Posted: Mar 30, 2015 9:30 am
wunksta wrote:jinxu wrote:
It is funny that you should bring up the point about different authors because that is one of the main reasons I accept the Bible. Having read through the Bible about 3 times now within a year (different translations as well), I am amazed by the level of consistency of the different authors. Something I find hard to believe is possible without God being the ultimate author. I am reading through the Historical Jesus thread though to see how historians view the Bible.
My main point is that in the past, someone wrote that the world was created in a few days. We have found physical evidence that this is not the case. My argument would be that if you feel that God created the universe, the world around you would be the evidence that you should rely on not a book that was written a long time ago.
As for the consistency of the Bible, I'll leave that for another thread but suffice to say that I wouldn't agree based on stuff I have read. Things like the Q document, issues with conflicting stories like how Judas died and similarities in stories to older religions like the ones from Mesopotamia (eg Gilgamesh) which were written a thousand years or so before the Jews existed as a culture.
So if the forming of the mineral is what determines its capacity to be tested. Can there be anything in that process, of forming, that could change dates? Does the rate it forms even differ? I am guessing it wouldn't because ultimately whatever amount you had would be crystallized and you would still just look at the ratio?
I'm not an expert but it's fairly accurate and consistent from everything I have read. There is a degree of accuracy of around .1 to 1% for the dating, so within a few hundred thousand years or so. It's something you could test in a lab yourself if you wanted to. Take some zircon and melt it repeatedly to see how long it would take to reform. You could also calculate the rate of decay for uranium.
That's what I love about scientific discoveries and research; no one is asking you to take it for granted. The entire process relies upon peer review and repeated testing. You could take the same material, test it yourself and reach the same conclusion. If someone received different results, or couldn't reproduce the findings then this throws out the study.
Thank you, I don't have a lab to try those experiments but I will continue "digging" around the geology sections to learn more about dating. And I understand your point regarding the created world vs. a written text. Hence, again why I am here and studying.