Macro evolution 4

You're just cutting and pasting your argument? Lame! Carbon dating has a short half-life it only works about 50,000 years back. Which is enough time to prove you're wrong, but not enough to evolve all life on the planet (ergo I didn't mention it). Carbon-12 in the upper atmosphere is hit by incoming radiation and converted into Carbon-14. There is a known ratio of carbon-12 to carbon-14 in the atmosphere and by plant photosynthesis within the biosphere. So when something dies, it cuts itself off from this constant ratio of carbon-14. Carbon-14 has a half life of around 5700 years. So if you have half as much Carbon-14 as you would expect to have today: 5700 years old. If you have a quarter as much carbon-14: 11,400 years old. One quarter means it's 17,100 or so (3 half-lives). However, the amount of carbon-14 drops to undetectable after about ten half-lives. So you can use it to track how old a mammoth corpse is, but not the Earth. Further, when things fossilize, they turn to rock and lose the original carbon. You can track anything that use to be alive within the last 50,000 years or so. However, other radiometric dating have other criteria of use. They can be used on rocks or on volcanic rocks or on the fossils or on a number of different things. You don't only use carbon-14, you use many different types of radiometric dating working on different clocks to determine the age of the planet or some rocks on the planet. You use a few different types, Ar-Ar, He-He, I-Xe, La-Ba, Pb-Pb, Lu-Hf, Ne-Ne, K-Ar, C-C, Re-Os, Rb-Sr, Sm-Nd, U-Pb, U-Pb-He, U-Th, U-U... to name a few. It doesn't matter if you want to hear it or not, radiometric dating is as scientifically secured as dropped objects fall. It is the reason we know the Earth is 4.5 billion years old. You don't dig down and call a certain depth a certain time, sediment is added in different places at different rates and tectonic forces toss it all around. So you need something a lot more concrete than that. If you think that's all there is to it, I'm sorry, but you have been mislead. Are you making this up yourself or reading the Jack Chick tract Big Daddy? We base our results on radiometric dating of certain rocks, and although there is something called biostratigraphy where we have certain well established index fossils and can date things with them. So if we find trilobites we know we aren't going to find any mammals or if we find a pig tooth and know that that species of pig lived 2.2 to 2.5 million years ago along with other fossils that the fossils are 2.2 to 2.5 million years old. We know this because we use radiometric dating to determine the age of that fossil by checking the clocks it possesses. Radiometric dating is a fantastic tool for this, though we have other ways of checking like finding out the age of the Sun or various other planets in our solar system (all about 4.5 billion). The cosmic dust? You mean the same dust that all the asteroids and comets spit out all the time? Really? If you gained 10 pounds in a month creationists would claim you can't be any older than 2 years. Because tracking backwards you would weigh nothing as of two years ago. Really, we get more dust, flies off comets and such all the time. God created starlight... to do what? Did he also redshift it such that it makes the universe appear to be expanding. Light isn't slowing down. Further God? What the hell does God have to do with this? Any evidence for this God fellow? The hottest stars are massive stars which hypernova into pulsars in less than a million years (they are all gone). Due to basic physics, the temperature of a star drops off at the square of the distance between us. So if you travel away from the star you'll end up getting colder and colder. We get more heat from light bouncing off the moon than we get heat from light from Alpha Centauri only 4.37 light years away. Also, 100,000 years ago fairly modern humans were running around Africa. 100,000 years isn't that long. Primates formed about 78 million years ago, humans split from the chimp lines about 4 million years ago (as fossil evidence and genomics indicate). Moon dust? Really, even creationists suggest you shouldn't use that argument. Seriously. http://www.answersingenesis.org... -- "For a long time, creationists claimed that the dust layer on the moon was too thin if dust had truly been falling on it for billions of years. They based this claim on early estimates—by evolutionists—of the influx of moon dust, and worries that the moon landers would sink into this dust layer. But these early estimates were wrong, and by the time of the Apollo landings, NASA was not worried about sinking. So the dust layer thickness can't be used as proof of a young moon (or of an old one, either). See Moon-dust argument no longer useful and Moon dust and the age of the solar system (Technical)." What next? Why are there still monkeys? ---------- Okay, I didn't really expect much from this debate but rather than point out how wrong my opponent is, let me point out some positive evidence in favor of evolution. So people don't accuse me of not meeting my burden of evidence. I highly recommend: http://www.talkorigins.org... As a pretty good overview of a number of pointed bits of evidence. Why are there pouched mammals in Australia rather than the standard live-birth mammals we have today? Why are there some in South America too? Well, the super-continent of Pangaea broke up up into Laurasia and Gondwanaland during the Triassic about 200 million years ago. With Laurasia consisting of North America, Europe and Asia. Gondwanaland consisting of South America, Africa, Australia, Antarctica, and oddly India. Well due to this geographic isolation the mammals continue to along separate courses, Gondwanaland broke freeing up Africa and India to crash back into Europe. Antarctica, Australia and South America went their separate ways during the Triassic about 135 million years ago. This split the mammals into two groups one became the modern marsupials (pouched mammals) and another became the placental mammals (like us). So we find that Australia and South America have marsupials along with some later invaders after South America ran into North America. Though, Australia's native wildlife like Kangaroos, Wombats, etc are marsupials. Now what about Antarctica? Should it have marsupials? Well, it does... or rather did. Most everything is extinct now, but when you look at the fossils in Antarctica has they are definitively marsupial mammals. And, often similar to those found in South America and Australia for the time. And yes, if you look at fossils from prior to the breakup of South America and Africa you find the same organism lived across those two continents (for example Mesosarus). Why are their specific types of mammals in different areas with regard to exactly how the planet progressed. If we found these things out of place it would be strong evidence against macroevolution, but we don't. No rabbit fossils with trilobites, apes in South America, it all fits in exactly as it should. Mutations during reproduction do occur and sometimes lead to subtle changes. Most of the time these changes are harmless and do nothing, other times they are detrimental, sometimes they are beneficial. When the changes are harmful the organisms with these changes are less likely to breed than other members of their species and less likely to pass on these detrimental genes. When the changes are helpful they are more likely to breed. And pass on this beneficial little tweak. Not every organism which could possibly exist can possibly exist, and in this fight for life, any edge helps. Compounding this process leads to organisms of amazing complexity. Some argue little changes work, but big ones can't. 'You can go 10 feet one foot in front of the other, but never 10 miles!'