"You know that's impossible right?" Explaining to kids the comments of creationists.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm the PP from page 1 that spawned a lot of this discussion. I don't think I was clear enough. Stating that some people believe in opinions but WE believe in facts is what I was trying to convey. I'm trying my damnedest to not impart my own bigotry against stupid people. I try very hard to let my kids know that other people have opinions and beliefs that are different from ours. We can disagree, hell- we can even feel sorry for them, but that doesn't make them lesser people. Even my 6 and 8 year olds are able to come to a swift conclusion that a story told a couple thousand years ago before people had a scientific understanding of the world just doesn't make sense now. Religion is what people used to explain things before they had science to help them understand the world. I also tell them that a lot of people still love the stories dearly but use them more like metaphors and mysteries. To each their own (or so I try to teach myself while teaching my kids).

Surely you teach them there is not God, then, right?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Carbon dating, when you go back many years, has never been proven. For lack of a better way to explain it (my grandparents were Harvard/Nasa scientists who explained it to me in layman's terms), there are so few carbons when you go back many many years that the possible margin or error is enormous, i.e., is it 100,000 years old? 1 million years old? 1 billion years old. Who knows - it's essentially only a theory when you go back that far because it has NEVER been verified. We have no dated documents or other dated evidence from millions of years ago with which to verify.

The age of the earth is not estimated by carbon-14 dating. Radiometric dating is used -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_the_Earth#Radiometric_dating.

Carbon dating will give good results for objects up to 50,000 years. It is a scientific, proven method that has been calibrated and verified, for example with old tree rings.

Same difference. Carbon dating is a form of radiometric dating. Plus, again, neither has been verified as dating anything hundreds of thousands or millions or billions of years old.

[Anonymous]

Hey don't worry those creationists are just ensuring their children to low skill, low level jobs.

[Anonymous]

I feel so sorry for children with parents who teach them God is not true. Very, very sad.

Why not let your children believe in God, heaven, the tooth fairy, maybe santa claus, etc., until they are old enough to make their own informed decisions.

You are not giving your children an opportunity to draw their own conclusions - you are drawing them for them by saying it's all absolutely fabricated.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Hey don't worry those creationists are just ensuring their children to low skill, low level jobs.

So your claiming that Evolutionists rule the world with low unemployment at high paying jobs? Where?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I feel so sorry for children with parents who teach them God is not true. Very, very sad.

Why not let your children believe in God, heaven, the tooth fairy, maybe santa claus, etc., until they are old enough to make their own informed decisions.

You are not giving your children an opportunity to draw their own conclusions - you are drawing them for them by saying it's all absolutely fabricated.

Science and religion are not mutually exclusive. One is about faith, the other is about testable hypotheses.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Carbon dating, when you go back many years, has never been proven. For lack of a better way to explain it (my grandparents were Harvard/Nasa scientists who explained it to me in layman's terms), there are so few carbons when you go back many many years that the possible margin or error is enormous, i.e., is it 100,000 years old? 1 million years old? 1 billion years old. Who knows - it's essentially only a theory when you go back that far because it has NEVER been verified. We have no dated documents or other dated evidence from millions of years ago with which to verify.

The age of the earth is not estimated by carbon-14 dating. Radiometric dating is used -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_the_Earth#Radiometric_dating.

Carbon dating will give good results for objects up to 50,000 years. It is a scientific, proven method that has been calibrated and verified, for example with old tree rings.

Same difference. Carbon dating is a form of radiometric dating. Plus, again, neither has been verified as dating anything hundreds of thousands or millions or billions of years old.

Okay. If you really don't want to "believe" what has been main-stream scientific research for the last 50+ years, I am done having a serious discussion.

Good luck to you. I hope your children will get a good education.

[Anonymous]

You people realize not all Christians believe in literally seven days creation, right? That some believe the seven days means seven periods of time, not 24 hrs. Also, it's possible to be a Christian and believe God created the universe but not know HOW he did it.

Also I take "science" with a grain of salt. Afew hundred years ago science just knew the earth was flat. Scientists are still human and basing their findings on what they know or what they wish they knew. They learn more and more all the time and are constantly debunking what they thought they knew.

[Anonymous]

don't confuse the creationists with facts or science, it only frustrates them and gets their heads spinning.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Carbon dating, when you go back many years, has never been proven. For lack of a better way to explain it (my grandparents were Harvard/Nasa scientists who explained it to me in layman's terms), there are so few carbons when you go back many many years that the possible margin or error is enormous, i.e., is it 100,000 years old? 1 million years old? 1 billion years old. Who knows - it's essentially only a theory when you go back that far because it has NEVER been verified. We have no dated documents or other dated evidence from millions of years ago with which to verify.

The age of the earth is not estimated by carbon-14 dating. Radiometric dating is used -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_the_Earth#Radiometric_dating.

Carbon dating will give good results for objects up to 50,000 years. It is a scientific, proven method that has been calibrated and verified, for example with old tree rings.

Same difference. Carbon dating is a form of radiometric dating. Plus, again, neither has been verified as dating anything hundreds of thousands or millions or billions of years old.

Okay. If you really don't want to "believe" what has been main-stream scientific research for the last 50+ years, I am done having a serious discussion.

Good luck to you. I hope your children will get a good education.

Thanks for your concern over my child's education.

Personally bitch, I transferred out of an honors computer science program (I was gifted, later AP through grade school - priorto I was reading at 18 months) and ultimately became a tax lawyer. I'm confident that my DD will have the same educational opportunities as her parents, albeit I am hoping her aspirations take her somewhere far more exciting than the law.

[Anonymous]

I find the most helpful thing for my child is studying myths across different cultures. It's very easy even for my 8 YO to see how Christian myth is not much different than Greek or Roman myth. I encourage her to be biblically literate but to see the Bible as yet another culture's mythology. Which means in our family that we believe the bible is pretend stories they made up for things they couldn't explain. Unfortunately some people still insist that those stories are still true.

They can believe whatever they want. We believe in science.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: There have been lots of things in history that are "factually incorrect" and have either been proven wrong or doubts raised. Yes, we once believed the earth to be flat and condemned those who said otherwise. Columbus didn't actually discover America (yet we still all pay homage to this "fact" on the second Monday in October). Some other interesting "facts" some spoken by true scientists:
"Everything that can be invented – has already been invented" (1899 Commissioner of the Patent Office).
"There is no likelihood man can ever tap the power of the atom," ... Robert Milken, Nobel Prize winner in physics, 1923
"Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible," ... Lord Kelvin, President Royal Society, 1895

But those are different, right?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Carbon dating, when you go back many years, has never been proven. For lack of a better way to explain it (my grandparents were Harvard/Nasa scientists who explained it to me in layman's terms), there are so few carbons when you go back many many years that the possible margin or error is enormous, i.e., is it 100,000 years old? 1 million years old? 1 billion years old. Who knows - it's essentially only a theory when you go back that far because it has NEVER been verified. We have no dated documents or other dated evidence from millions of years ago with which to verify.

The age of the earth is not estimated by carbon-14 dating. Radiometric dating is used -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_the_Earth#Radiometric_dating.

Carbon dating will give good results for objects up to 50,000 years. It is a scientific, proven method that has been calibrated and verified, for example with old tree rings.

Same difference. Carbon dating is a form of radiometric dating. Plus, again, neither has been verified as dating anything hundreds of thousands or millions or billions of years old.

If you look at the quoted wikipedia article, you will see "Radiometric dating continues to be the predominant way scientists date geologic timescales. Techniques for radioactive dating have been tested and fine-tuned for the past 50+ years. Forty or so different dating techniques have been utilized to date, working on a wide variety of materials. Dates for the same sample using these different techniques are in very close agreement on the age of the material." and "The radiometric date of meteorites can be verified with studies of the Sun. The Sun can be dated using helioseismic methods that strongly agree with the radiometric dates found for the oldest meteorites.[30]"


If multiple methods (40!) are giving the same result, what reason do you have for doubting it? Do you know of any scientific evidence that gives a much smaller age than about a billion?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I find the most helpful thing for my child is studying myths across different cultures. It's very easy even for my 8 YO to see how Christian myth is not much different than Greek or Roman myth. I encourage her to be biblically literate but to see the Bible as yet another culture's mythology. Which means in our family that we believe the bible is pretend stories they made up for things they couldn't explain. Unfortunately some people still insist that those stories are still true.

They can believe whatever they want. We believe in science.

Using the same logic, you can't possibly teach God's existence.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Carbon dating, when you go back many years, has never been proven. For lack of a better way to explain it (my grandparents were Harvard/Nasa scientists who explained it to me in layman's terms), there are so few carbons when you go back many many years that the possible margin or error is enormous, i.e., is it 100,000 years old? 1 million years old? 1 billion years old. Who knows - it's essentially only a theory when you go back that far because it has NEVER been verified. We have no dated documents or other dated evidence from millions of years ago with which to verify.

The age of the earth is not estimated by carbon-14 dating. Radiometric dating is used -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_the_Earth#Radiometric_dating.

Carbon dating will give good results for objects up to 50,000 years. It is a scientific, proven method that has been calibrated and verified, for example with old tree rings.

Same difference. Carbon dating is a form of radiometric dating. Plus, again, neither has been verified as dating anything hundreds of thousands or millions or billions of years old.

If you look at the quoted wikipedia article, you will see "Radiometric dating continues to be the predominant way scientists date geologic timescales. Techniques for radioactive dating have been tested and fine-tuned for the past 50+ years. Forty or so different dating techniques have been utilized to date, working on a wide variety of materials. Dates for the same sample using these different techniques are in very close agreement on the age of the material." and "The radiometric date of meteorites can be verified with studies of the Sun. The Sun can be dated using helioseismic methods that strongly agree with the radiometric dates found for the oldest meteorites.[30]"


If multiple methods (40!) are giving the same result, what reason do you have for doubting it? Do you know of any scientific evidence that gives a much smaller age than about a billion?

You quote Wikipedia. You talk about the sun.

My grandfather was a physicist at NASA - he worked on Apollo. He even built observatories from scratch (including inventing his own method of lens making, missle systems too, etc. . .). Even his work on Apollo is patented. My grandmother was a chemist. I cite scientists, not Wikipedia.