Forum:Creationist claim involving oil, bacteria, and radiometric dating.

< Index | General discussion

Well, this is my first forum post here. I'm going to get right into this. Recently, I was directed to this creationist article which claims this mosquito discovery as evidence for a young earth. The original paper can be found here. I am currently having trouble finding resources on the many topics in the ICR article. They begin with the mosquito find, then move into a discussion of oil, oil-eating bacteria, and radiometric dating among claims including discordant radiometric dates, circularity in dating methods, etc. All this finally leads up to the kicker conclusion... radiometric dating is invalidated altogether!

Any help clearing this one up for me would be great, as after searching TalkOrigins, Google, etc. for responses, I've come up dry, though I don't doubt the answers are there (as usual). Please read the whole ICR article and reply with all thoughts and criticisms. If we could find some good resources to rebut this, I would be very grateful.--CosmicArcher (talk) 21:42, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

While not that specific article, I've looked at the ICR's previous writings on this topic on my blog.^{(self promotion warning)} [1][2]

TL;DR: What was found in the mosquito fossils were the decay products of blood-related molecules, so Thomas' asking why they haven't decayed yet is a bit pointless (they have); the radiometric dating issues seem to be a wilful misunderstanding of the process; and while it's true that oil on the surface will be eaten by bacteria quickly in the geological sense, you'll note that there is actually no source for the claim that the oil should decay to methane underground over a period of just millions of years. Peter ^mqzp 22:32, 14 January 2014 (UTC)