Earth science curriculum tailored to fit wavering fundamentalists

Question for the geology knowledgeable folk:I'm often asked when discussing these topics with fundamentalist friends, "How do we know this?" It's a fair question of course and I try to be ready or find the answer.When it comes to how rocks are formed, how do we know? Let's take marble - we are told that it is Igneous rock cooked under great heat and pressure until it changes state somehow. Now I'm not doubting that science has come up with really good way to know this but how? Can we take and cook igneous in the lab and turn it to marble?Can we simulate lithification in the lab? (I know we make real diamonds so what the hell, why not lol) Can we make sandstone and limestone etc.?It's perhaps too generic of a question, but I don't want to be telling folk that we can duplicate things in the lab that we can't duplicate.Thanks
JB

A 70 year old scientific paper locked behind a pay wall? Surely there are good reasons why that should not happen.

Yeah... that's pretty generic.So much so that I don't really know where to start.Maybe first, I should say that most marble is not of igneous origin. It is a metamorphosed limestone for the most part. Oh, there are some carbonatite magmas that might be considered marble if recrystallized, but they are not very common.But a couple of answers to your basic question.We can infer the sedimentary origin of rocks in numerous ways and here are a few:-- by seeing transitional materials from unconsolidated sand to the hardest quartzite in the geological record.-- by seeing certain textures and forms that are formed during erosion and transport, such as rounding of grains or formation of cross-beds in both unconsolidated and lithified versions.-- by observing fossils being deposited and eventually completely permineralized with progressive lithification.I'm sure that there are many other lines of evidence and some will probably be given in future posts, but I'm not sure that the synthetic formation of rock is of any relevance.

Yes on the marble. I knew that and just wrote the wrong thing.Thanks
JB

Talk to the local librarian. http://journals.aps.org/...-public-and-high-school-libraries.

GREAT IDEA.Thanks
JB

Here is a funny idea. Imagine what a creationist could achieve if one came here with the right attitude. Just by asking a few open ended, and honest questions without pretending to know better results in every swinging d, evolutionist knocking themselves out to provide honest answers that include all of the strong and weak points of their arguments. What more could a creationist, who wants to prepare his own strong case against evolution, desire from the other side.But none of them seem able to manage it. They all give themselves away because they cannot seem to ask questions without giving away their own dearly held opinion that the Bible is a science text. Quite amusing...Edited by NoNukes, : grammar improvement

According to The method

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The historical perspective on the development of radiocarbon dating is well outlined in Taylor's (1987) book "Radiocarbon Dating: An archaeological perspective". Libby and his team intially tested the radiocarbon method on samples from prehistoric Egypt. They chose samples whose age could be independently determined. A sample of acacia wood from the tomb of the pharoah Zoser (or Djoser; 3rd Dynasty, ca. 2700-2600 BC) was obtained and dated. Libby reasoned that since the half-life of C14 was 5568 years, they should obtain a C14 concentration of about 50% that which was found in living wood (see Libby, 1949 for further details). The results they obtained indicated this was the case. Other analyses were conducted on samples of known age wood (dendrochronologically aged). Again, the fit was within the value predicted at �10%. The tests suggested that the half-life they had measured was accurate, and, quite reasonably, suggested further that atmospheric radiocarbon concentration had remained constant throughout the recent past. In 1949, Arnold and Libby (1949) published their paper "Age determinations by radiocarbon content: Checks with samples of known age" in the journal Science. ...

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Figure 1: The "Curve of Knowns" after Libby and Arnold (1949).

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I believe you can get a free membership to science at Science | AAASCuriously they don't list a 1949 reference but do listArnold, J.R., and W.F. Libby, 1951. Radiocarbon dates. Science, 113:111-120.You could also try to email thomas.higham@archaeology-research.oxford.ac.uk (but I don't think he works there anymore)Enjoy

Thanks RAZD.I'm looking for that particular paper because the YEC folk I am dealing with insist that Libby stubbornly opposed the notion that the atmosphere wasn't in equilibrium. I've read everything I can get my hands on and of course nothing of the sort is true (the opposite is true in fact). I'm just trying to read his work all the way back to the beginning so I can be knowledgeable.JB

I wouldn't be surprised if Libby decided, based in the data, that it really WAS in equilibrium, and then became somewhat stubborn in this conclusion. The claim that the atmosphere is in equilibrium is nearly true. If one assumes the Libby half-life and atmospheric equilibrium, I believe the errors over the past 40,000 years are no more than about 15%.But with modern radiocarbon calibration to tree rings (which Erv Taylor calls a "second radiocarbon revolution"), atmospheric equilibrium is irrelevant. As YEC Gerald Aardsma says:

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Assertion 1: Radiocarbon dates are based on the assumption that the atmospheric 14C to 12C ratio has been constant in the past.
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The assertion that the "whole validity of the system" hangs on the assumption of a constant 14C/12C ratio in the past, or that this is "the technique's Achilles' heel" is incorrect. The whole validity of radiocarbon dating for the past 10,000 years---the time span of interest to biblical chronology---hangs only on the tree-ring chronologies which are used to calibrate it. ... This process does not involve any assumption about historic radiocarbon to stable carbon ratios because the radiocarbon concentration in the tree-ring samples would be affected in exactly the same way as the radiocarbon concentration in the specimen to be dated. Assertion 1 is false.

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Though Aardsma is a YEC who was formerly on staff for ICR, he understands radiocarbon dating. The common YEC assertions that radiocarbon dating depends on "uniformitarian assumptions" of a constant decay rate and a constant atmospheric concentration are out of date by 40 years.

You guys are talking about equilibrium as if it meant that the C-12/C-14 ratio were constant. That's not what equilibrium means. Equilibrium simply means that the rate of production is equal to the rate of removal. Removal is via decay and is proportional to the amount, while production depends on the neutron flux which is not constant.I don't know for a fact that C-14 is in equilibrium essentially all of the time, but it very well might be in near equilibrium with the exception of times shortly after a step or near-step increase in neutron flux.What is definitely true is that the atmospheric concentrations of C-14 vary offer time. Did Libby dispute that or did he simply insist on equilibrium?Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

I'm not aware of this claim, but what I have heard before is the claim that because 14C is not in equilibrium, that the earth cannot be old. The fact is that the proportion of 14C in the atmosphere oscillates around an average level that is the equilibrium level, due to the fluctuation in production.Whether or not he claimed it was in equilibrium is irrelevant to what we know now to be the reality, and it becomes another case of appeal to authority and quote mining to argue that what he said invalidates what we know now.Also, we know that Libby was in error on his measurement of half-life (it is 5730 instead of 5568) and that little was known then about the variation in cosmic rays.I did some more looking and found these:

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Science 6 May 1955:
Vol. 121 no. 3149 pp. 649-658
DOI: 10.1126/science.121.3149.649

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Radiocarbon Dates of Pre-Mankato Events inEastern and Central North America, Richard Foster Flint1, Meyer Rubin2

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References:
LIBBY, W.F., RADIOCARBON DATING (1952).
LIBBY, W.F., CHICAGO RADIOCARBON DATES .3., SCIENCE 116: 673 (1952). FREE Full Text
LIBBY, W.F., CHICAGO RADIOCARBON DATES-V, SCIENCE 120: 733 (1954). FREE Full Text

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Those free links are just data lists with little discussion and no mention of equilibrium.Science 3 March 1961:
Vol. 133 no. 3453 pp. 621-629
DOI: 10.1126/science.133.3453.621
(extract): Radiocarbon DatingScience 19 April 1963:
Vol. 140 no. 3564 pp. 278-280
DOI: 10.1126/science.140.3564.278
(extract): Accuracy of Radiocarbon DatesHope that helps narrow the search.btw -- check with your library to see if they have access to paywall articles.EnjoyEdited by RAZD, : btw

I think Aarsdma isn't a less-than-10,000 years YEC, but he is an honest and knowledgeable source.Many of his ICR articles went against the party line. I don't know anything about his separation from ICR but I wonder...

Oh, I promise you that it isn't any sort of reasoned claim, it's just built on nonsense passed around our SDA community as fact. Here is a quote from the highly regarded (in SDA circles) SDA evangelist Doug Batchelor

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In science experiments, assumptions are critical. But if the starting assumption is false, the ensuing experiment will lead a scientist to draw a flawed conclusion, even if his calculations appear correct. Willard Libby, the developer of carbon dating, drew his conclusions based on the assumption that the earth was millions of years old. He calculated that it would take about 30,000 years for an atmosphere’s 14C/12C ratio to reach equilibrium. When he discovered that earth’s ratio was not in equilibrium, meaning it must be younger than 30,000 years, he dismissed it as an experimental error!

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This is what my SDA friends hear when Doug says that (my paraphrase):

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Libby's results told him the earth was younger than 30,000 years but because of his stubborn assumption that the earth was old, he was dismissive of those results on the basis that the results of the experiment were a mistake.

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Now what they hear is neither here nor there to the fact of the matter, but one of the facts of the matter is that I have to deal with what they hear in the process of educating them. It's a pain in the ass, but it's the truth.I have found one of the easiest ways to show them how much BS is included in quotes such as the one above from Batchelor is to to dig up the original material and read it with them.JBEdited by ThinAirDesigns, : No reason given.

Yeah, I'm sorta seeing that. If the results coming back were within the expected error rate of the testing methods, it would initially be hard to show that it wasn't in equilibrium.JB