Earth science curriculum tailored to fit wavering fundamentalists

First I would pose it as a question that disturbs you ...But I would ask how plant fossils are sorted by different types with grasses being last (did they run uphill?)Enjoy

And there are the stalactites that have formed over cave paintings ....

Hi NoNukes
Thanks for your concern.
My views are well known to the members, who remain my friends. My wife is a believer and I attend for her sake and for the fellowship. She doesn't go every week.
I "came out" a few years a go, and resigned my membership at a business meeting held to discipline another member with similar views.I guess a good outcome would be getting people to start to think about what they are told.

If I may, I would suggest the section on K/T tektites in this essay )which I may have mentioned earlier):

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The K-T boundary is recorded in numerous sedimentary beds around the world. The Z-coal, the Ferris coal, and the Nevis coal in Montana and Saskatchewan all occur immediately above the K-T boundary. Numerous thin beds of volcanic ash occur within these coals just centimeters above the K-T boundary, and some of these ash beds contain minerals that can be dated radiometrically. Ash beds from each of these coals have been dated by 40Ar/39Ar, K-Ar, Rb-Sr, and U-Pb methods in several laboratories in the US and Canada. Since both the ash beds and the tektites occur either at or very near the K-T boundary, as determined by diagnostic fossils, the tektites and the ash beds should be very nearly the same age, and they are (Table 2).

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There are several important things to note about these results. First, the Cretaceous and Tertiary periods were defined by geologists in the early 1800s. The boundary between these periods (the K-T boundary) is marked by an abrupt change in fossils found in sedimentary rocks worldwide. Its exact location in the stratigraphic column at any locality has nothing to do with radiometric dating it is located by careful study of the fossils and the rocks that contain them, and nothing more. Second, the radiometric age measurements, 187 of them, were made on 3 different minerals and on glass by 3 distinctly different dating methods (K-Ar and 40Ar/39Ar are technical variations that use the same parent-daughter decay scheme), each involving different elements with different half-lives. Furthermore, the dating was done in 6 different laboratories and the materials were collected from 5 different locations in the Western Hemisphere. And yet the results are the same within analytical error. If radiometric dating didn’t work then such beautifully consistent results would not be possible.
Radiometric Dating Does Work! | National Center for Science Education

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A flood can not sort species by an evolutionary history that supposedly never happened, and at the same time sort rocks by their K/Ar, U/Pb, and Rb/Sr ratios, all of which give the same date using different and independent dating methodologies.Edited by Taq, : No reason given.Edited by Taq, : No reason given.

Hi Taq,
This is a good one for me to consider because this dating concordance was mentioned in an early article in Origins, which is the journal published by the SDA Geoscience Research Institute. GRI was set up by the church to study creation issues, and after 50 years they still can not explain what is observed in a YEC/Flood paradigm.
In their early days they were more upfront with mentioning problems with YEC, but the church hierarchy is now more strongly conservative.To the others who have responded, thank you and I will thoughtfully consider your suggestions.

And one of the horrible tragedies of this whole thing is that it separates Christians from their church. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm an atheist. BUT, there is no reason why knowing about evolution and geology should make people turn their backs on God and Jesus. There are different reasons for being an atheist, which I will explain on another thread to anyone who wants to listen. But evolution is not a good reason. But the problem is that the evangelical Christians insist that it IS. They want to tell you that if you believe certain facts about geology, then you hate Jesus, you're an atheist, they are right to kick you out of their church. I will stand on my principles, and tell you that even though they are wrong about creationism, you may still be right about believing in God and accepting Jesus as your saviour. I say that's a different question. THEY say that it's the same question. THEY say that it's the same question.

I hope you have a good outcome. That said, holding dissident views is one thing, and a non-member 'busting' up church by contradicting the pastor is a different thing entirely. SDA is about as YEC as you can get. You might just as well question whether Jesus was resurrected at Bible study. This 'disciplining' activity... What was the intended effect supposed to be?Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

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There are several important things to note about these results. First, the Cretaceous and Tertiary periods were defined by geologists in the early 1800s. The boundary between these periods (the K-T boundary) is marked by an abrupt change in fossils found in sedimentary rocks worldwide. Its exact location in the stratigraphic column at any locality has nothing to do with radiometric dating it is located by careful study of the fossils and the rocks that contain them, and nothing more. Second, the radiometric age measurements, 187 of them, were made on 3 different minerals and on glass by 3 distinctly different dating methods (K-Ar and 40Ar/39Ar are technical variations that use the same parent-daughter decay scheme), each involving different elements with different half-lives. Furthermore, the dating was done in 6 different laboratories and the materials were collected from 5 different locations in the Western Hemisphere. And yet the results are the same within analytical error. If radiometric dating didn’t work then such beautifully consistent results would not be possible.
Radiometric Dating Does Work! | National Center for Science Education

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I know I have mentioned this before, but one of the key things I'm searching for is a way to illustrate the convergence of all this evidence. Here you have a relative dating system devised by the science of the day near two centuries ago showing that the Cretaceous layers were older than the Tertiary layers. This conclusion is still sound even with no other methods of confirmation. But along comes radiometric dating and what do you know? -- multiple other independent dating systems tested over and over and over come to the same conclusion. Convergence of the evidence is powerful.It's so interesting the way "it's all speculation" is thrown around by the YEC crowd. They act as if the 'speculations' of someone who hasn't been to the field and studied thinks like the Grand Canyon or thousands of other sites but is a keyboard warrior should somehow hold the same scientific weight of the countless thousands of scientists who have spent their lives tramping around, digging, observing, drilling, comparing and testing.It's like this argument: "Hey, I can kick Floyd Mayweather's butt - I can. I can also return serve on Federer, leave Lewis Hamilton in the dust and throw fastballs past Mike Trout all day long -- and if I can get time off from my job as assistant night manager at 7-11 I'll show you." Now, I think you're full of BS -- but hey, it's all just speculation. You're speculation is as good as mine, right?No, all speculation is NOT the same.We have decades and centuries of evidence that:
A: you can't dominate in all sports at once - there simply isn't enough time in the day practice everything
B: you almost assuredly can't dominate even in *one* sport while holding down a non-field related job and then spending the rest of your time bragging about yourself.My speculation has a TON of evidence behind it - your speculation, not so much.JB

I share both your lack of belief in their version of God, and your sadness that the results of good science is considered a test of faith.

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Nothing physical which demonstrations prove to us, ought to be called in question much less condemned upon the testimony of biblical passages which may have some different meaning beneath their words. For I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with senses, reason and intellect has intended us to forgo their use. -- Galileo

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I was wrong in saying "Origins" had treated the K-T boundary dating, but it is a good example. They have mentioned some other concordances that I could use.

A church member can be placed under censure or disfellowshipped for reasons that could include promoting ideas contrary to church teaching."Bob" I'll call him, wanted to transfer his membership to a different SDA church he was attending, and the approval for this was being held up while church members were trying to get him to state he believed in YEC. When he would not the meeting was called to censure him.The idea of this is the member is supposed to be worked with so he can change his ways. While under censure you can not hold church office, or transfer your membership.Bob wasn't going to change his views, so the next thing would have been a meeting to disfellowship him. He short-circuited that by resigning his membership.He then applied to be accepted at the other church on profession of faith. The local church decides who they will have as a member, so he was accepted by a majority vote of its members. However some were sufficiently unhappy with that to leave and go to another SDA church.There is a range of degree of conservatism among SDA congregations. In some Bob's transfer would have gone ahead without a murmur. Edited by Adminnemooseus, : Put in the blank lines.

Try this:One of the main objections to radiometric dating

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The ages of the Fen Complex (A,B) are on two separate dikes within the Fen Complex. Not only are their ages similar, but the direction of magnetization in the rocks is also identical and indicates that Oslo, Norway was located at about 30 degrees south at the time. This is an important consideration. In order to refute the ages, ye-creationists must not only explain how three different isotopic systems (with different decay constantsa and chemical behavior) all gave the same age and the same magnetic direction. It is also not trivial that the magnetic direction in these rocks indicates that Norway has moved northward following the emplacement of these rocks.

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Joe Meert has posted on this forum in the past, and he has a list of articles regarding creationist claims Creationism Pages by Joe MeertCreationism Pages by Joe MeertLikewise Don Lindsay has a number of articlesEvidenceThis one involves dating a string of craters
Are Radioactive Dating Methods Consistent?

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To check, we need one single event which has been dated by several methods. A nice example is the Triassic multiple-impact event, which formed a 4500-kilometer-long chain of huge craters. (There must have been a train of big objects from space, which hit the spinning earth, one by one, across several hours. Much like the way comet Shoemaker-Levy hit Jupiter in 1994.)

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Here are the five confirmed craters:

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"Stratigraphic" dating means that the crater itself has not been dated. Instead, the rock strata above and below the crater was dated. (By now, the Red Wing crater is under 1.5 kilometers of sediment.)

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The table shows five datings that are consistent with each other. However, there is a sixth dating involved: the one for drawing the map.

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Today, the continents are moving about one inch a year. This is a simple fact which can be measured by anyone with good GPS equipment. So, in 214 million years, the continents could have moved three thousand miles. To get a map of that past world, geologists did K/Ar datings of ancient lava flows. As the article below shows, the three main craters form a dead straight line on that map.

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Enjoy

While I greatly appreciate those links and in fact find them extremely compelling, I'm afraid that initially my audience will just turn them right off. I must somehow get them to recognize the *principle* of converging evidence before they will give any credence to a list like that. I'm trying to think of some way to illustrate the principle using things they already agree with as this would allow them to absorb the lesson without tripping straight into cog dis.When it comes to forms of reasoning and inference, I literally have to start at something like a grade school level. Even though they USE those on a daily basis (we could hardly survive without them), they aren't aware of it and have never been taught how valuable their rigorous application can be.Here's an idea I've come up with and I'll present it in as short a version as I can (it will still be long so bear with me). It's a bit of a little hypothetical game where one uses a series of "helpers" to win a prize. Initially you have no clue how reliable your helpers are, nor do you have any idea what methods they are employing to accomplish their tasks. You just know that you have no hope of winning without their assistance and to be successful you must use inductive reasoning from observations of their actions to step by step strengthen inferences.I'll write up an abbreviated version of the rules and post them in a bit for people to critique and improve (or suggest a totally different method of teaching the principles)ThanksJB

Precisely. If I were in your shoes, I would stress how the convergence of multiple independent lines of evidence is what makes the evidence so compelling. Only real geologic processes over millions of years could produce a geologic record where dinosaurs are only found beneath rocks that are about 65 million years old as dated by the independent measurement of isotopes in those rocks.As long as a rock meets the requirements for a given methodology, you could give rocks to scientists who are completely blinded as to where the rocks were found. They would still give you the same date. The convergence of fossil and age evidence is quite powerful.Even between the dating methodologies there is a massive amount of convergence. Why would a Creator make rock 6,000 years ago so that the K/Ar, U/Pb, and Rb/Sr clocks all produced the same fake age? A Creator would need to put in extra effort just to make sure those ratios were just right in order to produce these convergent dates. There is no other mechanism other than radioactive decay that can make these ratios match up to one another like they do.Edited by Taq, : No reason given.

Hi kbertsche,
I am familiar with Wonderley's excellent writings. They are a mine of good information.
It is interesting reading more on this subject and learning more geology along the way. I know the main reaction I am likely to get next week is "I will still believe the Bible" but I hope to be able to talk with the speaker -who is not the regular pastor,- and get his reactions to the various problems with the Flood.