110 replies to this topic

[Wolf O'Donnell]

Ah, but the question is... do we have too much evil?

Sorry to Godwin the argument so quickly but what about the Holocaust? Was that good for us? Surely, a benevolent God wouldn't have let it go so far? Yes, he may have allowed a bit of it, a bit of suffering, enough for us to act, but that much? Just under six million people had to suffer and die for the greater good? This reminds me of this scene from God on Trial...

[Egann]

That argument is disproven if suffering / evil is beneficial to mankind. We even had an entire thread on this.

Derived from this is an even less specific counter-argument, namely, to be in a position to use the "existence of Evil" argument to disprove God's existence LEGITIMATELY, one must first be omniscient. You can cast judgment on an omniscient being, but it only has validity if you are omniscient yourself. Otherwise the existence of evil argument is like a child pouting that eating his collard greens is unfair.

Case in point: The existence of evil argument is, logically speaking, an empty shell. Disguised by the fact that it is a very effective appeal to emotion, in fact. (This is cleverly hidden thanks to it's organization, which is indeed a likeness of a deductive syllogism.) It works for emotional purposes, but in logical terms claiming that Ignorance can judge Knowledge with ANY validity is absurd.

Also, Reflectionist, I think you greatly misunderstand what I meant earlier by "Objective within their own minds." What I meant in a more unpact way is "technically this knowledge is subjective, but it is acted upon and treated internally as if it were known objectively." According to the definitions this forum has settled upon, knowledge could only be truly "objective knowledge" if that knowledge were the product of external intervention. Left too their own devices, human cognitive mechanisms are fallable and insufficient to produce "objective" knowledge.

Oh, and yes, I am acting upon this as if I objectively knew this, even though in all probability it's an inference, and ergo is TECHNICALLY subjective knowledge. This is a PERFECT example of what I meant by "objective within their own minds."

[/tangent]

[spunky-monkey]

Thanks for the link above Wolf, it was insightful.

Derived from this is an even less specific counter-argument, namely, to be in a position to use the "existence of Evil" argument to disprove God's existence LEGITIMATELY, one must first be omniscient. You can cast judgment on an omniscient being, but it only has validity if you are omniscient yourself. Otherwise the existence of evil argument is like a child pouting that eating his collard greens is unfair.

Upon first glance this is a clever little counter-argument you've presented us to suggest that because we're lacking omniscience we cannot determine the existence of an omniscient deity. It's a pity then for theists that your defence is relying on an Ad hominem logical fallacy. The existence of Evil paradox is attacking the definition of God, and therefore indirectly disproves said being's existence.

Case in point: The existence of evil argument is, logically speaking, an empty shell. Disguised by the fact that it is a very effective appeal to emotion, in fact. (This is cleverly hidden thanks to it's organization, which is indeed a likeness of a deductive syllogism.) It works for emotional purposes, but in logical terms claiming that Ignorance can judge Knowledge with ANY validity is absurd.

An Appeal to emotion fallacy is the sort of "reasoning" involves the substitution of various means of producing strong emotions in place of evidence for a claim. We haven't done anything of the sort except to highlight the all too apparent logical contradictions that lie within people's definition of Christian God. People present or claim rather God as being "good", therefore we use reasoning, not emotion, to explain the existence for polar opposite morals commonly known as "evil". If people are mistaken about God being good, then fundamentally faith is invalidated because they believed in something that wasn't true from the start; their entire theory for supporting the Christian God concept is a misjudgement.

[Egann]

Upon first glance this is a clever little counter-argument you've presented us to suggest that because we're lacking omniscience we cannot determine the existence of an omniscient deity. It's a pity then for theists that your defence is relying on an Ad hominem logical fallacy. The existence of Evil paradox is attacking the definition of God, and therefore indirectly disproves said being's existence.

...Explanation, Please. I do not see any "ad hominem" here, besides possibly the observation that you are not omniscient. Yes, as that it applies to ME as well, that cannot be construed as a personal attack...unless, of course, you are CLAIMING to be omniscient. Oh, and this same line of thinking applies to the analogy as well, lest you think that I was using it to call you childish. In this sense, it applies to me as well because it is in the nature of the human condition.

Also, since Reflectionist pointed out the "Evil is Justified" thread, your claim that the argument is definition-based is moot. The minor premise must shift from "there is Evil in the world" -which IS an observation based on the given definitions- to "There is too much Evil in the world for it's presence to be justified or justifiable." In case you haven't noticed, the latter is not only a universal negative (and therefore impossible to prove) it is also a moral opinion-statement.

On the one-hand you have a definition-based argument that can't cover that evil has a justification even if we don't know it...which could be either an opinion or an unproven factual claim, depending on where you place the emphasis) and on the other your argument itself becomes an opinion-piece (ergo my assertion it is an appeal to emotion) incarnated within a deductive syllogism. You cannot cover both holes at once.

[spunky-monkey]

...Explanation, Please. I do not see any "ad hominem" here, besides possibly the observation that you are not omniscient. Yes, as that it applies to ME as well, that cannot be construed as a personal attack...unless, of course, you are CLAIMING to be omniscient. Oh, and this same line of thinking applies to the analogy as well, lest you think that I was using it to call you childish. In this sense, it applies to me as well because it is in the nature of the human condition.

You are partially correct; ad hominem abusive commonly refers to specifically criticizing or attacking the person. However the argument has various subtypes and other usage, with regards to usage in logic, you've asserted the argument/problem of evil is wrong and/or the source is wrong to argue against God purely because of something/someone discreditable/not-authoritative about the source or the cited sources, rather than addressing the soundness of the argument itself. You intentionally or unintentionally used ad hominem to suggest *we* both are lacking a necessary authority, or trustworthiness, or whatever, to case judgment on an omniscient God's morals because we are not omniscient. That's the logical fallacy in a nutshell.

Saying that I'm claiming to be omniscient is a big presumption and an erroneous one at that and I'm sure that's not what you intended.

Also, since Reflectionist pointed out the "Evil is Justified" thread, your claim that the argument is definition-based is moot.

That thread was seeking to justify the suffering in the world, not confront it directly, besides that's not what we're arguing at this moment in time. Science deems God 'irrelevant' because there's no empirical evidence to suggest it otherwise exists. Philosophy in religion and theology realises there are too many logical contradictions for the Bible's definition of God to exist. Under close scrutiny this concept of the benevolent all-loving deity with the real world just doesn't hold up at all.

The minor premise must shift from "there is Evil in the world" -which IS an observation based on the given definitions- to "There is too much Evil in the world for it's presence to be justified or justifiable."

The so-called "evil" in the world doesn't bother me; I have accepted it as a consequence or part of everyday life as you would do with chance in a universe of cause and effect. It's the popular distortion/denial that theists use to suggest God predetermined everything, yet is holy and just and somehow man is to blame for everything, and man going to Hell for all infinity or finite sin is justifiable that not only bothers me, but profoundly disturbs me as well. This above was but a small part of my transition from Christian to Atheist. To deny the above, is to deny my life as well.

In case you haven't noticed, the latter is not only a universal negative (and therefore impossible to prove) it is also a moral opinion-statement.

That's not even what I'm arguing. I am not attempting to justify evil, you're doing that all by yourself. Good luck with it.

On the one-hand you have a definition-based argument that can't cover that evil has a justification even if we don't know it...which could be either an opinion or an unproven factual claim, depending on where you place the emphasis) and on the other your argument itself becomes an opinion-piece (ergo my assertion it is an appeal to emotion) incarnated within a deductive syllogism. You cannot cover both holes at once.

Firstly, I regret to inform you yet again the argument is not TRYING to justify the presence of evil it is trying to understand how an omnibenevolent God and evil can be compatible, which they can't, a logical contradiction arises - hence the term "Epicurean paradox". I do recommend you look up on Epicurus' work in philosophy sometime.

Secondly, no, the argument put forward is not opinion-based, nor is it a factual claim. It consists of assumed propositions leading up to a logical contradiction based on what information is available regarding the popular concept of God. The paradox while having the basic structure of a logical appeal and uses deductive reasoning, is NOT a categorical syllogism because it has *no conclusion*, it ends with a logical contradiction preventing your universal negatives because the premises cause said contradiction. Research the paradox more closely because this is the last time I'll respond to you on the matter if you can't deliver any new material to the debate.

Edited by spunky-monkey, 31 July 2009 - 12:52 PM.

[Goose]

It's the popular distortion/denial that theists use to suggest God predetermined everything, yet is holy and just and somehow man is to blame for everything, and man going to Hell for all infinity or finite sin is justifiable that not only bothers me, but profoundly disturbs me as well.

You've met some predeterminists I see. Saying that God plotted out the whole story, and we are just sad little characters in it.

Not everyone takes that stance, as its not really bibilcal. God does have a path for us, but its a choice that we can choose to go down. If God had plotted this all out, and we had no free will, then yeah, he's a bastard, but thats not the case. - and this is all according to my christian beliefs mind you - God created us with free will, so we could live out our lives the way we wanted and love him out of free will, not because we were forced. He didn't pre determine everything and then point the finger at us, rather, he said,

"this is yours, do what you will with it, but please take care of it, and eachother. But say hi everynow and again. Dont forget about your old pa here either." (Extreme paraphrase.)

To those predeterminists I say they are shifting the blame from us to God because "he made me do it!" I used to work with kids, and that excuse doesn't cut it. He gave us free will, and told us to love both him and eachother. What we do with it is our own fault, not his.

[Wolf O'Donnell]

Actually, spunky, it's the paradox of an omniscient, omnipotent and omnibenevolent God and the presence of evil. He cannot be all three whilst continuing to let the amount of evil that is present in the world to go on.

Either he doesn't know, doesn't have the power to do anything about it or doesn't care.

Edited by Wolf_ODonnell, 01 August 2009 - 05:27 AM.

[Goose]

Actually, spunky, it's the paradox of an omniscient, omnipotent and omnibenevolent God and the presence of evil. He cannot be all three whilst continuing to let the amount of evil that is present in the world to go on.

Either he doesn't know, doesn't have the power to do anything about it or doesn't care.

Who commits the evil in the world? Humans. Did god give humans free will? Yes. If God did start destroying people who committted evil things, then there would be very few people still alive at the end of it.

You can't really bag out God for letting us do evil things and still ask for free will. Either we get the choice to do good or bad, or we become like robots.

Which would you rather?

[spunky-monkey]

You've met some predeterminists I see. Saying that God plotted out the whole story, and we are just sad little characters in it.

Before we go any further you need to be more careful on your choice of wording Goose - to be a predeterminist (predeterminism) is to have the belief that all events that occur in life have already been determined by a higher power, before the advent of temporal existence. Predestination, on the other hand is a doctrine stating that everything has been foreordained by a God, it focuses heavily on that some predestined people have been elected for salvation, while the rest are destined for damnation.

From my perspective, you are already a predeterminist because you claim to believe in a God that created everything, i.e. reality. If you're responding to the concept of predestination only please say so, otherwise you're arguing against predeterminism (your own core beliefs) and I honestly don't know what kind of religious orientation you're from if you're suggesting that.

Not everyone takes that stance, as its not really bibilcal. God does have a path for us, but its a choice that we can choose to go down. If God had plotted this all out, and we had no free will, then yeah, he's a bastard, but thats not the case. - and this is all according to my christian beliefs mind you - God created us with free will, so we could live out our lives the way we wanted and love him out of free will, not because we were forced. He didn't pre determine everything and then point the finger at us, rather, he said,

"this is yours, do what you will with it, but please take care of it, and eachother. But say hi everynow and again. Dont forget about your old pa here either." (Extreme paraphrase.)

I have to stop you there. There's plently of information you can access from the Bible to suggest divine foreordaining or foreknowledge of all that will happen; with regard to the salvation of some and not others. But we're going off on a tangent here and the rest is inconsequential to me. I'm arguing or using reasoning rather about the analogy of the Christian God's definition (since no one else is prepared to supply me with their own). If you're arguing over the Bible's loose interpretation of polytheistic ideas regarding determinism and how they conflict with your beliefs, kindly leave me out of it. As an atheist, trying to defend God's actions in the Bible is of no interest to me.

Actually, spunky, it's the paradox of an omniscient, omnipotent and omnibenevolent God and the presence of evil. He cannot be all three whilst continuing to let the amount of evil that is present in the world to go on.

Either he doesn't know, doesn't have the power to do anything about it or doesn't care.

That's pretty much what I summed up in my last post, but your feedback is still appreciated. Anyway I'm not interested in resolving the paradox, merely quoted it to emphasis the concept of a God is an illogical, emotional one.

Edited by spunky-monkey, 01 August 2009 - 10:38 AM.

[Wolf O'Donnell]

Actually, spunky, it's the paradox of an omniscient, omnipotent and omnibenevolent God and the presence of evil. He cannot be all three whilst continuing to let the amount of evil that is present in the world to go on.

Either he doesn't know, doesn't have the power to do anything about it or doesn't care.

Who commits the evil in the world? Humans. Did god give humans free will? Yes. If God did start destroying people who committted evil things, then there would be very few people still alive at the end of it.

The Problem of Evil does not just confine itself to the things we do. It also includes the suffering caused by things completely out of our control, that is the definition as I have often seen it. That's why I keep referring to "the amount". This isn't the issue of free will, because a benevolent God would allow free will. There is no paradox there. The paradox is in an omnibenevolent God allowing the evil we do and the evil inflicted on us through things we do not do. Is the evil we inflict on ourselves not enough? Do we also need the suffering of viruses, of things going wrong with natural biology and so forth?

Would a benevolent God create a parastic worm that can only live by burrowing into an innocent child's eye?

It isn't a problem for me, as I don't believe in God; there is no God as far as I'm concerned. It might not even be too much of a problem for you, as long as you insist on theistic evolution instead of intelligent design; God is absolved of some blame, for at least not deliberately creating the creature. But it is a problem for Creationists like the one who created the video in the original post.

Did you see the video I posted?

Who created the Egyptians? God did. Who sent the famine? God did. Who created the Amaleks? God did.

Here's another paradox. If we all had a choice, then surely Jesus would not necessarily have died. He had to die for our sins, didn't he? If he had to, then surely, the Romans must have been fated to execute Jesus, right? God must have taken that choice away, otherwise, there would have been a chance that Jesus would not have died for our sins. Dying of old age, probably wouldn't have been the same, right?

There's also another paradox related to Jesus' death. Why was Jesus supposed to die? Was it for our sins? To absolve us of them? But this is God, we're talking about. An omnipotent God who decided the rules, right? Surely, he can absolve us without sacrificing some random human being who happened to be himself?

[Egann]

You are partially correct; ad hominem abusive commonly refers to specifically criticizing or attacking the person. However the argument has various subtypes and other usage, with regards to usage in logic, you've asserted the argument/problem of evil is wrong and/or the source is wrong to argue against God purely because of something/someone discreditable/not-authoritative about the source or the cited sources, rather than addressing the soundness of the argument itself. You intentionally or unintentionally used ad hominem to suggest *we* both are lacking a necessary authority, or trustworthiness, or whatever, to case judgment on an omniscient God's morals because we are not omniscient. That's the logical fallacy in a nutshell.

Saying that I'm claiming to be omniscient is a big presumption and an erroneous one at that and I'm sure that's not what you intended.

...No. What you describe is the genetic fallacy, not circumstantial ad hominem. It doesn't really matter, though. The fault in both is in not establishing a connection between the credentials with the argument...which I did.

I know that Reflectionist and I aren't particularly good examples of this because we tend to just slap fallacy names on things and leave it to the reader to piece together what we're thinking, but demonstrating that an argument is a fallacy involves more than just saying that it's argument follows the same basic flow. You must demonstrate the error in reasoning, THEN categorize it into a fallacy. In short, you have to know the fallacy behind the fallacy.

There's also another paradox related to Jesus' death. Why was Jesus supposed to die? Was it for our sins? To absolve us of them? But this is God, we're talking about. An omnipotent God who decided the rules, right? Surely, he can absolve us without sacrificing some random human being who happened to be himself?

Upon reading this, I realize what the real problem is with the Problem of Evil argument. It is an attempt to make God after the image of Man's conception of Him, not an attempt to understand God as God. This is an absolutely atrocious bit of theology that EVERY THEIST OUT THERE -CHRISTIAN OR NOT- WOULD OBJECT TO ON THE SAME POINT. It betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of what is meant by the word "God."

God is immutable, and if He decided on one set of rules, it would be because they reflected His nature. To suddenly revoke those rules would mean that His nature changed (after all, He makes the circumstances as well as the rules) and God would have changed. To say that God could simply "change the rules" denies that God is God, but rather makes Him into a big man who knows a lot and has lots of powers.

The same thing is true with the Problem of Evil argument. The fact that God doesn't SHARE a reasons for allowing Evil does not preclude one from existing, so metaphysically speaking, the Problem of Evil argument effectively says "if I don't know of a reason that can justify evil, it doesn't exist" and therefore indirectly (and probably unintentionally) claims the omniscience of the arguer. Caused, of course, by the human tendency to assume we know everything in the universe...or at least, everything important.

Think about it. If I gave you a reason that you agreed justified the existence of Evil, would you continue to use the existence of Evil argument? No. Oh, I said it before, but I think it bears repeating: the ones doing the proving (or the disproving in this case) have the burden of proof. So to use the existence of Evil argument effectively, you must first prove that such a reason cannot exist. (Good luck with that. It's a universal negative.)

[spunky-monkey]

...No. What you describe is the genetic fallacy, not circumstantial ad hominem. It doesn't really matter, though. The fault in both is in not establishing a connection between the credentials with the argument...which I did.

I know that Reflectionist and I aren't particularly good examples of this because we tend to just slap fallacy names on things and leave it to the reader to piece together what we're thinking, but demonstrating that an argument is a fallacy involves more than just saying that it's argument follows the same basic flow. You must demonstrate the error in reasoning, THEN categorize it into a fallacy. In short, you have to know the fallacy behind the fallacy.

Did I ever explicitly say circumstantial ad hominem by name? No I did not.

In any case, an Ad hominem is a Genetic Fallacy, it falls under the same category as those fallacies of relevance.

Edited by spunky-monkey, 01 August 2009 - 05:24 PM.

[Wolf O'Donnell]

There's also another paradox related to Jesus' death. Why was Jesus supposed to die? Was it for our sins? To absolve us of them? But this is God, we're talking about. An omnipotent God who decided the rules, right? Surely, he can absolve us without sacrificing some random human being who happened to be himself?

Upon reading this, I realize what the real problem is with the Problem of Evil argument. It is an attempt to make God after the image of Man's conception of Him, not an attempt to understand God as God. This is an absolutely atrocious bit of theology that EVERY THEIST OUT THERE -CHRISTIAN OR NOT- WOULD OBJECT TO ON THE SAME POINT. It betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of what is meant by the word "God."

God is immutable, and if He decided on one set of rules, it would be because they reflected His nature. To suddenly revoke those rules would mean that His nature changed (after all, He makes the circumstances as well as the rules) and God would have changed. To say that God could simply "change the rules" denies that God is God, but rather makes Him into a big man who knows a lot and has lots of powers.

Ah, but this is not related to the Problem of Evil at all. It's something else I came across when I started thinking about Christianity in general (because let's face it, the creator of that youtube video must have expressly been thinking about Christianity).

I find it strange. You would object to this, not because you have some good evidence to show otherwise, but because it would make your God's reign seem arbitrary. And what if it is?

If the Bible is to be taken as literal truth, then we can clearly see that God has changed. The God of the Old Testament is an abusive genocidal maniac. He wiped out Sodom and Gomorrah. He commited mass genocide with a flood and ordered the mass genocide of the Amalekites, as well as any person that dared to live in the so-called Holy Land. To win a debate with the devil about someone's piety, he deliberately afflicted the man with one evil after another. Is that the action of a good God, to deliberately go out of his way to harm his "children" just to prove that they are worthy? It's not just some minor trial either. It's killing people he knows, infecting him with diseases. This is not a good or moral God, yet Christians claim otherwise.

Presuming that God exists, we can come to four conclusions:

1. God has not changed and the Christians don't know what they're talking about.
2. We cannot trust the New Testament to be accurate.
2. God has changed and therefore you don't know what you're talking about.
4. We cannot trust the Old Testament to be accurate.

The same thing is true with the Problem of Evil argument. The fact that God doesn't SHARE a reasons for allowing Evil does not preclude one from existing, so metaphysically speaking, the Problem of Evil argument effectively says "if I don't know of a reason that can justify evil, it doesn't exist" and therefore indirectly (and probably unintentionally) claims the omniscience of the arguer. Caused, of course, by the human tendency to assume we know everything in the universe...or at least, everything important.

Think about it. If I gave you a reason that you agreed justified the existence of Evil, would you continue to use the existence of Evil argument? No.Oh, I said it before, but I think it bears repeating: the ones doing the proving (or the disproving in this case) have the burden of proof. So to use the existence of Evil argument effectively, you must first prove that such a reason cannot exist. (Good luck with that. It's a universal negative.)

Will the Sun rise again tomorrow, Egann? If you were to ask anyone here whether the sun will rise again tomorrow, they will say yes. Does that presume they know everything? After all, there's nothing to say the sun won't rise tomorrow. Who is to say that the sun won't sudenly explode tonight? We can say, reasonably, that there is a good probability that it won't but we cannot preclude it. But if anyone goes to bed everynight, with the fear that the sun will not rise again in the morning, wouldn't they be thought of as crazy?

Here's another one. If you were to come across someone who believed that water can spontaneously turn into hydrogen peroxide at anytime and therefore refuses to consume anything that contains water in it, would you consider them crazy? Yes, because there is no evidence that it has happened before. But just because there is no evidence it has happened before, doesn't mean it won't in the future. Can you prove that it won't? No, you can prove it has never happened before. You can prove that there's no known mechanism for that occurring. You can prove that there's no known occasion of it happening. However, that's known. What about the unknown?

Are you suggesting that if we are to state that the sun will rise again tomorrow and that water is safe to drink, that it won't turn into hydrogen peroxide, that we claim omniscience?

If there is no known reason to believe something is true then we say it is not true. We do not claim that we know that there is no reason whatsoever and never will be, only that there is no known reason and that's good enough.

However, to answer your point directly, the Problem of Evil still exists. None of us can come up with a decent answer, so it's still a Problem, isn't it? Only when it's answered does it cease to be a problem. Now there might actually be an answer, problems usually do, but until that answer comes forth it is still a problem. Tell me, when people drank water and died from the diseases in it, was it a problem? Yes, it was. It didn't matter that there was already an answer, just that somebody had to think up of it (presumably if God exists he would have known the answer already). It was a problem. So it is with the Problem of Evil.

Out of all of us, Goose has come closest to answering it. I'd concede to him, if it weren't for the fact that the sheer amount and nature of evil and suffering seemed a bit over the top.

What about you, though? You've made a claim yourself. You tried to disprove the Problem of Evil by claiming there must be a reason. So where's your evidence? You're trying to disprove the Problem of Evil, right? Where is your evidence?

When you said that cyanide was a problem to the Miller-Urey experiment, where was your evidence? The burden lay with you, but you didn't provide a single jot of evidence to back up your claim; in fact, when I tried the same thing, I found evidence against your claim and provided it. Where was your evidence, Egann? When you said there was problems with radiocarbon dating, you provided no evidence. I provided evidence to the contrary. When you said that God must have a reason, it's just that we can't think up of one, where's your evidence?

Don't shift the burden of proof response onto me if you yourself do not uphold it.

[Egann]

...No. What you describe is the genetic fallacy, not circumstantial ad hominem. It doesn't really matter, though. The fault in both is in not establishing a connection between the credentials with the argument...which I did.

I know that Reflectionist and I aren't particularly good examples of this because we tend to just slap fallacy names on things and leave it to the reader to piece together what we're thinking, but demonstrating that an argument is a fallacy involves more than just saying that it's argument follows the same basic flow. You must demonstrate the error in reasoning, THEN categorize it into a fallacy. In short, you have to know the fallacy behind the fallacy.

Did I ever explicitly say circumstantial ad hominem by name? No I did not.

In any case, an Ad hominem is a Genetic Fallacy, it falls under the same category as those fallacies of relevance.

...in which case calling it a genetic fallacy in the first place would have made much more sense than calling it an ad hominem as that you were talking about qualifications from the beginning.

I take it by your silence on the second half of the quote that you concede that you cannot explain how my reason is faulty without generically labeling it as "a fallacy" as that you cannot point to any specific error in the reasoning? [/prod]

I know you don't, but I can't fix an argument if I don't know what's wrong with it.

If the Bible is to be taken as literal truth, then we can clearly see that God has changed. The God of the Old Testament is an abusive genocidal maniac. He wiped out Sodom and Gomorrah. He commited mass genocide with a flood and ordered the mass genocide of the Amalekites, as well as any person that dared to live in the so-called Holy Land. To win a debate with the devil about someone's piety, he deliberately afflicted the man with one evil after another. Is that the action of a good God, to deliberately go out of his way to harm his "children" just to prove that they are worthy? It's not just some minor trial either. It's killing people he knows, infecting him with diseases. This is not a good or moral God, yet Christians claim otherwise.

Presuming that God exists, we can come to four conclusions:

1. God has not changed and the Christians don't know what they're talking about.
2. We cannot trust the New Testament to be accurate.
2. God has changed and therefore you don't know what you're talking about.
4. We cannot trust the Old Testament to be accurate.

...Assuming you've correctly interpreted both the Old and New Testaments and that you have concluded correctly that they are not only in opposition, but CONTRADICTORY. Keyword: INTERPRET. The interpretation that I believe (the interpretation valid for this debate, seeing that I'm the Christian) is that The Old Testament Points to the New and the two testaments individually show opposing characteristics of a single God. It's only when you put the two together that you see the full character of God and understand why God sent Jesus (because He loves us, NT), why Jesus had to die (to satisfy God's justice, OT), and why God couldn't just "change the rules" (God is immutable, OT).

No offense, but I find the very idea that the Old and New Testaments are in opposition to be an indicator that you read them both with an eye predisposed to find fault, and as a result you see fault, whether the fault is real or not. Yes, there are Christians who believe this, but that's more a hang-over result of the 60's when there was a pressure to abandon the perceived "hate" of the Old Testament than anything else. This interpretation fell out of theological favor almost 30 years ago.

Will the Sun rise again tomorrow, Egann? If you were to ask anyone here whether the sun will rise again tomorrow, they will say yes. Does that presume they know everything? After all, there's nothing to say the sun won't rise tomorrow. Who is to say that the sun won't sudenly explode tonight? We can say, reasonably, that there is a good probability that it won't but we cannot preclude it. But if anyone goes to bed everynight, with the fear that the sun will not rise again in the morning, wouldn't they be thought of as crazy?

Here's another one. If you were to come across someone who believed that water can spontaneously turn into hydrogen peroxide at anytime and therefore refuses to consume anything that contains water in it, would you consider them crazy? Yes, because there is no evidence that it has happened before. But just because there is no evidence it has happened before, doesn't mean it won't in the future. Can you prove that it won't? No, you can prove it has never happened before. You can prove that there's no known mechanism for that occurring. You can prove that there's no known occasion of it happening. However, that's known. What about the unknown?

Are you suggesting that if we are to state that the sun will rise again tomorrow and that water is safe to drink, that it won't turn into hydrogen peroxide, that we claim omniscience?

....Come again? There's probably a connection in your mind, but from my point of view this comes across as being a non sequitor. I don't see what specific assumptions made from common experience have to do with knowing that there is no sufficient reason that justifies evil. The two not only belong to different subjects, but also are known through radically different ways.

Out of all of us, Goose has come closest to answering it. I'd concede to him, if it weren't for the fact that the sheer amount and nature of evil and suffering seemed a bit over the top.

So the problem of Evil argument boils down to your OPINION that there's too much? How do you define and measure evil and how much would you call justifiable? How do you know that you'd still call that same amount "justifiable" if we were at that level or that your opinion would change and you'd STILL think that there was too much evil?

What about you, though? You've made a claim yourself. You tried to disprove the Problem of Evil by claiming there must be a reason. So where's your evidence? You're trying to disprove the Problem of Evil, right? Where is your evidence?

When you said that cyanide was a problem to the Miller-Urey experiment, where was your evidence? The burden lay with you, but you didn't provide a single jot of evidence to back up your claim; in fact, when I tried the same thing, I found evidence against your claim and provided it. Where was your evidence, Egann? When you said there was problems with radiocarbon dating, you provided no evidence. I provided evidence to the contrary. When you said that God must have a reason, it's just that we can't think up of one, where's your evidence?

Don't shift the burden of proof response onto me if you yourself do not uphold it.

1. There's a difference between proving or disproving something, and questioning the assumptions of a particular task. The one is expected to have proof, the other is an inquiry. And if memory serves...I posted several sources and evidences, anyways. Oh, BTW, your source (singular) on why I should agree with your dating mechanisms did not deal with any of my questions about the assumptions involved in radiometric dating. It answered OTHER questions, to be sure, like "how do we know that decay rates haven't changed over time?" but not MY questions like "how do we know what chemical changes happened to the sample when it was in the water-table?" and "how do we know the rock has always been this dense and had this constant gas effusion rate? Why couldn't it have been compressed from geological forces?" or even "how do we know the starting chemical composition of the sample to begin with as that it probably started with some decay-products already in it?" I know. I checked.

2. I HAVE provided evidence in this argument in the form of a logical argument. Granted, you and spunkey-monkey are contesting that argument, but that's not the same as ME NOT HAVING GIVEN any evidence.

Don't try to paint me as being hipocritical just to shirk your way out of having to do something.

[Wolf O'Donnell]

...Assuming you've correctly interpreted both the Old and New Testaments and that you have concluded correctly that they are not only in opposition, but CONTRADICTORY. Keyword: INTERPRET. The interpretation that I believe (the interpretation valid for this debate, seeing that I'm the Christian) is that The Old Testament Points to the New and the two testaments individually show opposing characteristics of a single God. It's only when you put the two together that you see the full character of God and understand why God sent Jesus (because He loves us, NT), why Jesus had to die (to satisfy God's justice, OT), and why God couldn't just "change the rules" (God is immutable, OT).

So what are you saying? That God made the Amalekites, specifically to kill them? They were made as sacrifices or to foreshadow the coming of Christ, is that it? So, an entire nation of people had to be wiped out just so God could tell everybody that Jesus was coming and not in an outright manner, but in a... "you have to read between the really vague lines to get a vague answer" manner.

It would seem that by attempting to prove God is immutable, you have proved that God is not good.

No offense, but I find the very idea that the Old and New Testaments are in opposition to be an indicator that you read them both with an eye predisposed to find fault, and as a result you see fault, whether the fault is real or not. Yes, there are Christians who believe this, but that's more a hang-over result of the 60's when there was a pressure to abandon the perceived "hate" of the Old Testament than anything else. This interpretation fell out of theological favor almost 30 years ago.

Of course I read them to find fault. I read everything to find fault. That is what I've been taught to do whenever I come across any scientific literature, so I don't see why I cannot apply it to the Bible just because you don't like it.

....Come again? There's probably a connection in your mind, but from my point of view this comes across as being a non sequitor. I don't see what specific assumptions made from common experience have to do with knowing that there is no sufficient reason that justifies evil. The two not only belong to different subjects, but also are known through radically different ways.

Not at all. If it's good enough to know no known reason water will become toxic through a chemical reaction we as of yet do not yet know, then surely it is good enough to presume there is no sufficient reason to justify evil if no one can come up with one.

So the problem of Evil argument boils down to your OPINION that there's too much? How do you define and measure evil and how much would you call justifiable? How do you know that you'd still call that same amount "justifiable" if we were at that level or that your opinion would change and you'd STILL think that there was too much evil?

You mean, it's not over the top? You think it's justified that a worm can only live by burrowing into a poor innocent child's eye, a child that has done nothing wrong, that has done nothing to deserve it? You think it's justified that six million plus people died at the hands of the Nazis and that even more died at the hands of Josef Stalin? That it's justified that they didn't die quickly, that they took days, possibly even months to die?

1. There's a difference between proving or disproving something, and questioning the assumptions of a particular task. The one is expected to have proof, the other is an inquiry.

Oh and who it to say that one thing is an inquiry or not one?

I think of the Problem of Evil as an inquiry. Is it not an inquiry about the nature of God, just like your enquiry about the Miller-Urey experiment? What is it an enquiry about? Is it not an enquiry about god's status of being omnipotent, omniscient and omni-benevolent all at once? What group made this statement in the first place? Was it not the Christians?

And if memory serves...I posted several sources and evidences, anyways.

Then your memory is faulty, because I can only see just the one and it's this one and I pointed out to you quite clearly that you quote-mined the abstract to show there was a problem with radiocarbon dating when there wasn't one.

So, your definition of several is one?

Oh, BTW, your source (singular) on why I should agree with your dating mechanisms did not deal with any of my questions about the assumptions involved in radiometric dating. It answered OTHER questions, to be sure, like "how do we know that decay rates haven't changed over time?" but not MY questions like "how do we know what chemical changes happened to the sample when it was in the water-table?" and "how do we know the rock has always been this dense and had this constant gas effusion rate? Why couldn't it have been compressed from geological forces?" or even "how do we know the starting chemical composition of the sample to begin with as that it probably started with some decay-products already in it?" I know. I checked.

Quoting from the posted article:

how do we know what chemical changes happened to the sample when it was in the water-table?
Why couldn't it have been compressed from geological forces?

radioactive decay rates have been measured for over sixty years now for many of the decay clocks without any observed changes. And it has been close to a hundred years since the uranium-238 decay rate was first determined.

However, to be fair on you, there could be a more detailed explanation. So I will now post this article

How do we know the rock has always been this dense and had this constant gas effusion rate?
how do we know the starting chemical composition of the sample to begin with as that it probably started with some decay-products already in it?

Why would a rock become less dense? Only if it's heated surely? That would mean it would have gone back into magma, which is the kind of rock that you're not supposed to use as stated in the article...

Geologists have known for over forty years that the potassium-argon method cannot be used on rocks only twenty to thirty years old. Publicizing this incorrect age as a completely new finding was inappropriate. The reasons are discussed in the Potassium-Argon Dating section above.

If it was suddenly melted, it would become a new rock.

As for your other questions, gas effusion rate? You mean the rate at which argon is formed, surely? Well, it's from the decay rate.

The half-lives have all been measured directly either by using a radiation detector to count the number of atoms decaying in a given amount of time from a known amount of the parent material, or by measuring the ratio of daughter to parent atoms in a sample that originally consisted completely of parent atoms. Work on radiometric dating first started shortly after the turn of the 20th century, but progress was relatively slow before the late orties. However, by now we have had over fifty years to measure and re-measure the half-lives for many of the dating techniques. Very precise counting of the decay events or the daughter atoms can be done, so while the number of, say, rhenium-187 atoms decaying in 50 years is a very small fraction of the total, the resulting osmium-187 atoms can be very precisely counted. For example, recall that only one gram of material contains over 1021 (1 with 21 zeros behind) atoms. Even if only one trillionth of the atoms decay in one year, this is still millions of decays, each of which can be counted by a radiation detector!

The uncertainties on the half-lives given in the table are all very small. All of the half-lives are known to better than about two percent except for rhenium (5%), lutetium (3%), and beryllium (3%). There is no evidence of any of the half-lives changing over time. In fact, as discussed below, they have been observed to not change at all over hundreds of thousands of years.

Potassium is an abundant element in the Earth's crust. One isotope, potassium-40, is radioactive and decays to two different daughter products, calcium-40 and argon-40, by two different decay methods. This is not a problem because the production ratio of these two daughter products is precisely known, and is always constant: 11.2% becomes argon-40 and 88.8% becomes calcium-40. It is possible to date some rocks by the potassium-calcium method, but this is not often done because it is hard to determine how much calcium was initially present. Argon, on the other hand, is a gas. Whenever rock is melted to become magma or lava, the argon tends to escape. Once the molten material hardens, it begins to trap the new argon produced since the hardening took place. In this way the potassium-argon clock is clearly reset when an igneous rock is formed.

In its simplest form, the geologist simply needs to measure the relative amounts of potassium-40 and argon-40 to date the rock. The age is given by a relatively simple equation:

t = h x ln[1 + (argon-40)/(0.112 x (potassium-40))]/ln(2)

where t is the time in years, h is the half-life, also in years, and ln is the natural logarithm.

However, in reality there is often a small amount of argon remaining in a rock when it hardens. This is usually trapped in the form of very tiny air bubbles in the rock. One percent of the air we breathe is argon. Any extra argon from air bubbles may need to be taken into account if it is significant relative to the amount of radiogenic argon (that is, argon produced by radioactive decays). This would most likely be the case in either young rocks that have not had time to produce much radiogenic argon, or in rocks that are low in the parent potassium. One must have a way to determine how much air-argon is in the rock. This is rather easily done because air-argon has a couple of other isotopes, the most abundant of which is argon-36. The ratio of argon-40 to argon-36 in air is well known, at 295. Thus, if one measures argon-36 as well as argon-40, one can calculate and subtract off the air-argon-40 to get an accurate age.

All your questions were answered. It's whether you chose to believe it or not.

However, for your sake, shall I go find some more detailed answers?

2. I HAVE provided evidence in this argument in the form of a logical argument. Granted, you and spunkey-monkey are contesting that argument, but that's not the same as ME NOT HAVING GIVEN any evidence.

Don't try to paint me as being hipocritical just to shirk your way out of having to do something.

Well, then in that case, we have also provided evidence then, haven't we? Did I not cite the Amalekites, the Holocaust, the people who died in Josef Stalin's camps? Did I not mention the numbers of people who suffered? Did I not mention the worm that lives in a child's eye? Aren't you accusing me of the same thing that you've been doing?

If I haven't provided any evidence, then neither have you. If you have provided evidence, then so have I.

Edited by Wolf_ODonnell, 03 August 2009 - 02:16 PM.

[Egann]

So what are you saying? That God made the Amalekites, specifically to kill them? They were made as sacrifices or to foreshadow the coming of Christ, is that it? So, an entire nation of people had to be wiped out just so God could tell everybody that Jesus was coming and not in an outright manner, but in a... "you have to read between the really vague lines to get a vague answer" manner.

It would seem that by attempting to prove God is immutable, you have proved that God is not good.

I believe you are confusing the issue. The issue here is not "is God good?" but rather "who is morally culpable for the actions of the Amalekites? God, or the Amalekites, themselves?" If the Amalekites had known the path God had planned for them, you'd have a point, but as that they didn't and they freely chose that path, they are morally culpable for their own actions. Does God bear a secondary responsibility for creating them? A bit, perhaps, but morally speaking saying "God made me to do it" is an excuse for an action already done, not a reason to do an action in the future, therefore the overwhelming bulk of culpability belongs to the individual offender, not the creator.

Of course I read them to find fault. I read everything to find fault. That is what I've been taught to do whenever I come across any scientific literature, so I don't see why I cannot apply it to the Bible just because you don't like it.

More on this later.

Not at all. If it's good enough to know no known reason water will become toxic through a chemical reaction we as of yet do not yet know, then surely it is good enough to presume there is no sufficient reason to justify evil if no one can come up with one.

Oh, so you're not assuming you know EVERYTHING, just everything IMPORTANT. The Greeks did that, too, and that's why Aristotle thought it was logical to assume that heavier bodies fell faster than lighter ones.

Some assumptions make more sense than others. Even if I were to grant you that you don't need to prove this assumption, you have yet to even prove that it's a good assumption to make.

You mean, it's not over the top? You think it's justified that a worm can only live by burrowing into a poor innocent child's eye, a child that has done nothing wrong, that has done nothing to deserve it? You think it's justified that six million plus people died at the hands of the Nazis and that even more died at the hands of Josef Stalin? That it's justified that they didn't die quickly, that they took days, possibly even months to die?

I'm saying that I'm not qualified to make that call. Besides, everything you say is based on the assumption that suffering is evil. But you never bothered to define what evil is. I hate to have to break it to you, but suffering and evil are two distinct phenomena. Suffering is pain, which is an indicator, not a fault. Evil is a morally aprehensible action. The two are related, but not identical.

I may not like the amount of SUFFERING God put in this world, but in the end, it's morally neutral and this is His universe. It's His call to make, not mine.

Oh and who it to say that one thing is an inquiry or not one?

I think of the Problem of Evil as an inquiry. Is it not an inquiry about the nature of God, just like your enquiry about the Miller-Urey experiment? What is it an enquiry about? Is it not an enquiry about god's status of being omnipotent, omniscient and omni-benevolent all at once? What group made this statement in the first place? Was it not the Christians?

An inquiry in the form of a deductive syllogism?

Quoting from the posted article:

how do we know what chemical changes happened to the sample when it was in the water-table?
Why couldn't it have been compressed from geological forces?

radioactive decay rates have been measured for over sixty years now for many of the decay clocks without any observed changes. And it has been close to a hundred years since the uranium-238 decay rate was first determined.

However, to be fair on you, there could be a more detailed explanation. So I will now post this article

How do we know the rock has always been this dense and had this constant gas effusion rate?
how do we know the starting chemical composition of the sample to begin with as that it probably started with some decay-products already in it?

Why would a rock become less dense? Only if it's heated surely? That would mean it would have gone back into magma, which is the kind of rock that you're not supposed to use as stated in the article...

Geologists have known for over forty years that the potassium-argon method cannot be used on rocks only twenty to thirty years old. Publicizing this incorrect age as a completely new finding was inappropriate. The reasons are discussed in the Potassium-Argon Dating section above.

If it was suddenly melted, it would become a new rock.

As for your other questions, gas effusion rate? You mean the rate at which argon is formed, surely? Well, it's from the decay rate.

....You do a good job of answering questions I never asked and demonstrating you don't know what you're talking about. Effusion is the rate at which a gas seeps through a small hole...LIKE Argon formed from radioactive decay seeping from a rock. A Noble gas like Argon will not chemically combine with anything in the rock, therefore it will slowly effuse from the rock skewing your results.

For the record, effusion is used to weponize Uranium. Uranium is chemically combined with Flourine to form Uranium Hexaflouride gas, then it's passed through miles of narrow tubing until the U-235 slowly passes through the U-238.

Effusion rates are determined by the hole-size, so if a rock was compressed (say from sediment on top of it) the effusion rate would change.

And then there's the Potassium. In case your inorganic salt chemistry is a touch rusty, EVERY Potassium salt is soluble in water. As that most fossils are found in sedimentary rocks (which tend to be permiable) and are at the surface or above the water-table, every time it rains you're going to shift the K-Ar date.

Does your equation take these into account? No. Are you really looking at K-Ar dating with an eye to find fault? Again, no.

I'm going to take a few days off this thread if you don't mind.

[Wolf O'Donnell]

I believe you are confusing the issue. The issue here is not "is God good?" but rather "who is morally culpable for the actions of the Amalekites? God, or the Amalekites, themselves?" If the Amalekites had known the path God had planned for them, you'd have a point, but as that they didn't and they freely chose that path, they are morally culpable for their own actions.

Well if they didn't know about God's plans, then surely, they are not culpable?

Does God bear a secondary responsibility for creating them? A bit, perhaps, but morally speaking saying "God made me to do it" is an excuse for an action already done, not a reason to do an action in the future, therefore the overwhelming bulk of culpability belongs to the individual offender, not the creator.

Except if the Amalekites didn't know (and quite frankly, seeing as they didn't worship him, how would they know?) and believed that their god was the one true god, as everybody of every single other group has done before, there is no choice is there?

Oh, so you're not assuming you know EVERYTHING, just everything IMPORTANT. The Greeks did that, too, and that's why Aristotle thought it was logical to assume that heavier bodies fell faster than lighter ones.

Well, of course, unless I am shown otherwise to a degree that convinces me.

Some assumptions make more sense than others. Even if I were to grant you that you don't need to prove this assumption, you have yet to even prove that it's a good assumption to make.

Well, you can't provide any evidence and I can't provide any evidence. So why should I believe there is any evidence to begin with? Sure there might be and I know there is a possibilty there might be, but without any, why believe in it?

I'm saying that I'm not qualified to make that call. Besides, everything you say is based on the assumption that suffering is evil. But you never bothered to define what evil is. I hate to have to break it to you, but suffering and evil are two distinct phenomena. Suffering is pain, which is an indicator, not a fault. Evil is a morally aprehensible action. The two are related, but not identical.

Yes, but the Problem of Evil almost always seems to incorporate suffering into its definition.

I may not like the amount of SUFFERING God put in this world, but in the end, it's morally neutral and this is His universe. It's His call to make, not mine.

So you don't like the amount of suffering God put into this world. Therefore, you do believe it is too much because you personally do not like the amount. I stated that it was too much, because I believed it was too much. You also believe it is too much. There is no reason to believe that there isn't too much because nobody yet has chimed in saying there isn't too much. And the reason I kept pushing the statement "too much" is because I knew there was a good probability that you would agree with me.

Now imagine that God is on trial now for the Crime of Too Much Suffering. Everybody on the jury dislikes the amount of suffering in the world and therefore they agree there is too much. He isn't coming up with a good reason at all; not just one that doesn't satisfy us but no reason at all. except for a variation on the phrase "trust me". He's going to be found guilty, isn't he?

An inquiry in the form of a deductive syllogism?

Well, apart from the fact that your inquiry didn't have syllogism (learnt a new word there), I frankly don't see the difference. You made a statement about Miller-Urey synthesis and therefore deemed it problematic for abiogenesis. I've made a statement about God's nature and the Problem of Evil and deemed it problematic for the notion of God as omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent.

....You do a good job of answering questions I never asked and demonstrating you don't know what you're talking about. Effusion is the rate at which a gas seeps through a small hole...LIKE Argon formed from radioactive decay seeping from a rock. A Noble gas like Argon will not chemically combine with anything in the rock, therefore it will slowly effuse from the rock skewing your results.

Except, I did, because if you looked carefully, I said the gas would have been replaced by argon from the air. You therefore do not count the argon in vesicles that contain air concentrations of argon.

You know what? I'm going to do this all over again and I'm going to wait until you return in order to post the answer right in front of you.

[spunky-monkey]

God is immutable, and if He decided on one set of rules, it would be because they reflected His nature. To suddenly revoke those rules would mean that His nature changed (after all, He makes the circumstances as well as the rules) and God would have changed. To say that God could simply "change the rules" denies that God is God, but rather makes Him into a big man who knows a lot and has lots of powers.

Your definition of God is acknowledged - You hold the values of Classical theism in monotheistic religions from Christianity that God is, an absolute, an eternal, an omniscient, all-powerful being of omni-benevolence. You confirm that God is related to the world as its cause, but is unaffected by the world, i.e. immutable, the belief that God cannot change.

However flaws in that analogy immediately spring to mind; If God's nature cannot change and he is unaffected by what goes on in the world, then not only can he not literally do anything (which contradicts his omnipotent character because he can supposedly do everything) but it breaks down the fundamental concept of monotheism in that God, according to Christian faith, is said to often interact with his creation i.e. men (for which there is clearly no occurrence because otherwise there would be empirical evidence of said supernatural intervention). We'll disregard the problem of evil momentarily and focus upon God being good, now if God really is a being of omni-benevolence, this prevents him from being remotely evil, but that contradicts his omnipotence yet again, and events in the Bible when he has performed great evil, because God should be feasibly capable of both, or else he is not all-powerful.

If God is immutable, he will not be influenced by the world's troubles, however omni-benevolence demands that he is "good to his creation", i.e. not just a creator, but an active maintainer, one who is actively seeking to promote all things (glorification). With omniscience in-force God has no excuse; he cannot remain hidden whilst pretending he didn't have the knowledge that someone somewhere desperately needed his communion. A logical contradiction arises here, evident by all those suffering, starving and dying miserably in the world, God can't possibly be good if he does not actually help those who call out his/her/its name for help. The philosophical argument from nonbelief or sometimes known as argument from divine hiddenness comes into play.

1. If there is a God, he is perfectly loving.
2. If a perfectly loving God exists, reasonable nonbelief does not occur.
3. Reasonable nonbelief occurs.
4. No perfectly loving God exists (from 2 and 3).
5. Hence, there is no God (from 1 and 4).

Schellenberg's argument affirms the inconsistencies between this world and the world that should exist if God had the Monotheistic desires combined with the omnipotence to make these desires a reality. To argue with the logic is to suggest that I'm not an atheist.

Either the world is as it should be, flawed, in other words designed exactly according to God's divine plan which means God lacks the will to change it, meaning he is not and never was omni-benevolent, OR the world has become fallen and God lacks the strength to correct it, meaning he is not omnipotent. Which ever way you look at it God cannot be everything above and yet still immutable with the real world. Like how the Invisible Pink Unicorn can't be both visibly pink and invisible at the same time. The analogy just doesn't hold up.

If God is good like people claim, then why does he hide himself from us anyway? A truly good deity is open, honest and transparent to sentient beings, not hidden, secretive and immutable.

2. I HAVE provided evidence in this argument in the form of a logical argument. Granted, you and spunkey-monkey are contesting that argument, but that's not the same as ME NOT HAVING GIVEN any evidence.

You haven't provided us with any logical arguments; said arguments were submitted to you since the burden of proof rests with you. What you have given to the debate are some conditional statements, ones that do not assert the premises of the argument which are necessary to support what appears to be its conclusion, or lack of conclusion in the case of the Epicurean paradox. When you tried to add assertions to them, it resulted in a logical flaw which was brought to your attention, though your responses seemed adamant that your defence never invoked a single logical fallacy at some point.

If you have provided arguments then I must admit they are hard to recognize other than premises or drawn up conclusions of your own. You've showered your writing with assertions without producing anything which one might reasonably describe as an argument. No shame on you though because all of us have done that at some point or other, making statements look like arguments, when actually they're not.

Edited by spunky-monkey, 04 August 2009 - 02:37 PM.

[Wolf O'Donnell]

I've gone through the article and I still can't figure out how your questions have not been answered.

How much Argon effused from the rock?

We can tell how much argon effused from the rock by how much air-argon replaced it. The article states:

This is rather easily done because air-argon has a couple of other isotopes, the most abundant of which is argon-36. The ratio of argon-40 to argon-36 in air is well known, at 295. Thus, if one measures argon-36 as well as argon-40, one can calculate and subtract off the air-argon-40 to get an accurate age.

If a rock is highly porous and thus all of the produced argon effuses out of the rock, then quite simply a scientist wouldn't use that rock for the obvious reason that none of the argon isotope products would still be there to measure.

Although potassium-argon is one of the simplest dating methods, there are still some cases where it does not agree with other methods. When this does happen, it is usually because the gas within bubbles in the rock is from deep underground rather than from the air. This gas can have a higher concentration of argon-40 escaping from the melting of older rocks. This is called parentless argon-40 because its parent potassium is not in the rock being dated, and is also not from the air. In these slightly unusual cases, the date given by the normal potassium-argon method is too old. However, scientists in the mid-1960s came up with a way around this problem, the argon-argon method, discussed in the next section.

The above quote deals with cases where there's too mch argon-40 as a result of it being trapped underground. To save time, I will not go into the argon-argon dating method as it is quoted in the article. And we can know if is being dated as too old from the Kr-Ar method because we can compare the age we get from other methods. Like argon-argon:

http://www.berkeley....cy/pompeii.html

Did the rock ever pass through the water table and if so, how long was it there and how much Argon or Potassium was removed as a result?

Actually, I don't think the article does answer this question because I've just realised there's a common sense answer to this question, therefore negating the article's need to respond to it. Use only the bits of rock you know would not have been exposed to water, which would surely be the core. Water tends not to dissolve rock very well, so any rock containing potassium wouldn't really have much of it washed away because it is chemically bound to whatever other elements make up the igenous rock.

Furthermore, unless I'm mistaken, igneous rock tends not to have passed through the water table at all. I'm going to have to get back to you on that one.

What pressure was the rock buried at and what was the relative Argon content of the rocks around it? Not much of the Argon is going to effuse if it's got nowhere to go, and pressure radically affects effusion rates. Was the final density of the rock constant or was it compressed somewhere along the line?

If it doesn't go anywhere, then it's still there for scientists to measure.

The answers are in the article, it's just that you have to know where to look. And I must admit I didn't actually show you where to look so I was at fault there. No, the article doesn't address the points directly in a question and answer format, but it does address your points.

Also, though it is unrelated to the topic when I asked someone about uranium weaponisation through through gas effusion, they told me that method's been obsolete since the 1960s due to its high ineffeciency. I just thought you'd like to know.

Edited by Wolf_ODonnell, 06 August 2009 - 11:59 AM.

[Egann]

It's late where I am, so I'll restrict myself to commenting on one detail that stuck out.

Actually, I don't think the article does answer this question because I've just realised there's a common sense answer to this question, therefore negating the article's need to respond to it. Use only the bits of rock you know would not have been exposed to water, which would surely be the core. Water tends not to dissolve rock very well, so any rock containing potassium wouldn't really have much of it washed away because it is chemically bound to whatever other elements make up the igenous rock.

Furthermore, unless I'm mistaken, igneous rock tends not to have passed through the water table at all. I'm going to have to get back to you on that one.

Translation: to know you're getting accurate dates, you have to have a sample SEALED within impermeable rocks.

That's all well and good, but it also is a very rare event. It's true with your example of Argon-Argon dating because the samples were sealed inside pyroclastic (impermeable) rock, but that was a fluke. In nature, fossils are buried in sedimentary rocks and brought to the surface by erosion, and the primary factor in erosion is WATER. In nature, very nearly the only impermiable rock you can find fossil samples in is shale, which also WAS permiable once upon a time, but became impermiable as it got compacted. No matter how you cut it there's still an unknown at one end or the other.

[Wolf O'Donnell]

And how exactly will this water wash away potassium within the rock, Egann? Yes, there'll be erosion of the surface but what about the interior? The surface would be anything exposed to the elements, even if it is inside the rock. Are rocks like sponges? Would the water dissolve into every single piece of rock?

EDIT: I've deleted the rest of the response, because you've confused me now. Every time I read potassium-argon I keep seeing igneous rock being referred to, not sedimentary rock. So I'm going to have to do some more research to see how potassium-argon is even relevant to fossil dating.

RE-EDIT: It's not. Potassium-argon dating is not used on fossils. Source: http://www.suite101....eontology/38275.

Because fossils are found in sedimentary rock, paleontologists have to use radiometric dating information on igneous rocks found below and above the fossils in order to determine an age range for the sedimentary rocks.

So, yes, the article didn't refer to fossil dating at all, but then again, neither did you. For some reason, I didn't realise you were talking about fossils, just radiometric dating in general.

Edited by Wolf_ODonnell, 07 August 2009 - 05:54 AM.