I used to think of atheists as defiant people who for some unclear reason were blinded from seeing the truth.
I also thought they were stubborn, as they never bought my Bible-driven arguments and explanations that I used to think were air-tight and well thought-out.

Unbeknownst to me the first cracks in my faith started probably started around 12 years ago when I allowed myself to deeply question everything in the Bible, no holds barred; my thinking was that this would help my faith grow deeper and know God more. My faith mostly grew stronger for the next seven years, but apparently the faint fault lines in my faith were also growing.

The fault lines started to become more visible five years ago when I started asking questions about if miracles still happened today. And over time I started asking if God still intervened in the world today. And then I started asking if every line of the Bible was true. And then I started questioning the resurrection, and the virgin birth, and ...

I was at an airport one day, two and half years ago, and it suddenly hit me -- I had been fooled all along. Chai! The next six weeks were sad and depressing! I couldn't believe that I had believed in this falsity for so long. It took a good nine months before I could begin to really talk about it. I had to again process what it means to be human. I once again felt like an adolescent learning how the world works.

This was when I started to see the sense in all the arguments and defiant questions that my atheist friends used to ask.

This is my first time logging into NL with this account since we last debated! Lol.
Busy times. Hope you are good.

DoctorAlien:
Hello Antiparticle...

Let me just interject here briefly, we don't need to know what happened before the Big Bang in order to analyze what we know happened almost immediately after it started. (Knowing what happened before would be extraordinary helpful to science though). The path you are on is a "God of the gaps" argument.

Your assertion is like saying that "because I don't know what happened before I was born, therefore I have no authority to discuss or evaluate anything that happened after I was born". This is an indefensible logical fallacy.

In any case, I think @AgentOfAllah has done a detailed job on describing the physics of the aftermath of the Big Bang, beyond what I could, and I deeply thank him for that.

@DoctorAlien, shall we move on to the ice cores?

PS: Before we continue, I would once again ask you reconsider the basis of your questions. Are you asking questions because you are curious to find out the truth about the nature of reality? Or are you asking questions to arbitrarily railroad any findings that contradict your 6000-year-old universe hypothesis? If it is the latter, then this conversation is not helpful for any of us.

DoctorAlien:
Isn't it funny that most Big Bangists cannot tell you the situation of things before the Big Bang, or what existed before the Big Bang, or even what the Big Bang is, yet they believe that the Big Bang happened?

@AgentOfAllah:
Thanks for your explanations. I agree that it is difficult to be exhaustive on each of these scientific findings given that I have to address several of them. Plus, my time is finite so I have to choose what to focus the explanations on.

I particularly appreciate your treatment of the cosmic microwave background and its relation to the radiation of a black body. I contemplated discussing this but I didn't want to get into a long rat-hole so I just focused on redshifts. The way you clarified my use of the term "localized cosmological effects" is also appreciated, I concur that the phrasing might appear a bit technical to precisely understand. I also think some of my writing on radiometric dating can be more accurately refined (specifically my explanation of how using two isotopes considerably minimizes any dating errors), but this will take time and pages so I decided to not write epistles about that.

Anyways, @DoctorAlien has additional questions for you. While I would like to keep this conversation strictly between @DoctorAlien and I, you are welcome to address @DoctorAlien's response(s) to your post. As you and him discuss, I will temporarily just observe in order to be fair to @DoctorAlien because a two-on-one debate will not be fair to him. My only request is that you continue to follow the guideline of civility that @DoctorAlien and I agreed to on the first page.

I will jump in (to discuss "ice cores" ) whenever you both are done with addressing this topic. @DoctorAlien, is this ok by you? Thx.

I have 5 minutes before I leave to catch my train, so I will respond quickly.
Tell me your explanation that rebuts the ice core argument. I won't rebut the whole article you posted as this is unfair to me to have to read and rebut the whole thing. Whenever I post an article, I provide most or all the relevant detailed information in my post so you don't even need to read the article unless it is to get more detail. This is a conversation between two of us, so I'd suggest you do some reading too (as I do and have done). My posts to you are detailed because of readings I have done in the past, and in some cases recent readings. I however understand that it can be daunting to do a lot of reading on these topics, but trust me bro you will come out really knowledgeable.

I saw it. But I think you, too, should do some reading before you respond. Read up about ice cores first, then ask your questions. We should both be committed to this conversation. I have done a ton of research on the Bible, and I happen to be deeply conversant with a lot in physical science (although I am still very much a learner and will always be). You should at least do a minimal amount of research for the conversation to be fair. Please at least read the content of the "ice core" link in my post and then you can ask your follow-up question based on that. I make sure that most, if not all, of the links I provide here are from some of the most credible sources.

DoctorAlien:
Okay. I made a post on the ice cores.

I have addressed all your problems with radiometric dating. I am ready to move on from it.

I have also addressed the cosmological issues. I am ready to move on as well. I should add though that your approach to summarily dismissing any information that doesn't fit your 6000-year old universe hypothesis is disappointing and make me less enthusiastic about this conversation.

We can move to ice cores if you want. Or we can terminate.

DoctorAlien:
Pardon me if I have wronged you, but I'm just trying to point out some of the flaws in radiometric dating.

DoctorAlien:
1. Dating outcomes vary with different pairs of isotopes.

They only vary if the sample was contaminated. They don't if the sample wasn't contaminated (almost 100% chance). Rocks used to reliably date the earth don't have this problem.

DoctorAlien:
2. How are you sure that the second pair of parent-daughter didn't contaminate the material too?

Even if the second pair was contaminated, the isotope1-isotope2 contamination ratio has to be exactly proportional to the isotope1-isotope2 instantaneous decay rate ratio (now keep in mind that the decay rate is not linear) for the dating outcomes to still come out the same for both parent-daughter isotopes, so this is extraordinarily unlikely (literally almost zero!). And even if it happened for one sample, it wouldn't happen for a massive majority of samples.

This is for you to answer, not me. And actually, this fact works against you because it shows that the Bible is unreliable. KJV is even worse, because it was written off newer manuscripts with more forgeries and errors.

I can't believe I'm typing paragraphs upon paragraphs painstakingly answering your questions, yet you are closing your ears claiming "lying scientists" or "NIV is not the Bible" or "ice cores must have contaminated" etc. It really is a shame because I was hoping for a robust conversation but I am disappointed. I have a whole lot more topics that crater the credibility of the Bible but I don't need to go there because you have refused to engage in an intellectually honest conversation.

DoctorAlien:
But you never provided a reason why many, many verses are missing in the NIV, while this isn't the case with other versions.

Please read my posts again. This is the second time that you are asking questions I already addressed.

You did this same thing with blueshifts. I explained that blueshifts as a localized cosmological effect do not contradict the notion of an expanding universe. Localized effects are different from "far field" effects. How many times can I say this? You will successfully challenge the Big Bang if you show that blueshifts occur for galaxies extremely far away from us (tens of millions of light years away or more).

On the contamination topic, I have made it clear that contaminations are easy to detect because the dating results would be different if different isotope dating methods are used.

I assert that you are not debating in good faith.

DoctorAlien:
How did you debunk the fact that materials under examination could have been contaminated by either the parent isotope, or the daughter isotope, or even both in varying quantities?

Another thing you did, which I ignored, was your assertion that the NIV version of the Bible should not be considered to be the Bible. You did this because I showed you that the Book of Mark in NIV acknowledged problems with forgery. This, once again, is not debating in good faith.

I have debunked your key assumption of sample contamination, and you resorted to the statement that the scientists are lying. How else do you want me to engage you if when you run out of rebuttals, you say that the scientists are lying? Look at things from my perspective. I really can't continue if your last resort argument will always be that the scientists are lying.

It shows that you are not debating in good faith.

DoctorAlien:
I simply will not accept a method fraught with assumptions and prone to much errors as reliable.

Dude, it is trivial to show that the dating (using different isotopes) would result in different results of the sample was contaminated. Very trivial actually. I can show you if you want. I'll draw two decaying exponential curves on a piece on paper, take a picture, post it here, and show you they won't "intercept" the correct time point if there are mistaken starting points to the curves.

In any case, I think you should re-evaluate if you want to continue this conversation. It appears that you have made up your mind that you will not accept any findings that contradict your 6000-year old universe hypothesis. And this is fine. But if that's what you are going to do, don't pretend that you want to have a conversation, because it is a waste of both of our time if this what you will continue to do. You are inventing arbitrary reasons to not accept scientific findings.

You are welcome to play a game of musical chairs, but I'm sorry I can't join you in that because the reason why I decided to oblige you in this conversation was because I thought you cared about evaluating what is true and what is not. But it appears that you don't care.

DoctorAlien:
"Scientists" and Big-Bangists can publish any lie they want just to support their claims. We know that there have been many cases where recent materials were given astronomical ages by the "reliable" radiometric dating method.

Once again, you are mistaken. The second law of thermodynamics does not apply to before the Big Bang. We don't know what the laws of physics were before the Big Bang.

DoctorAlien:
Suffice it to say that the Big Bang theory disregards the second law of thermodynamics which states that the Universe tends to disorder rather than order. If indeed the Big Bang occurred, there should be just particles of matter distributed in the Universe, and not highly ordered structures like galaxies and the solar system(with intelligent life.).

I just explained the blueshifts to you bro. Are you debating honestly?

DoctorAlien:
The blueshift refutes the Big Bang theory. Scientists argue that observed celestial bodies moving away from us(redshift) are as a result of the blast. What about the ones moving towards us? Did they not come from the blast?

LOL. How did they arrive at the conclusion that the universe is 13.8 billion years old?

I don't know if you read my previous post closely enough. If they were contaminated, the age estimations would be different for different dating methods! And there are cases where this has been observed. Yet, physical scientists do their best to identify rocks with the minimal estimation possible, which is what is done for an incredible majority of samples used. Without contamination, the dated age is the same when different radiometric dating isotopes are used. Several rocks scattered around extreme ends of the earth (as well as from meteorites) have shown a similar ~4.6 billion year age for our solar system. This is inarguable and incontrovertible.

DoctorAlien:
You are carefully trying to shift the goal post. What do you have to say about the fact that scientists assume that the rocks they examine were not contaminated?

Let me address this post of yours.

DoctorAlien:
How do you explain other astronomical observations that directly challenge Big Bang's single explosion assertion, such as
a) Blue shift movement, meaning some celestial objects moving toward us, directly opposing the explosion's propelling force.

The notion that blueshifted celestial objects challenge the Big Bang assertion is based on a false premise. We observe cosmological redshifts for celestial objects very far away (millions of light years away) from us, and this is consistent with the Big Bang. This doesn't imply that blueshifts in localized cosmological vicinities contradict the Big Bang. It doesn't. For example, the fact that the earth and the sun are tightly bound together in our localized cosmological space does not automatically imply that redshifts for far-away galaxies don't happen. One is a "universal" effect (redshifts, for objects large lengthscales away from us), while the other is a "localized" effect (blueshifts and other effects).

There are other areas in physics where these seemingly contradictory (but actually non-contradictory) sort of effects are found; it is analogous to the concept of near field and far fields in full-wave electromagnetism. Do some reading on "near fields" vs "far fields" to get insight into localized versus far-field effects in general. The antenna in your phone exhibits near field effects and far field effects, both of which have different characteristics yet are non-contradictory.

DoctorAlien:
b) Some stars in the Milky Way appear older than the universe.

Wrong. No star was conclusively found to be older than the universe. It just so happens that the margin of error for the calculation made it appear older than the universe. This is the specific star that you are talking about. The age was calculated to be 14.5 billion years old plus or minus 0.8 billion years.

But even if a star was found to be older than the universe, this doesn't in any way support your arbitrary assertion that the universe is 6000 years old. It only creates opportunities for astrophysicists to refine their methodology. What you are doing is similar to claiming that all of medical science is wrong just because one or more doctors misdiagnosed a patient. This is absurd and disingenuous.

Edited

The answer to this is extremely simple. If radiometric dating is inaccurate for dating the earth, then all carefully selected samples used for dating the earth won't result in dates that converge towards ~4.5 billion years. If radiometric dating is as inaccurate as you say, all the key samples used to date the earth won't give dates in the billions of years. I am ready to move on from the radiometric dating topic, I have sufficiently addressed it. I take it that you have a disagreement about the 13.8 billion-year age estimate of the universe as well? Also, please address my post about ice cores. Thx.

DoctorAlien:
You have failed to address the main issue: how do you account for the fact that much of the daughter isotope in a rock could have been acquired and therefore could not have resulted from decay? Or that much of the parent have been acquired by process of contamination?

To make matters worse, how do you explain the fact the basalt that flowed from the top of the Canyon yielded a samarium-neodymium age of 916 million years and a uranium-lead age of 2.6 billion years? Which of the ages is correct?

Ok, let's move on to [url=https://www.climate.gov/news-features/climate-tech/climate-core-how-scientists-study-ice-cores-reveal-earth%E2%80%99s-climate]ice cores drilled out of kilometers-deep ice sheets in Antarctica[/url], which help us infer earth climate patterns hundreds of thousands of years ago. This is another data point that debunks the notion of a 6000 years old earth.

What do you say about this?

This will be the last part of our "age of the earth/universe" conversation. I will move on after your response to this. My next topic will also be related to the credibility of the Bible.

Good question, I indeed thought about this.

Radiometric dating takes care of that possibility by using different element isotopes for the dating. Radioactive decay curves are exponential (and the instantaneous curve slopes differ for each element isotope used) so if there are mis-estimations in the parent isotope amounts, we would get different dating results when different element isotopes (e.g. using Uranium dating and comparing to Potassium-Argon dating) are used. It turns out however that the dating accuracy is still the same when you use Uranium and Potassium-Argon to date the oldest rocks.

DoctorAlien:
How does radiometric dating take care of the fact that the rock under examination could have acquired more of either the parent isotope or the daughter isotope? This is just one of the flaws associated with radiometric dating.

I'm ready to move on too. You can drop any question you want me to answer.

DoctorAlien:
In the Big Bang theory it is not the receding motion
of matter, but expanding space that is used to
explain the redshift with distance. Thus they argue that the wavelength of light is longer due to 'stretching' space. The problems;

1 This is not a Doppler effect. A Doppler effect is for motion of matter in space, not for the expansion of space itself. Thus the Big Bang theory is not founded on the Doppler effect but a theoretical concept of expanding space.

I don't know if you read what I wrote; where did you see me write that the Big Bang theory was founded on the Doppler effect?? I used the redshifts to explain the observation of expanding space. The Doppler effect itself is not the Big Bang, and I don't know how you arrived at the conclusion that I wrote that.

Anyways, let me explain one cosmological expression of the Doppler effect via redshifts: For two galaxies both millions of light years away (one slightly closer to earth than the other), we observe the farther galaxy to have an increased redshift than the closer galaxy. This is because the farther galaxy is moving faster and faster away from an observer millions of light years away than the second closer galaxy (also millions of light years) away. The increased redshift is an expression of the Doppler effect, and these different redshifts (for the closer and farther galaxies) are a further illustration of expanding space. Celestial objects closer to the outer edges of the universe recede away from us faster than closer ones. This is congruent with the idea of a rapidly expanding universe, but is in no way an exhaustive explanation. The cosmological microwave background is another data point legitimizing the Big Bang and how long ago it happened.

DoctorAlien:
2 This then assumes that space exists (to be able to expand), yet in other areas of physics they claim there is no absolute space. e.g. The electromagnetic wave is claimed to not require a physical medium. This was necessary to accommodate Einstein's special relativity where there was no absolute reference frame for motion (space), instead all motion is relative to other matter.

Ok, but what's your point? I think you are mixing up things here. When it is said that light (EM waves) does not require a physical medium to propagate, it means that it doesn't need any physical matter as a medium to propagate through. It used to be thought that light needed a hypothetical aether to propagate, but it was later found that it can indeed propagate through vacuum completely empty of matter.

Anyways, what is your rebuttal to the 13.8 billion-year estimation of the age of the universe via cosmological calculations? Even if you disagree with cosmological calculations, how do you explain the fact that we consistently observe galaxies that are millions of light years away? It took millions of years for the light from those galaxies to get here, thus implying a universe at least millions of years old (unless you believe in last thursdayism). The Hubble Telescope has even observed a galaxy 13.2 billions years away. What do you say about that?

DoctorAlien:
Antiparticle,

I must laugh at the way you criticize the Bible. You expect to see words like "Milky Way" and "galaxy" and "Andromeda" in the Bible? Jesus said that after the great tribulation, the stars shall fall(Matt. 24:29). This prophecy was fulfilled in the great meteoric shower of November 13, 1833. It was the most extensive display of falling stars on record. It was estimated that a single observer could see an average of 60 000 meteors per hour.

Thanks for the response. It is both incorrect and dubious to claim that the prophecy was fulfilled in 1833. Let me explain.

First and foremost, meteor showers have nothing to do with the falling of stars. Secondly, even if the Year 1833 meteor showers were what Jesus was referring to as "stars" (we both know this isn't what meteor showers are, but let's make this assumption for the sake of argument), claiming that it happened because of Jesus' prophecy 1800 years earlier is not statistically robust.

For example: If a "prophet" prophesies that I will die one day, well that prophecy will become accurate if we wait long enough because all humans die one day! Your claim that Jesus' prophecy was fulfilled is analogous to the prophet claiming his prophecy was accurate because I indeed died. You don't need a prophet to prophesy anybody's eventual death, as it is known that we will all die. In the same way, claiming that a meteor shower was a fulfillment of Jesus' prophecy is not statistically sound. Meteor showers happen all the time and you don't need an arbitrary prophecy to predict this. Physical scientists do a better job predicting meteor showers to the exact date, that is much more credible!

I await your clarification of Jesus's assertion that stars will fall onto the earth. Stars cannot fall onto the earth. Jesus demonstrated that he had very little (edited) knowledge about stars. If he did, he wouldn't have made that statement.

DoctorAlien:
I take it that you have not taken your time to analyse the too many assumptions made while determining the age of rocks. That calls the whole process into serious question.

I never implied that radioactive dating and radioactivity were not related. However, they are not the same.

No. The assumptions are such that the whole process is not to be trusted. I will list the assumptions when you tell me how the earth was determined to be more than 6000 years old.

Ok, radiometric dating uses the fractional proportion of a radioactive isotope left in a given sample. This process is applied on the oldest rocks found on earth, and also on meteors introduced into our atmosphere.

I am ready to leave the radiometric dating topic, since you haven't specifically explained your problems with the assumptions made. But you are welcome to do so if you choose.

Now I'll move on to another way to illustrate that the Bible is wrong about the age of the universe.

The universe is estimated to be about 13.8 billion years old. Note that this estimate is through a method completely different from radiometric dating!

This estimate was obtained from the cosmic microwave background radiation left behind after what we might consider the Big Bang. Keep in mind that the cosmic background radiation was predicted in 1948 (based on mathematical and other observational estimations) even before it was physically discovered!

Another way used to estimate the age of the universe is the cosmological redshift, which is an expression of the Doppler effect. Basically we are able to estimate the time elapsed since the universe started rapidly expanding based on the frequency (color, but not the colors you can see with your bare eyes sha) of light emitted from celestial objects moving fast away from one another. The Doppler effect is an effect observed in acoustic (sound) and electromagnetic waves (e.g. the signals that propagate from your phone); this effect is basically an expression of the change in frequency of light/sound emitted from a moving object if it is moving very fast (relative to wavelength) from the perspective of an observer.

We use sophisticated telescopes (and in some cases very large massive dish antennas) to observe the redshift of celestial objects travelling very fast away from one another in our rapidly expanding universe, and this redshift is clearly and consistently observed. The cosmic background radiation is itself redshifting, meaning that the wavelength of its radiation is changing as the edges of the universe further expand and expand faster and faster away. We were able to correctly calculate the properties of the cosmic microwave background even before we discovered it!

What do you say about this? Do you think all this is credible or not? Btw, I would suggest you spend some time deeply researching these research works before responding. Thank you.

Ok, I'm moving away from radiometric dating, although I still hope you would respond by justifying, for example, why radiometrically dating rocks from fallen asteroids would give us the wrong results. I specifically chose asteroids (within our solar system) because they require less assumptions (than rocks on earth or fossilized organic matter) for radiometric dating. Yet these asteroid rocks show dating results that are consistent with the oldest rocks found on earth. Why?

We have dated rocks from the earth and across the solar system, and the results are consistent, our solar system is over 4 billion years old while the earth is slightly younger (these two findings are empirically consistent with the idea that the earth was formed from the contents of the sun, which is the star of our solar system).

DoctorAlien:
I never claimed they lie simply because their findings don't agree with the Bible: they lie because their findings contradict reason.

Please explain how their findings contradict reason? You still haven't done this. You provided one example of radiocarbon dating being wrong, and thereby extrapolate that all radiocarbon (and radiometric) dating therefore must be wrong. What you should take into account is that those incorrect results in one (or even a few) scenario(s) is not a failure of radiometric dating, it was the result of tainted samples NOT radiometric dating. It's like saying that because one laboratory made a mistake on your blood test (due to tainting the sample with another person's blood), therefore the methodology used for all blood tests is unreliable! This is a massive logical fallacy.

DoctorAlien:
Physical Science is not pitted against the Bible. Many a skeptic make this fallacious assumption.

I used to think this when I was Christian, but not anymore. This is because physical science disproves many of the Bible's claims, and shows that the supposed deities of Yahweh/Jesus barely had knowledge of how the universe works. For example, Jesus in Matthew 24 said that in the last days the stars would fall from the sky. He didn't know that stars cannot fall from the sky into the earth; most stars are millions to billion times larger than the earth!

Another one is Revelations Revelation 8:10 which says: "And the third angel sounded, and there fell a great star from heaven, burning as it were a lamp, and it fell upon the third part of the rivers, and upon the fountains of waters". Once again, this demonstrates a misunderstanding of nature.

DoctorAlien:
I await your concrete and solid proof that radiometric dating cannot be faulted.

All scientific methodologies are open to being challenged or faulted, provided there is countervailing evidence or cogent proof. I have no reason to accept your challenge on radiometric dating when you are extrapolating a few instances of wrong dating due to tainted samples to imply that all radiometric dating is incorrect. There is a preponderance of evidence showing that radiometric dating is by and large very accurate, yet you dismiss it. You dismiss it because you want the Bible to be true, which I am sympathetic to, because I used to be subconsciously the same way as a Christian.

DoctorAlien:
Engineering involves mathematics, but engineering is not mathematics. You now get the radioactive decay-radiometric dating relationship? LOL. You clearly don't know that many assumptions are made during radiometric dating. Said assumptions make the process totally unreliable.

Your prior post implied that radiometric dating had nothing to do with radioactive decay, and I felt I had to correct you; but it seems I misunderstood you. I'm glad you already knew that the former is derived from the mechanism of the latter. It is indeed true that there are assumptions made in radiometric dating, just as there are assumptions made in every engineering, physics, and scientific discovery. The question to ask is: are the assumptions empirically reasonable? You have not provided any explanation as to why the assumptions are empirically unreasonable. Keep in mind that the burden of proof on you is very high if you insist that radiometric dating is unreliable, since its accuracy has been corroborated tens to hundreds of thousands of times.

I can't fathom why & how you would think that radiometric dating is dubious. Please do tell what assumptions they make that are wrong. While you ponder this, I'll give you some more scientific evidence that disproves the Bible's assertions that the earth is 6000 years old.