User:Martin Arrowsmith/sandbox

Note: Conservapedia's counterexamples are bolded to make them more discernible from the general body of the text.

The main problem with these little statements is that they are simple assertions without citation or supporting evidence or even, in many cases, any grasp of reality. It is difficult to know how to rebut a claim that isn't even internally consistent.

Point-by-Point Refutation of Conservapedia's Counterexamples to an Old Earth
   Conservapedian Counterexamples

"the moon is receding from the Earth at a rate suggesting it would have been too close a billion years ago"

  Rational Rebuttal

Accurate modeling of the dynamics of the Earth-Moon system over geologic time frames is extremely complex, and depends upon factors as variable as the distribution of continents on the Earth.

   

"spiral galaxies appear to be young, and only implausible proposals of the existence of dark matter can reconcile with belief in an old universe"

 

Appear to be young? Younger than what? Young how?

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"the massive Great Lakes are receding in volume too rapidly to have existed a long time"

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Nobody claims that the Great Lakes are as old as Earth; they are remnants left over from the most recent glaciation that covered the area on the order of 12k years ago. The vagueness of the claim makes it hard to know how to respond - what is 'a long time' in this context?

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"freshwater lakes are known to be relatively young Ice Age theories were developed to try to explain this, but massive freshwater lakes exist even near the equator" [sic]

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Freshwater lakes form and disappear on rapid geologic timescales; the puddles left behind after a rain represent an extreme version of this phenomenon. Any low spot will collect freshwater under the proper circumstances, and will become saline, or alkaline, or dry up, or get bigger, as conditions change. If the puddle on my driveway is only an hour old, does that make my driveway only an hour old as well?

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"The Earth's magnetism is changing at too fast a rate for the Earth to be old. The Earth's magnetic field is weakening in strength by 5% every 100 years, from NASA.  Exponential decay at that rate is not compatible with an old Earth, since it would have required the Earth's magnetic field to be impossibly large at the times postulated by old-Earth theory. "

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This outright ignores the geological evidence of multiple magnetic field reversals over geologic time, and the modern theories of geomagnetism which predict that periods of field reversal are preceded by field weakening. We are overdue for a field reversal, and we are possibly in one of the periods of weakening that precedes the flip. We won't know for sure for another couple thousand years, though. For what it's worth, even with the weakening over the last century, the Earth's field is more than twice its average strength over the previous million years.

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"the existence of inland saltwater lakes, such as Mono Lake and the Great Salt Lake, suggest a recent global flood"

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"the age of onset of puberty/sexual maturity is rapidly changing, suggesting that life is in a short-term rather than long-term equilibrium For evidence of a rapidly changing age for sexual maturity in fish, see http://icesjms.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/46/3/235"

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In humans, earlier onset of menarche has long been known to be linked to improvements in nutrition and subsequent increases in body fat percentage, with some suggestions that it has also been hastened by environmental exposure to estrogen-like compounds. Andy's citation points to earlier sexual maturity in Atlantic cod, which have been fished so heavily that humans have selectively bred the cod to reproduce as early as possible, because the cod lifespan has been driven lower and lower by our intervention.

Anyway, what is meant by a short-term equilibrium vs. a long-term equilibrium? Rapid responses to changes in selection pressure would seem to indicate a robust variability in the population which would lead to greater longterm survival rather than stagnation. Does the rapid development of antibiotic resistance in bacteria suggest that bacteria are in a short-term equilibrium?

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"the high observed rate of extinctions of species and harmful genetic mutations suggest a relatively short period for the existence of life rather than a long one."

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The number of extinct species would seem to be more of a problem for young-earth theories rather than old-earth ones, since the sheer amount of biomass suggested by the fossil record (all those megamegatons of extinct trilobites and crinoids and forams and diatoms) can't have all been alive within the last 6000 years; the oceans would need to have been an opaque soup of life and the land a shoulder-to-shoulder traffic jam to account for all those bones. There's no reason that speciation and extinction must be perfectly balanced at all times.

If harmful mutations crop up frequently but are frequently culled from the population, how does that then suggest that life has not existed for a long time? Most of the really severe mutations end up in miscarriage before we ever see their results, so our view of 'harmful genetic mutations' is affected by survivor bias.

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"the plentiful supply of high concentrations of underground well water, which would be expected based on familiar principles of entropy to dissipate over a long period of time"

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Apparently they would have to dissipate because in Andyland is no known way for any water to ever get underground, because no water ever falls from the sky, and even if it did it would immediately bounce off and not soak in.

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"the age of onset of cancer is markedly decreasing, http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/109865519/abstract?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0 suggesting rapid changes inconsistent with an alleged long existence to life"

</TD> <TD valign=top> One abstract referring to familial prostate cancer, which shows statistically that the trend to earlier diagnosis over time can't be shown to be anything other than the result of more widespread PSA testing, apparently trumps several other studies that show no generational progression. Furthermore, studies of other cancers across generations show no changes in age of onset, or show that some cancers are now found in older rather than younger patients. This is another great example of Andy reading some tidbit and immediately generalizing it to all situations over all time.

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"the lack of erosion between rock layers http://www.amazon.com/review/R1WTZL8GG4H9K0, http://www.knowthebible.net/id115.html"

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Don't bother clicking on the reference links; they don't make cogent arguments. How would one define erosion between rock layers?

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"the planetary orbits in the solar system -- including Earth's -- are unstable and unsustainable over the very long time periods asserted by atheists Newsweek: "An embarrassing little secret of astronomy ...."."

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A great leap made from 'unpredictable to a given degree of precision over millions to billions of years, due to extreme sensitivity to starting inputs, ie chaos' and 'unstable and unsustainable'. I don't know with certainty what the wind chill will be at the local weather station twenty weeks from today, but I can bet it won't be above the boiling point of water or below the freezing point of oxygen. Yet we don't call the weather unstable and unsustainable.

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"earthquakes alter the Earth's rotation every century; extrapolating by orders of magnitude in time would have resulted in the occurrence of much larger earthquakes that would have destabilized the rotation A similar analysis may be performed for the likelihood of devastating collisions with meteors as time is extrapolated by orders of magnitude."

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The farther back you go, the more violent the earthquakes/floods/meteors must have been, because why exactly?

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"the oldest direct evidence of life -- written documents, remnants of civilizations, tree rings, etc. -- is no older than about 3000 B.C."

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I don't remember anything that happened before about, say, 1975, so clearly all arguments that the the world is older than that are baseless speculation. We will ignore the evidence of clonal trees that are collectively upwards of 10k years old, even though the individual trees are younger. We will also ignore the dendrochronology that goes back farther than that. Heck, the existence of a single tree that was alive from at least 2900 BC until 1962 is a bit of a problem for young-earth flood believers, who place the flood at around 2300 BC.

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"the number of purely bred dogs declines over time as dogs naturally crossbreed; a short period of time is suggested by the fact that there are over 100 different breeds of dog thriving today"

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WTF? So is the number of purebred lines supposed to be less than in the past? A cursory review of the American Kennel Club website shows that the number of breeds recognized there has risen over time rather than falling. As for the number of dog breeds quoted, try multiplying it by a factor of about 50, since the vast majority of breeds aren't recognized by the AKC or any other registry.

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"New brainfarts here"

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Just try to form a coherent rebuttal to incoherent ideas. I dare you. </TD> </TR>