Continued Correspondence with Palm, Baraminology and introducing Carter, adding Carbon 14 and Lake Suigetsu

With David Palm, Mainly on Flood, Ark, Ararat · Continued Correspondence with Palm, Baraminology and introducing Carter, adding Carbon 14 and Lake Suigetsu

19 jan 2019 à 17:04

Me to David Palm

[link to previous post]
With David Palm, Mainly on Flood, Ark, Ararat
https://correspondentia-ioannis-georgii.blogspot.com/2019/01/with-david-palm-mainly-on-flood-ark.html

mar 18:33

Tu 5.II.2019

David Palm to me

So sorry about the delay in getting back to you, Hans-Georg. I'm still not at all seeing how the hyper-evolution off the ark works. For one thing, the entire surface of the earth would have been decimated, hardly the best place for animals then to thrive. What did the carnivores eat if not the non-carnivores that just came off the boat and that could put an end to those lines of animals pretty fast. We know that severe bottlenecks in populations cause lots of problems, so we would predict a lack of genetic diversity and unhealthy populations, not the tremendous explosion of speciation you are positing.

Here's a good article on this:

Naturalis Historia : Ken Ham’s Darwinism: On The Origin of Species by Means of Hyper-Evolution Following Noah’s Flood
July 17, 2018 by Natural Historian
https://thenaturalhistorian.com/2018/07/17/ken-hams-darwinism-on-the-origin-of-species-by-means-of-hyper-evolution-following-noahs-flood-2/

"There are many problems with the content and conclusions of AiG article, Reimagining Ark Kinds, including: 1) the lack of any Biblical record or documentation by any other non-biblical historical records of such radical biological change, 2) the irony of how AiG is using reconstructions of ancient organisms based on the evidence of historical science—a science they usually denigrate—to justify their belief that organisms have evolved into many new species, 3) the irony of a complete lack of any reference to transition fossils for the thousands of new species that YECs say have formed from each Biblical kind, and 4) the fact they openly admit that hundreds of thousands of fossils exist that are not the product of global flood deposits but rather were fossilized after speciating following their departure from the ark. The latter is a an admission that fossilization can readily occur in a non-global-flood context."

This article by the same guy is interesting, in that he points out that the Bible records many species that are identical to our modern ones, thus shortening even further how much time this hyper-evolution/speciation has to occur. And yet we don't observe it now and nobody seems to have observed it in the past:

Naturalis Historia : Ken Ham’s Biblical Evolution? I Have a Book That Says Otherwise
February 5, 2016 by Natural Historian
https://thenaturalhistorian.com/2016/02/05/ken-hams-biblical-evolution-i-have-a-book-that-says-otherwise/

Me to David Palm

"So sorry about the delay in getting back to you, Hans-Georg. I'm still not at all seeing how the hyper-evolution off the ark works."

For hedgehogs and moonrats, one of them needs to have a major mutation about spines/"hairs". Within each, there needs to be isolation so as to produce different species. No hype on that evolution.

"For one thing, the entire surface of the earth would have been decimated, hardly the best place for animals then to thrive."

God would have provided survival needs.

"What did the carnivores eat if not the non-carnivores that just came off the boat"

Ask Gollum, so to speak ... fissssssssssssh

"and that could put an end to those lines of animals pretty fast."

If fish had been scarce, [which was] hardly the case.

"We know that severe bottlenecks in populations cause lots of problems,"

If random events of disaster, you forget God brough the animals on the ark.

"so we would predict a lack of genetic diversity and unhealthy populations, not the tremendous explosion of speciation you are positing."

We are not talking a tremendous explosion of new information. We are talking of downgrading mutations striking differently and thereby causing reproductive isolation.

"Here's a good article on this:"

Will see ...

Naturalis Historia : Ken Ham’s Darwinism: On The Origin of Species by Means of Hyper-Evolution Following Noah’s Flood
July 17, 2018 by Natural Historian
https://thenaturalhistorian.com/2018/07/17/ken-hams-darwinism-on-the-origin-of-species-by-means-of-hyper-evolution-following-noahs-flood-2/

Citing [it] myself: "During that time at least 95% (probably 99% or more) of all species of land mammals and birds that have lived are proposed to have evolved from just a few common ancestors—the “ark kinds”—preserved on the Ark."

With hedgehogs and moonrats, there was arguably one couple and then 25 species from that. 1/25 = 4%, 96 % of the species being added to those of the original number.

He cites earlier articles, one of which considers Terror Birds an added kind and so on, as if Terror Birds couldn't have been same kind as emus, cassowaries, kiwis, elephant birds, ostriches.

"There are many problems with the content and conclusions of AiG article, Reimagining Ark Kinds, including:
1) the lack of any Biblical record or documentation by any other non-biblical historical records of such radical biological change,"

The change from one hedgehog couple to 25 hedgehog and moonrat species is not very radical.

"2) the irony of how AiG is using reconstructions of ancient organisms based on the evidence of historical science—a science they usually denigrate—to justify their belief that organisms have evolved into many new species,
3) the irony of a complete lack of any reference to transition fossils for the thousands of new species that YECs say have formed from each Biblical kind,"

Ironic, perhaps, but there is a clear difference between hedgehogs descending from Deinogalerix and hedgehogs with moles having a common ancestor with dogs, cats, seals and hoofed animals (evolutionary superorder "Laurasiatheria (hedgehogs, shrews, moles, whales, bats, dogs, cats, seals, and hoofed mammals)")

"and 4) the fact they openly admit that hundreds of thousands of fossils exist that are not the product of global flood deposits but rather were fossilized after speciating following their departure from the ark. The latter is a an admission that fossilization can readily occur in a non-global-flood context."

I may actually differ on how much I accept of "geologic column" from them. If it is carbon dated post 40 000 BP, yes, it is post-Flood, but some of them are so naive about "geologic column" they ask "where in the geologic column is the limit between pre-Flood, in-Flood and post-Flood deposits?"

"This article by the same guy is interesting, in that he points out that the Bible records many species that are identical to our modern ones, thus shortening even further how much time this hyper-evolution/speciation has to occur. And yet we don't observe it now and nobody seems to have observed it in the past:"

Naturalis Historia : Ken Ham’s Biblical Evolution? I Have a Book That Says Otherwise
February 5, 2016 by Natural Historian
https://thenaturalhistorian.com/2016/02/05/ken-hams-biblical-evolution-i-have-a-book-that-says-otherwise/

I'd probably divide felids from pantherids and foxes from dogs. But I'd agree on elephant kind.

Obviously, an evolution which goes from a common ancestor to coyotes and poodles is slower than visible change. Therefore, barring special interest by breeders, is unlikely to get recorded.

David Palm to me

Imo you're not seriously grappling with this problem. Basically you're just invoking miracles and unobserved mechanisms to fill in why the model doesn't fit and can't explain what we observe.

Me to David Palm

I am not, YOU are invoking a "diversity" which is not qualitatively there between the different species.

There is numeric "diversity" if you like, not a qualitatively radical one.

And, that is what we observe.

Cats and lynx are both felids, there are known crossbreeds.

Tigers and lions are both pantherids, and ligers exist.

David Palm to me

Do you know of any professional geneticist who would agree that a single pair (or even seven pairs) of animals have enough genetic diversity to be the original parents of all those disperate species, and that those species can all arise in the span of just a thousand years or so?

Me to David Palm

Do you know a single evolutionary geneticist who does not believe that all animals of all kinds have arisen from an ancestry with even less diversity, the first eucariotes being basically yeast cells?

Now, between yeast, pine trees and wolves, the diversity really is too much for me.

Between pine and spruce or wolf and coyote it isn't.

NONE of this depends on ancestral population being very diverse.

And there is something called the founder effect.

Suppose the first hedgehogs and the first moonrats just got isolated from each other, one of them having a mutation making the spines either much softer or much harder and pointier.

The smaller the populations are in which this happens, the quicker they will become diversified from each other if isolated from each other.

David Palm to me

Why don't we observe this happening now?

Me to David Palm

Going from Coyote to wolf takes time.

But we do observe cross breeds.

Here is how I feel about the appeal to accredited expertise only:

Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere : ... on Expertise
https://assortedretorts.blogspot.com/2019/02/on-expertise.html

And I do know at least one geneticist who is baraminologist, his name is Robert Carter, he's on CMI:

https://www.facebook.com/robert.carter.904

Thanks for reminding me, we differ on what the possibilities are for Neanderthals being pre-Flood, and he just put the article from CMI (from Candlemass day, Australian timezone) on his wall, meaning I can respond with my own article, also from Candlemass day (Paris tz).

jeu 12:16

Th 7.II.2019

Me to David Palm

by the way, things came up on Jimmy Akin's podcst, here are my answers to same questions:

New blog on the kid : Rivalling Jimmy Akin, as Scholastic
https://nov9blogg9.blogspot.com/2019/02/rivalling-jimmy-akin-as-scholastic.html

jeu 16:50

Th 7.II.2019

David Palm to me

Hans-Georg, since you frequently reference carbon dating, I thought this might interest you.

https://www.asa3.org/ASA/PSCF/2018/PSCF6-18Davidson.pdf

Me to David Palm

Probably I would be interested, but:

"Ce programme est bloqué par une stratégie de groupe. Pour plus d'informations, contactez votre administrateur système."

In other words, unless you like to quote salient parts, I must wait until I am in a cyber or in another library.

David Palm to me

Try this link: www.csun.edu/~vcgeo005/Nr53Carbon.pdf

Me to David Palm

That is also a pdf which will also be blocked.



[Right now the "stratégie de groupe" is changed, pdfs are working again.]

David Palm to me

Ah, okay.

Me to David Palm

This is a university library.

Probably, some students are writing essays and some of their professors are too lazy to look for what they could have plagiarized by internet search, so seek to eliminate even possibility for such plagiarism ... or sth ...

David Palm to me

How about through Messenger?

Me to David Palm

How do you mean?

I clicked on links, they started downloading and are now two downloads that cannot be opened.

Trust your own judgement in doing a fairly decent resumé of the arguments?

David Palm to me

It's an overlay of tree-ring data (for the first part of the curve), varve data from Lake Suigetsu, and C14 dating, showing excellent correlation out to 50K years.

Me to David Palm

"excellent correlation" is clearly overdone.

The "excellent correlation" leaves out that there are diverse bottlenecks with very little overlapping material.

And I did take a look at one material that was there, back a few years ago.

Not actual rings, but diagrams of how samples supposedly overlap.

The correlation of two or three different "ringed" tree objects was to my non-specialist view hazy. The lake as such depends on varves being ONLY:

* mud * flowers from cherry trees

and coming ONLY in the order it dropped down.

However, if lake was NOT always that peaceful, there can definitely have been occasions in which mud and flowers can have been mixed and then sorted in a layered way, meaning the lower and earlier layers are very far from annual.

Tas Walker also looked on them and they are "suspiciously narrow". [Can't find that reference, right now]

I was wondering whether the links were including some real challenge, like the one I was taking on here:

Correspondence of Hans Georg Lundahl : Other Check on Carbon Buildup
http://correspondentia-ioannis-georgii.blogspot.com/2017/11/other-check-on-carbon-buildup.html

You see, fastest buildup in my scheme (which has made "gradual carbon buildup since the flood" less popular among protestants, since favouring on my view LXX over Masoretic chronology) would be around 10 or 11 times faster than now.

If there were simply equivalence between medium cosmic radiation at any place on earth and the quantity of C14 produced (twice more carbon in such and such time = twice as much radiation), that's clearly a safe level.

11 * 0.34 milliSievert per years is 3.74 milliSivert per year on medium height and locality.

Add that during the time before Younger Dryas, men could live lower down (less radiation!) and therefore medium inhabited height was lower than now. And if Equatorial regions were uninhabitable, there are not all that many human inhabited places dating by carbon from Upper Palaeolithic in that region.

B U T I came across info stating that this equivalence does not hold.

So, suppose it were a square, you'd have 121 times more radiation and 41.14 milliSievert per year is not healthy. In Japan they say 20 milliSievert per year is about the limit.

Hence, I checked. And, as you saw, got no answer.

(Btw, I cited medium level of milliSievert per year from cosmos as 0.34, that was from memory, now I see I have cited it as 0.39 ...)

Here we have it, should have been 0.39:

Cosmic
0.39 World average
0.3–1.0 Typical range
0.31 Princeton
0.26 Wa State
0.30 Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology of Japan

David Palm to me

Well, have a look at the whole article when you can get access. I think you'll see that many of your questions are addressed.

Me to David Palm

I do not think they are, as you have presented it, it is written by one who ignored my facts.

David Palm to me

Well, have a look and see.

Me to David Palm

I may and may not, but you remind me of Protestants who recommend GotQuestions, then a lutheran attacking Apostolic succession as inverifiable and then another thing and another thing.

You see, I was not asking and will not ask how the now standard defense of uniformitarian calibration goes, I already know and dismiss it as worthless.

David Palm to me

OK

Me to David Palm

If you are interested and there are no "stratégies de groupe" against blogspot.com adresses, here is one post where I adress this:

Creation vs. Evolution : Hasn't Carbon 14 been Confirmatively Calibrated for Ages Beyond Biblical Chronology? By Tree Rings?
https://creavsevolu.blogspot.com/2016/12/hasnt-carbon-14-been-confirmatively.html

jeu 20:49

Th 7.II.2019

Me to David Palm

First paper, authors have a bias:

https://biologos.org/author/gregg-davidson
BioLogos
https://biologos.org/author/ken-wolgemuth
BioLogos AND Petroleum consultant
Qualifications : neither is expert per se at Carbon 14 and neither at the relevant fields of botanics for dendrochronology.

Gregg Davidson is Professor and Chair of Geology and Geological Engineering at the University of Mississippi. His books on science and Christian faith include The Grand Canyon, Monument to an Ancient Earth (associate editor and contributing author), When Faith and Science Collide, and entries in Zondervan’s Dictionary of Christianity and Science.

Ken Wolgemuth is an ASA Fellow, adjunct professor of Geosciences at the University of Tulsa, and founder of Solid Rock Lectures. He has a 40-year career in the petroleum industry, and is a contributing author to The Grand Canyon, Monument to an Ancient Earth and to Zondervan’s Dictionary of Christianity and Science.

"Finding even older wood that overlapped in time with the dead trees extends the count back farther still. In principle, this record could be extended as far back in time as there were trees on Earth. However, there is a practical limitation, as it becomes increasingly difficult at a given location to find very old wood that reliably overlaps to yield an unbroken sequence far back in time. A gap in the record may be due, for example, to climatic changes in the past when trees did not readily grow in that area, or a time interval when most of the fallen trees fully decomposed."

Very candid admission, I would agree that tree rings in Arizona for recent pre-Columbian times are definitely reliable. Also used as a definitely reliable calibrational confirmation of C14.

"At present, the oldest reliable cross-dated count goes back about 14,000 years, based on living and fossil trees from Central Europe."

The problem is, there are bottlenecks of very few overlapping pieces of wood and these not very clear matches.

This they do not mention.

"The primary requirements for determining age are (1) a constant radioactive decay rate, (2) knowledge of the original carbon-14 content, and (3) quantification of any old carbon that may have been incorporated into the specimen. The last requirement applies mostly to marine samples, in which oceandwelling organisms, even today, extract carbon from seawater that has been “pre-aged” by long isolation from the atmosphere.4 Terrestrial samples, such as tree rings and lake sediments, are less susceptible to this complicating factor, limiting the primary requirements to the first two."

Agreed. Except for men and bears who cold live much on fish.

Someone seemed to have diagnosed pre-Columbian coastdwellers on Pyrenean Peninsula with syphilis - ah it wasn't the Azteks' fault, after all! - and then it turned out they could be post-Columbian ones, having eaten much shellfish.

"But recall how carbon-14 is formed. Variations in cosmic-ray flux, caused by a variety of factors such as solar flares and changes in Earth’s magnetic field, result in variable carbon-14 production. To turn a measured carbon-14 value into an age, independent methods are employed to first provide realistic assessments of past atmospheric production rates. This is an important note, for young-earth writers routinely make the false assertion that conventional geologists naively assume a constant historical production rate."

What they according to us DO assume is, carbon 14 has fluctuated around 100 pmC.

Minor fluctuations are not the same thing as a major different rate before Flood, leading to fairly low pmC at Flood, and a major different rate just after Flood up to, perhaps past Exodus, leading to a major buildup from around 1 - 2 pmC to sth like constantly around 100 pmC.

"If any of the conventional assumptions is not correct, it should become readily apparent as measured values trend outside this window. Moreover, specific young-earth claims should result in predictable departures from conventional expectations that would lend support to their model."

These guys have tested their model, not my competing one.

Their claim of "predictable departures" is moot, that would depend on what exact young earth model they were predicting them from.

And involving tree rings or varves is moot, since these are in cases (not too rare ones, once you get back in time) of doubt cross-checked by carbon dates, so it is circular proof.

Remains only whether the carbon dates as such would cause "predictable departures" from results.

No, they would not. Not within carbon, since my model is there to account from them, and not involving the "known ages" of such and such tree rings or varves, since that is "proven" with a circle from the carbon dating they pretend to be giving proof for.

"Multiple tree rings per year, postulated by Flood geologists, should yield values that fall above the window (rings are younger and higher in carbon-14 than conventionally expected)."

There is in fact no one tree for which I'd need this assumption. Some other would, depending on assumptions all trees living after flood were planted after flood, which is moot, and also on assumption Flood was in 2200 or 2400 BC or thereabouts, but if it was in 2957 BC? Or even less recently according to Syncellus.

"On the other hand, if atmospheric carbon-14 was much lower in the past, the data should plot well below the window. And any errors in cross-dating the tree rings, due to false-positive matches in ring patterns, should be readily apparent by data that abruptly shifts upward (wood younger than the match suggested) or downward (wood older than the match suggested)."

Very optimistic estimate, which I don't share.

"Just the raw tree-ring count and the measured carbon-14 content."

Except the raw tree ring count even beyond just 2000 years back has some presumptions of carbon 14 involved to even start matching where they do.

Matches are sometimes so loose, they can be arranged to where it would fit best with carbon 14.

"Either God saw fit that 14,000 tree rings equals 14,000 years, or God manipulated unrelated and independent processes (tree rings per year, atmospheric carbon-14 production, and radioactive decay rates) in a precise manner over a much more abbreviated time frame such that they are indistinguishable from the expectations of conventional geology."

Or a third, the two guys are promoting a fake news, bc they are not the right expertise to have a close look at tree rings, and they are overtrusting about one unbroken series of 14 000 tree rings.

"A closely related charge is that the tree-ring and varve studies were performed for the purpose of improving a radiocarbon calibration curve; therefore, our claim of not making use of calibration curves is somehow employing circular reasoning and our conclusions invalidated.21 This charge boils down to the nonsensical assertion that one cannot use data for more than one purpose. The cited researchers used their measured carbon-14 to refine a calibration curve. We made use of their measured data for a completely different purpose. Circular reasoning was left in the unemployment line."

Testing for matches in some vicinity of radiocarbon age (or Libby age, or uncalibrated carbon date, in BP) is sufficient for circularity to actually occur.

If they had looked further away in uncalibrated carbon time, they might have found better or as good matches, and therefore at least possibility of a radically different calibration.

"Near-zero carbon-14 content in older samples is accommodated by the hypothesis that atmospheric carbon-14 content at the time of the flood was only about 0.5 pMC and rose rapidly in the years following the flood."

He's referencing another model for carbon rise than mine. And others also have I have seen on CMI.

It can be noted that the transition unvarved - varved occurs at 40 pmC - corresponds to 7600 YA or 5600 BC (calibrated or roughly).

This would suggest there was a disruption heavier at some time after Babel, at Black Sea Flood, than during the Flood. Over Earth as a whole, such a result would be nonsense, but over a small lake, it would be possible.

"If multiple sediment couplets formed in pulses in the early post-flood years, deposits that formed in rapid succession should have nearly the same carbon-14 content."

If varves were subsequently multiplied, and then the most varves are from a very narrow part, according to Tas Walker's criticism.

I'm frankly too tired to look into this, it is half past nine.

dim 18:12

Su 10.II.2019

Me to David Palm

Now it is about 6pm, I am less tired.

Here is the thing.

When I do tables about carbon rise, I am very open about the calculations I make, not as in giving each and every one every time, but if challenged I'd happily respond on an article where I'd left sth out.

With comments enabled on a blog, no technical problem. Confer what happens with a pdf.

One of the guys said, with a rise in carbon levels, there would be a widely other pattern of carbon matching the varves.

In fact, I am not sure exactly what kind of carbon rise he envisages, but I don't think it is actually mine.

My carbon rise is in fact fairly steep, but it is not totally abrupt. Whether for matching of tree rings or for varves, things would so to speak pull the matchings apart elastically. For varves, that means more chance of very thin varves actually getting separately noticed, for instance, and I admit, I have no complete solution on this one, but it is also not so incomplete as to be doubtful.

Here is the CMI take on Suigetsu:

CMI : National Geographic plays the dating game
by John Woodmorappe | This article is from
Journal of Creation (formerly TJ) 16(1):48–50, April 2002
https://creation.com/national-geographic-plays-the-dating-game