Re: Hades - or Eden?

Ken Down wrote:

[me:]
>> That's nice. But you don't always quote verbatim, and you
>> (quite rightly) never quote the entirety of an article, so
>> there is scope for doubt as to whether what you've said is
>> an accurate representation of what the article says even
>> if all your quotations are correct.

[Ken:]
> But I always indicate when I am quoting by the usual marks of quotation and
> also by giving the reference after the passage. As to the summary I give
> linking the quotes, you are correct in that there is scope for doubt but
> again, with New Scientist so readily available, I would be very stupid to
> misrepresent what the author has said.

You could (unless you are somehow immune to misunderstanding,
in which case you're the only such person I know of) misrepresent
by accident rather than by design.

> What I deduce from the facts is, of course, another matter entirely and I
> have no complaint if you find fault with that.

Thank you.

>> Sure, "evolution" can (in everyday use) refer to any gradual
>> change, as well as having the technical meaning it has in
>> biology. Likewise, "creation" can (in everyday use) refer
>> to what happens when an artist produces a work of art.
>
> I think that quite a few scientists are happy to use terms like "evolved" to
> describe *any* process of gradual change, whether or not life was involved.

Perhaps they are. But I bet that if you (for instance)
ask them "do you believe in evolution?" they will take you
to be talking about biological evolution, not about (for
instance) the idea that the earth got how it is by a
gradual process.

>> Sure, if Harrison's right then some things currently
>> believed about the "evolution" of the earth into its
>> present state will need changing.
>
> Good - and those changes will bring the theory a tiny step closer to the
> Biblical scenario.

I still don't see how they would bring it any closer to
what you call "the Biblical scenario". They would move
the likely beginning of life something like 300 million
years earlier; that's all.

>> None of this has anything to do with whether evolution
>> (in the biological sense) is right, nor with whether
>> creationism (in the historico-theological sense) is right.
>
> I disagree. If it could be proved beyond doubt that the earth was only 6,000
> years old (notice the "if") then evolution (in the biological sense) would
> have to be abandoned, because it depends on long ages of time. The two
> things - biological evolution and long geological time - hang together.

I think you must have misunderstood what I meant by "none
of this". Of course young-earth creationism has something
to do with whether biological evolution is right; I wasn't
denying that. But Harrison's work doesn't.

>> Perhaps you imagine that there's something in Harrison's
>> proposal that's inconsistent with some idea that's
>> fundamental to present scientific ideas about how the
>> earth got to be the way it is. I've no idea what, or why.
>
> Well, scientists claim to have done all sorts of calculations on the rate of
> cooling possible for an Earth-sized body; that's why they are able to say
> that much of the present temperature of the earth has to be down to
> radioactivity.

The claim that without radioactivity the earth would have
cooled down more over 4 billion years than we've observed
is not cast into doubt by Harrison's work. It's also not
very interesting now that we know about radioactivity.

> If the earth started off as present theories claim and if
> cooling proceeds at particular rates and if there is the amount of
> radioactivity that we understand there to be, then continental crust should
> not have appeared when the new evidence shows that it did, in fact, appear.

Lots of ifs. Might be interesting if the exact level of
radioactivity 200Ma[1] after the formation of the earth were
crucial to the existing theories. Again, I'm not a geologist
and so don't know whether that's so.

[1] Ma = M anni = million years.

> So what's wrong? Have we got the amount of radioactivity wrong? If so, then
> how do we account for the present temperature of the earth, because if there
> isn't as much radioactivity as we thought then after 4.56 billion years the
> earth should be very much colder than it is.

"Very much"? I doubt this. Consider: if Harrison's right then
the earth was as cold 200Ma after its formation as it was formerly
thought to have been 500Ma after its formation. So the new predicted
temperature for the earth now would be more or less the old predicted
temperature for the earth 300Ma in the future. Now, yet again, I'm
not an expert on this stuff, but I don't think that's a very big
change.

> Have we got the rate of cooling wrong? If we have, then either we are far
> more ignorant about the size and composition of the earth than we thought we
> were or there is something fundamentally wrong about our understanding of
> fundamental physical processes (and I'm sure that you, like me, would be
> most reluctant to adopt that idea!)

I think you exaggerate.

> So that leaves the origin of the earth - and if that is wrong, then there is
> something very wrong with a good deal of speculative cosmology as concerning
> the origin of the universe.

It leaves another possibility: Harrison could be wrong. His
conclusions are based on a pretty small sample, and at least
one eminent palaeogeologist (Balz Kamber) seems to think it's
likely that H. is wrong.

>> So far as I can make out, the only actual discovery Harrison
>> claims to have made is that there was continental crust on the
>> earth's surface earlier than had previously been thought.
>> I've no idea how that's supposed to conflict with the existence
>> of "primaeval soups" or lightning bolts.
>
> Continental crust *and* conditions very similar to those today - and that
> was one of the quoted passages, put within marks of quotation and
> everything. Do you wish to claim that I have misquoted?

No, but I wish to claim that it's an entirely unwarranted
extrapolation from what Harrison has actually found, namely
that in one piece of rock there are some bits that (1) are
up to 4.3 billion years old, (2) have been part of the earth's
crust very early on, and (3) have had some interaction, early on,
with liquid water. Harrison takes this to show that 200 years
after the earth's formation there was liquid water on the surface
of the earth. He may be right; I'm no geologist and can't
comment on how robust his findings are. But I'm pretty sure
this doesn't tell us anything whatever about how common
lightning was on the very early earth, or about what else
may have been in that water.

--
Gareth McCaughan
..sig under construc
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Hades - or Eden?
    ... But you don't always quote verbatim, ... "evolution" can refer to any gradual ... If it could be proved beyond doubt that the earth was only 6,000 ... radioactivity that we understand there to be, ...
    (uk.religion.christian)
  • Re: Hades - or Eden?
    ... To have the earth cool in 200Ma instead of 500Ma? ... can make a big difference in the amount of radioactivity, ... if the only way for Harrison ... right and our existing understanding is disastrously ...
    (uk.religion.christian)
  • Baby Oil and Benzene Provide Look at Earths Radioactivity
    ... Baby Oil and Benzene Provide Look at Earth's Radioactivity ... radioactivity of Earth for the first time, ... Earth as they shot up through the ground and the detector. ... all the world's nuclear power plants ...
    (sci.physics)
  • Another Possible
    ... The Earth is a water-dominated planet, perhaps radioactive beaches helped life to thrive. ... We've heard about life being created in a puddle of primordial chemical soup, sparked by lightning strikes, or organic molecules falling to Earth from comets or planets, such as Mars. ... Due to the close proximity to abundant water, radioactive beaches may have possessed all the essential ingredients for organic compounds, and eventually life, to thrive. ... This is a hard theory to understand, it is well known that radioactivity breaks down organic molecules and causes a whole host of problems for us carbon-based creatures. ...
    (soc.senior.issues)
  • BSG - Uninhabitable Earth question
    ... Do other people think that BSG should have provided more information to support the "uninhabitability" of earth. ... I don't usually get caught up in sci-fi verisimilitude questions, but I think the notion of earth being uninhabitable, due to a nuclear war 2000 years prior, is interesting. ... The worst radioactivity comes from elements with short half-lives. ...
    (rec.arts.tv)
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