Not to argue for creationism, but this argument sucks. Lead can be produced by supernova, not just through decay of heavier elements. But even that’s besides the point, since if you believe some entity created the universe, surely said entity could have created whatever ratio of lead to uranium they wanted. It’s not a falsifiable claim, there’s really no disproving it, unfortunately.
(Not so fun fact: the environmental impact of leaded gasoline was discovered by trying to estimate the age of the earth using the radio of lead to uranium in uranium deposits, but the pollution from leaded gasoline was throwing the measurements off.)
Also this doesn’t say anything about the Earth.
Plus you can give a liberal reading of the bible to be:
- god created the heaven and the earth. God created the heavenly bodies.
- God created the sky - earths atmosphere and climate
- God separates oceans - creates continental forms, and plant based life
- God creates the moon and sun and stars. This one seems out of order to me… maybe just the earth and solar system stabilize. I don’t know how plants exist without the sun, so maybe it’s microbes or something.
- God creates birds and sea creatures. Maybe birds are dinosaurs.
- God creates modern land animals, then creates man and woman. That makes sense, mankind is certainly new with only a few hundred thousand years of records before civilization starts.
That doesn’t have to imply the earth is 4000 years old. Even the original wording could be read as eon instead of day.
The Bible is a couple thousand chapters long. The creation story is the first two chapters. It’s pretty obviously only attempting to establish that God created the universe in some ambiguous way and move on with the story. That doesn’t stop people from inferring all sorts of things from what is essentially a poem.
It’s literally a poem in the original language.
I thought carbon dating of fossils was our best argument against the 4000 years myth.
I’m not siding with the 4000 year old earth argument, but that is a weak counterargument.
Lead was created by dying stars that long predate the Earth.
The problem with that argument is that it falls into the Last Thursdayist problem.
It could just as well be argued that the lead was created instantly in that state, or mid-decay.
this argument isn’t going to work on someone who believes god created said lead… and also, pretty sure not all lead was created from nuclear decay.
i get dunk on people feels satisfying, but this is just bad science communication through and through
I genuinely don’t understand how uranium can exist a priori in this argument but lead not? I might be missing something.
The original post only gave half the explanation. It’s not that lead exists in general, it’s that lead exists within zircon crystals.
Under normal circumstances that would be impossible, zircon crystals strongly reject lead atoms as they form. There’s no way to stuff lead into the crystal lattice in the quantity we find them there. But uranium and zircon go together just fine, we just have to wait for it to decay into lead. The trouble is it takes ~4.5 billion years for just half of those uranium atoms to turn into lead. So any zircon crystal we find with half as much lead as uranium must be roughly that old
This the explanation I’m looking for. OP didn’t make sense to me, lead could be created in supernovae and shit just like every other heavy element
But that still doesn’t change the belief that a creator could have created the universe in whatever state it currently exists in. That’s why these arguments never go anywhere with hard core young earth creationists. It’s also not worth the energy arguing with them because they often believe that anyone trying to convince them otherwise is an antichrist trying to lead them astray.
If God created it in that state then they should be curious to understand that creation. They look at rainbows as the beauty of creation but not the fact that lead exists in these crystals. It’s all equally beautifully complex. So why not try to understand it.
If God made the world look like it was created billions of years ago there must be something worth learning from that, even if you believe it was snapped into existence 6000 years ago.
Tbf for your specific example, rainbows are specifically mentioned and “explained” in the Bible. After drowning all life on Earth except for Noah and a bunch of inbred animals, God sent the wainbow down as a pwomise that he would nevew do it again 👉👈
To be fair they weren’t inbred yet
They were by the time they got off the boat though.
There’s no mention of meat pies in that story, not even sandwiches.
All young Earth creationist should be exiled to a remote desert island to die
I was a YEC before going to university. I studied geology. After two years, I accepted that evolution happened. After four years, I was an atheist. I went on to get a doctorate, and I have published quite a few papers about rocks that are >2 billion years old.
As a kid, there were literally 0 authority figures in my life that accepted that evolution happened. It was taken as a given that it was ridiculous. My biology teacher skipped the chapter on evolution, saying, “this is controversial.”
Patience, love, and making critical information available gives kids like I was a chance.
That is quite a journey! I hope that it wasn’t too fraught (learning shouldn’t have to be). Well done on making good of it!
An existential crisis is an important part of growing up.
Where is the proof about these magic numbers? Checkmate atheist. /s
All math is a lib lie! Just look at those blasphemous arabic numerals!
Numbers are a terrorist plot confirmed.
We will not be afraid.
