We hear often about the boundary that evolutionary theory does not have to explain. Abiogenesis is that boundary. Evolutionists do not have to propound about how the Universe got here, how the earth got here, or how inorganic matter became organic. It goes something like this
“The origin of life is certainly an interesting topic, but it is not a part of evolutionary theory. The study of the naturalistic origins of life is called abiogenesis. While scientists have not developed a clear explanation of how life might have developed from non-living material, that has no impact on evolution.”
In the spirit of fairness and respect, I would like to propose a similar boundary for the Young Earth paradigm.
YEC’s do not have to explain the date or dates of any foreign planetary material that did not originate on the surface of the earth. Foreign material would include, but not be limited to, igneous rock or volcanic ash with its full range of radioactive mineral content, metamorphic rock that contains radioactive minerals, melt inclusions, intrusions, and tektites.
Since God may have used pre-aged material in the building of our differentiated planet (and other cosmic bodies in our sun system), the YEC claim of a young earth could not be set aside. Discussions about God’s motivation and methods in creating the interior of our planet – as it pertained to age – would fall outside the boundary of the YEC model.
The YEC appeal to God and the mystery of earth’s construction could not be considered a weakness of the paradigm since it would be similar to the evolutionist’s appeal to aliens who may have seeded life on the planet – panspermia.
I would agree with that statement if creationists were not making claims about the age of the universe (which includes other planets). If you were to say that as a YEC, you are only specifically making a claim about the age of the Earth, and that you are okay with the universe itself (and other planets and galaxies and so on) all being much older than you think the Earth is, then in that case, I would totally agree that you are not under an obligation to explain why other astronomical bodies exhibit the ages that they do.
If God really did use pre-aged material in constructing and sorting planetary bodies, then by all accounts the evidence really does show that the Earth and other planetary bodies are old, right?
And hence you’d be saying that yes, you know the empirical evidence we can collect with science shows Earth and other bodies to be much older than 6000 years, it’s just that you think the age of the Earth can be better estimated from interpreting scriptural accounts of some human family history?
No, not true. Lava flows were once on the surface, and most of their contents crystallized on the surface and so are reporting the true ages of those flows. All the other stuff reports its true age, incompatible with YEC.
“Pre-aged” is just another term for omphalism. And it’s not just pre-aged; it’s pre-aged in a particular pattern that’s consistent across the stratigraphic column. You are leading inexorably toward a deceptive god. Is that your intent?
I must admit that’s a novel way to dodge the huge amount of physical evidence you can’t explain. It won’t work through because the evidence is still sitting there right in front of you.
There are countless examples of intrusive rock bodies intercalated with sedimentary rocks, often causing visible alteration in those rocks in the vicinity of the contacts (aka contact metamorphism). How is that possible if those crystalline rocks are older than the sediments?
Here is a nice example of how an igneous sill has baked the surrounding sediments (dolomite turned into marble because of the heat of the intrusion). The igneous rock is clearly younger than the sediments it intruded into. Dating such intrusions is valuable in putting a lower boundary on the age of the sediments (which must be older than the intrusion).
I believe it’s @r_speir’s position that the crystals in the intrusion are older than the intrusion, and possibly that the contact metamorphism is also older. How that could be is so far unclear. He just waves his hand in the direction of “contamination”, and that’s supposed to be good enough.
The stratigraphic column is a surface feature and would have nothing to do with assigning deceptive ages to rock containing radionuclear material. That exercise would be strictly off-limits.
Absolutely not. All we are saying in drawing that boundary is that those ages cannot be known under the given paradigm. Those ages may in fact be young, but it would not be under the compulsion of YEC to explain or defend.
You are apparently new to my argument. @John_Harshman knows it well and has finally learned to anticipate my response to questions like yours when he says, " it’s @r_speir’s position that the crystals in the intrusion are older than the intrusion".
However, his response is almost, but not quite accurate. It’s not that the crystals in a cooled melt are “older” but that the entire melt, including crystallization, is contaminated and beyond a recognizable and reliable date since it contains radionuclides foreign in nature to the planet surface.
For radiometric dating it doesn’t matter where the melt comes from, how old it is, or what it’s composition is.
All that matters is that from the time of crystallisation the clock starts ticking: decay products can no longer escape the parent nuclides because they are all bound up in the crystal structure, therefore the ratio of daughter to parent nuclides in a crystal is directly proportional to the time since crystallsation.
Whatever happened before crystallisation is qiuite irrelevant when it comes to dating the time of crystallisation. Do you understand this?
It absolutely matters where the material comes from. In all cases, it comes from the interior of the planet, which 100% of the time, yields disparate ages depending on which mineral is tested.
You are reciting radiodating dogma which cannot be used to make your point. Despite what geochronologists claim, when crystallization occurs, they cannot know the proportion of parent to daughter ratio. If your dogma was correct, we wouldn’t be having this discussion because all radio-testing would return consistent and reliable dates.
I absolutely do not “understand” this, because your mere recitation of dogma is completely counter to what the evidence reveals. From every indication, what consistently happens - 100% of the time - before crystallization, is contamination, contamination, contamination.
No idea what you mean by that. The column is not a surface feature. Parts of it are exposed on the surface in various places, but it also exists far below the ground, as seismic data, drill logs, and drill cores show.
A lava flow is defined as a surface flow. Later, they get buried in sediment and are no longer on the surface. They’re younger than the sediments below them and older than the sediments above them.
You mean you assume that they can’t be known, so you can ignore the data saying they’re old?
How would that work? How can all the crystals in a cooled melt be older than the melt? How can they be contaminated, if they form from the melt? What does it matter whether the radionuclides are “foreign in nature”, whatever that means?
Not true. It only matters when the crystal formed. Minerals incorporate certain elements and exclude others.
But it does, and we’re having this conversation anyway.
What do you mean by contamination? Contamination with what? How?
I’ve shared this scheme around the web a few times, and can’t remember whether I’ve shared it here before.
Within at least the Christian/Islamic creationist paradigm, there are not just two options for age, there are (at least) these:
Call ‘old’ millions of years at least, and ‘young’ tens of thousands at most. (this gets us around 6,000 or 10,000 or 20,000 years)
Old universe, old Earth, old life
Old universe, old Earth, young life (sometimes called ‘young biosystem creationism’ (YBC))
Old universe, young Earth, young life (often called ‘young Earth creationism’ (YEC))
Young universe, young Earth, young life (also often called YEC)
There are other possibilities: an old Earth in a young universe is likely logically impossible, but old life from elsewhere in the universe taking root on a young Earth is conceivable, for example. I don’t know that it’s creationist: “God created life a billion years ago in Andromeda and Genesis is about its arrival on Earth”.
It’s probably a worthwhile set of distinctions to think about, and @r_speir’s proposal is arguably old universe, young Earth, with Earth being made out of bits of the old universe rather than created ex nihilo.
I think the demarcation between cosmogenesis, (a)biogenesis and evolution is eminently defensible since each involve different mechanisms.
The demarcation between… age of rocks and age of Earth? I think that’s the proposal is one I’d be happy to stipulate for the purposes of the discussion, but I think the thread to date does a decent job of demonstrating that it really doesn’t get YECs off all that many hooks.
I don’t see what #2 gains anyone. All dating of rocks and fossils must still be as wrong as YECs claim, except for some of the very earliest rocks (more than 3.5 billion years old, at a minimum). And the only way we know the earth is that old is by the very radiometric dating they’re forced to reject. This is a less defensible position than YEC, and we can observe @r_speir’s flailing.
#3 at least gets rid of the distant starlight problem.
You bring up a technicality. All the strata you mention are considered “surface” in the argument I am advancing.
“Surface” is where magma has ended up. You know what I mean in my argument. The origin point of the material was deep within the planet.
Wrong. I can ignore the data about age entirely - whether young or old, I cannot say and neither can you.
Isotopic mixing between the earth’s mantle and crust has occurred.
Lava flows exhibit isotopic characteristics of the mantle.
Isotopic data suggest basalts were generated from melting of old mantle.
Isotopic data also suggest basalt magmas were contaminated during their ascent.
This is patently wrong and proved by the disparate ages obtained during testing of samples.
If you think that consistent and reliable dates are returned from the data and not manipulated, then we cannot have an honest discussion.
You full well know what I mean. See #1,2,3 in list above.
The long and short of it is, I don’t have to discuss any of this with you to defend a YEC position since “Discussions about God’s motivation and methods in creating the interior of our planet – as it pertained to age – would fall outside the boundary of the YEC model” as the OP states.
Would it not then be a YBC, not a YEC, model? If the claim is that Earth is not young? (Or, possibly, that the age of the Earth is in-principle unknowable)
The new YEC boundary condition I am advancing says the parenthetical part of your post is the correct one - namely, “the age of the Earth is in-principle unknowable”. This unknown would affect life, the planet, and by extension, the Universe.
So is this a YEC victory? Absolutely, inasmuch as evolutionists likewise defer to offer an answer to the question of abiogenesis.
Should YECs seek evidences of a young planet and Universe? Absolutely, inasmuch as evolutionists should likewise be bound to seek to explain abiogenesis.
It won’t help to play the game of “pass the buck” because the naturalist, chemist, and biologist will all defer to the “evolutionist” label and each will say, “We don’t have to answer the mystery of abiogenesis, though the biochemist among us does enjoy the challenge. However, nothing should obligate him to discover and uncover the mystery in fullness.”
So nothing is gained by passing the buck. We still can’t hold anybody accountable to give an answer to abiogenesis.
Likewise, we could segment the creationist community into science disciplines and play the pass the buck game. Each in turn would cry, “I am a creationist and so do not have to unfold the mystery of the earth’s interior.”
