon-14 in the atmosphere is only 78% what it would be if the earth were older.

 

Finally, Dr. Libby and the evolutionist crowd have assumed that all plant and animal life utilize carbon-14 equally as they do carbon-12. To be grammatically crass, this ain’t necessarily so. Live mollusks off the Hawaiian coast have had their shells dated with the carbon-14 method. These test showed that the shells died 2000 years ago! This news came as quite a shock to the mollusks that had been using those shells until just recently.

 

We’ve listed five faulty assumptions here that have caused overestimates of age using the carbon-14 method. The list of non-compliant dates from this method is endless. Most evolutionists today would conclude that carbon-14 dating is – at best – reliable for only the last 3000 to 3500 years. There is another reason that carbon-14 dating has yielded questionable results – human bias.

 

If you’ve ever been part of a medical study, you’re probably familiar with the terms “blind study” and “double-blind study”. In a blind study, using carbon-14 dating for example, a person would send in a few quality control samples along with the actual sample to the laboratory. The laboratory analyst should not know which sample is the one of interest. In this way, the analyst could not introduce bias into the dating of the actual sample. In a double-blind study (using an experimental drug study as an example), some patients will be given the experimental drug, while others will be given a placebo (a harmless sugar pill). Neither the patients nor the doctors while know who gets what. This provides an added layer of protection against bias.

 

Radiocarbon dates that do not fit a desired theory are often excluded by alleging cross-contamination of the sample. In this manner, an evolutionist can present a sample for analysis, and tell the laboratory that he assumes the sample to be somewhere between 50,000 years old and 100,000 years old. Dates that do not conform to this estimate are thrown out. Repeated testing of the sample may show nine tests that indicate an age of 5000 to 10,000 years old, and one test that shows an age of 65,000 years old. The nine results showing ages that do not conform to the pre-supposed theory are excluded. This is bad science, and it is practiced all the time to fit with the evolutionary model.

The Shroud of Turin, claimed to be the burial cloth of Christ, was supposedly dated by a blind test. Actually, the control specimens were so dissimilar that the technicians at the three laboratories making the measurements could easily tell which specimen was from the Shroud. This would be like taking a piece of wood and two marbles and submitting them to the lab with the instructions that “one of these is from an ancient ponderosa pine, guess which.” The test would have been blind if the specimens had been reduced to carbon powder before they were given to the testing laboratories. Humans are naturally biased. We tend to see what we want to see, and explain away unwanted data.

 

Perhaps the best description of the problem in attempting to use the Carbon-14 dating method is to be found in the words of Dr. Robert Lee. In 1981, he wrote an article for the Anthropological Journal of Canada, in which stated:

 

"The troubles of the radiocarbon dating method are undeniably deep and serious. Despite 35 years of technological refinement and better understanding, the underlying assumptions have been strongly challenged, and warnings are out that radiocarbon may soon find itself in a crisis situation. Continuing use of the method depends on a fix-it-as-we-go approach, allowing for contamination here, fractionation there, and calibration whenever possible. It should be no surprise then, that fully half of the dates are rejected. The wonder is, surely, that the remaining half has come to be accepted…. No matter how useful it is, though, the radiocarbon method is still not capable of yielding accurate and reliable results. There are gross discrepancies, the chronology is uneven and relative, and the accepted dates are actually the selected dates.”

 

The accuracy of carbon-14 dating relies on faulty assumptions, and is subject to human bias. At best, radiocarbon dating is only accurate for the past few thousand years. As we’ve seen though, even relatively youthful samples are often dated incorrectly. The Biblical record gives us an indication of an earth that is relatively young. The most reliable use of radiocarbon dating supports that position. This method of dating, overall, tends to be as faulty and ill conceived as the evolutionary model that it was designed to support.

If you're issue is with the "biblical" parts of this, the flood is scientific fact, (all real scientists have accepted it, and so have the kooks that aren't blatantly kooks) and the bible's version of history (apart from god and the rising from the dead stuff) is widely accepted, even amongst evolutionists.

Now for the fossil record argument... (not the carbon dating part, since that's already covered)

There has never been any supporting fossils, or recorded mutations that would even come close to being a link between humans and any other creature. Look it up, it's common knowledge. Seems like there should be at least ONE skeleton or bone to support evolution if it actually happened... I mean seriously, not even one generation of human/ape hybrids?!?

I have just presented an extremely small selection of disproving evidence for the evolution side, and why evolution shouldn't be taught in schools. (bad science all around) Anyone willing to try disproving creationism with as much evidence?

1. GODDAMN CLIFFHANGERS

2. This is freaking awesome - I want a sequel

3. I heard the Cthulhu reference when Dave was muttering

4. I want a sequel

5. This is amazing

6. I want a sequel

 

Freaking fantastic. I'm gonna go watch it again.

Agreed!

has anyone tried calling machinima? i was able to find their contact info even though they don't publish it (thanks Google). i was wondering if anyone else had tried to contact them and stumbled across the same contact info i did. i've tried everything but calling; they aren't responding to emails, facebook messages, or youtube messages.

 

Machinima

1149 North Gower Street

Los Angeles, CA 90038

United States

 

Founded in 2000

 

Phone:

323-785-2332

http://www.machinima.com

 

 

Crap. Now I need to buy a plane ticket to California AND get siege weapons past airport security.

Siege weapons are easy, just take them apart, ship 'em UPS next day, (use heavy duty packaging though) and reassemble on site...

Knives are easy, just buy ceramic. Same for guns... (ceramic Glocks)

Explosives are the easiest, but I'm not telling you how to get them by, since they can be made with household stuff, and I'll likely be stalked by the CIA if I posted the "how to" online...

Now hard is when you try getting keychains and hairdryers past security.

I just noticed that it seems to lock up more often the more people that are logged in...

Check the max server load setting... That was the problem on my hack site a while back, had it set to 5, which is way too low...

Listening to the movie Lightning Jack that my Dad and Bro are watching in the other room...

At the rate we are losing posters, you might end up talking to yourself...

Not quite, I never give up on forums... I have one I still check every couple days that hasn't had a new post in nearly a year... lol

Sooooooo... Free range??

If only the price was less than double or triple the regular...

I never had any problems accessing the forum except during the short downtime.

The rest of us are getting "Forum Temporarily Unavailable" messages, but they seem to be less often now for some reason...

Might want to check the server for viruses, and maybe do a restart...

Right now I'm contemplating the day ahead.

I hope the site is stable now (I have not seen a "Forum Unavailable" message yet today) and those idiots over at Machinima.com finally feel good and ready to post "The Tunnel".

I'm posting between messages now... It's not stable yet...

Might want to check the server for a virus...

Ok, back on topic about the oil problem...

My sister worked for El Paso Natural Gas Company for about a year, and this is something interesting that she noticed in their files...

There is an inexpensive way (less than $1000) to convert your normal gasoline powered car over to Natural Gas. There are many benefits to doing it too. You could easily have a gas line in your garage so you can fill up at home... Natural Gas is one of the few "unlimited" resources we have... It burns much cleaner than gasoline... It is much cheaper per gallon than gasoline... The US is second only to Russia in Natural Gas extraction...

I could say more, but it's early, and I need my sleep...

Soundtrack for the movie Moon.

Spend all my money on games I'll probly only play for a few weeks before leaving them to gather dust...

Brag that I'm a mod on a hack site, but then don't hack in-game, and expect people to believe I'm not hacking...

Play World of Warcraft...

Torrent 200GB of HD movies, and never buy them... (I have a good excuse for it though, those are the movies that aren't available in the local stores)

This IS the most biased poll ever. The only thing that would make it more biased would be to give Ep 1 0 votes.

Just ask a mod, I'm sure they can do it... lol

I used to love Crazy Taxi...

Hoping the site will finally work as good as it did for the first week...

so do you guys know what is messing with the forums and causing the issues with loading? i know its out of your control but i'm curious.

I'd guess it was the bots...

 

Just put a box that you have to answer a question each time you do a search, that fixes the bot problem.

+1 (what the hell happened your rep?)

 

In addition to that, make sure the answer of the question isn't in google's search results if you were to search the question on google

I want to get the lowest rep possible, so my rep is reversed... If you like what I post, give me -rep... lol

Most of the question boxes used for search features that I've seen rotate between a selection of 5-25 different questions. Then it doesn't matter if the questions are found on Google.

Yeah, I have them installed in my Windows fonts folder... I use them sometimes when I make a tutorial for a game.

I actually never read that before, my source was a printed science magazine from some years back. Maybe their source was a wiki article? Hmmm. . .

That's very a common thing for "tech" or "science" magazines to do when they don't really know anything about the subject.

I was going to recommend a book that I read a while back, taught me much about quantum computers, but I can't seem to remember it's name. (and I can't find it on any list, I think it was c.2001 publish date, had lots of humor in it too)

This is me after a long day of welding...

That's with me trying to smile...

Trying to post in between the "forum unavailable" messages...

Alrighty. Also your example image seems to have actually been deleted. It's got that default Photobucket image ("This image or video has been moved or deleted").

Yeah, I decided to update the pic using a view of the icons from the folder I stored them in... They're on either side of the original HL2 icon for easier comparison. (the old pic sucked)

so do you guys know what is messing with the forums and causing the issues with loading? i know its out of your control but i'm curious.

I'd guess it was the bots...

Just put a box that you have to answer a question each time you do a search, that fixes the bot problem.

The look pretty nice, although the outer edge of both icons looks a bit choppy compared with the nice and smooth inside. Other than that, great effort, make some more. ;P

Please download the icons, don't just look at the picture. I couldn't get the pic to show the transparency, and I couldn't upload a pic of the actual icons for some reason. They are of the same quality on the edges as the HL2 icon that comes straight through Steam, no black border or anything choppy.

What swapped letter you never said the first time.

I kinda figured someone could see the only 2 swapped letters in the title if they looked at it.

but how you are wording your sentences seems you really talk like your above me because you have better grammar than me hence im less than you. That is the vibe im getting posting back to you, that is why i am taking offence to everything you say.

In other words you think that using grammar is insulting? There must be a lot of people "insulting" you then...

in the future if you dont want people to be mad at you for just talking, try not to ignore what they asked to begin with, and try not to be so pompous with EVERYTHING you say.

I have knowledge and experience. If I were not to share it with you it would violate my social responsibilities. Nothing I've posted is "pompous" in any way.

imagine your self in my shoes and read over what you posted.

I can't imagine myself in your shoes since I don't know anything about you except your lack of understanding.

Trying to get my WoW account back to full after a hacker found his way in.

What realm?