Pretty sure the point of creationism is that everything was put on the earth when it was created, including fossils etc. You can’t argue this with logic. My favorite spin off of this is Last Thursdayism where the earth was created last Thursday (regardless of what day it’s now) which basically uses the same argument.
Eat lead
Submitted 4 weeks ago by fossilesque@mander.xyz to science_memes@mander.xyz
https://mander.xyz/pictrs/image/0552e441-92df-4674-9c0c-eb3f56159623.jpeg
Comments
MicrowavedTea@infosec.pub 4 weeks ago
Ddub@lemmy.ca 4 weeks ago
That does explain why I can never get the hang of Thursdays
finitebanjo@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
TachyonTele@lemm.ee 4 weeks ago
What, were you born today or something!
thanks_shakey_snake@lemmy.ca 4 weeks ago
Hence the first and only commandment of Last Thursdayism: Don’t Panic.
Thorry84@feddit.nl 4 weeks ago
And the fun scientific counterpart of the Boltzmann brain. The idea that in an infinite universe (at least in a couple of the spatial dimensions if not also a time dimension) random fluctuations could combine to form your brain. Including all of your memories, thoughts, hopes and dreams. You think you have had an entire life, but in reality your brain was just formed moments ago. And it may possibly stop existing in a few more moments, this moment being the only one the brain has actually experienced.
When taken to its natural conclusion, the entire Earth of even the solar system or galaxy might have just been created by random chance. The perfect storm of randomness. It may have been created longer ago or just nanosecond before now. There is no way of telling.
Thermodynamics has been used to counter and strengthen this idea. And with infinity on the table anything goes.
Ashelyn@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 weeks ago
I always found the idea of stable Boltzmann brains fascinating. The idea that on an infinite enough universe, there must exist self-sustaining minds that function on an entirely circumstantial set of rules and logic based on whatever the quantum soup spit up.
Trainguyrom@reddthat.com 4 weeks ago
You think you have had an entire life, but in reality your brain was just formed moments ago. And it may possibly stop existing in a few more moments, this moment being the only one the brain has actually experienced.
A moment in which I sit on the toilet and read philosophy on my fondleslab and perhaps make this comment. Really a wild thought
mindaika@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 weeks ago
“God did it to trick you” is pretty hard to disprove
Ashelyn@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 weeks ago
It’s also hard to argue while also claiming your god is moral, which is why creationists usually scapegoat the task of planting fossils to Satan.
arswaw@hexbear.net 3 weeks ago
Anything that is asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
Voroxpete@sh.itjust.works 4 weeks ago
“It Is Useless To Attempt To Reason A Man Out Of A Thing He Was Never Reasoned Into.” - Jonathan Swift
GrammarPolice@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
It’s an ad hoc argument. You can’t argue against any ad hoc arguments with logic
nialv7@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
this argument isn’t going to work on someone who believes god created said lead… and also, pretty sure not all lead is created from nuclear decay.
i get dunk on people feels satisfying, but this is just bad science communication through and through
ByteOnBikes@slrpnk.net 4 weeks ago
I had a conversation with a woman who strongly believed God put the dinosaur bones there to test our faith.
Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de 4 weeks ago
what an idiot, clearly god put the bones in the ground because dinosaurs were his favourite creation and he wanted us to know about them. Had he not put them there we’d have no idea, and he’d be very sad.
rockerface@lemm.ee 4 weeks ago
Some lead might have been created from supernova fusion, probably. I’m not actually sure if it’s the right isotope or if lead even has radioactive isotopes that we know of
TonyTonyChopper@mander.xyz 4 weeks ago
Anything can be radioactive if you add enough neutrons
Cethin@lemmy.zip 4 weeks ago
Also, the half life is when half of it decays. Some of it is constantly decaying. We don’t need to wait for the half life to see any of it. The ratios would be totally off if there was enough of it to get the amount of lead we have right now, but some would exist. When the math is that complex, it’s not going to change anyone’s mind who believes what a magic book (written by regular humans) says. Nothing will, be if you want a chance it has to be something simple and obvious.
werefreeatlast@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
There are exactly 1.6 x 10^18 kilograms of lead on earth but every three minutes or so a brand new gram is welcomed into existence due to the radioactive decay of uranium.
Calculate that flat earthers!
LovableSidekick@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Technically this could all be true even if the universe were created 4000 years ago. As somebody says in Robert Heinlein’s novel Job: A Comedy of Justice, “Yes, the universe is billions of years old, but it was created 4000 years ago. It was created old.” (approximate quote from memory)
I absolutely agree with science, but strictly speaking we can’t know for sure that it wasn’t the creation of some superbeing who operates outside of the laws of physics - or it could even be a simulation.
nickhammes@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
We can’t prove that the world we live in wasn’t created last Thursday, with our memories, the growth rings in trees, and so on created by a (near) omnipotent trickster to deceive us. But science and rationality give us tools for determining what’s worth taking seriously, and sorting out the reasonable, but unconfirmed, claims from the unverifiable hogwash.
can@sh.itjust.works 4 weeks ago
Trainguyrom@reddthat.com 4 weeks ago
Actually the universe was created on Jan 1st 1970. That’s why computers sometimes have errors with pre-1970 dates, it’s the universal simulation glitching due to the high clock rate of computers compared to the universe’s. Anyone who claims to have been born before 1970/01/01 is a simulation that’s lying to you, and anyone born after is real, hence why now that its more player characters than NPCs things are going off the rails politically and socially!
Bytemeister@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Pffff. Look at this conspiracy bullshit.
Everyone know that the universe will actually be created tomorrow. What you are experiencing now is a flashback from tomorrow of what you did yesterday. Prove me wrong.
Clinicallydepressedpoochie@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
What a tricky god to even implant memories of me imagining all of creation happening only a few seconds ago every time I read about this particular anecdote in the false past.
where_am_i@sh.itjust.works 4 weeks ago
And yet simulation theory has a very reasonable merit.
And if it were to turn out true, you’d also have to admit that OOPs argument was hogwash. Actually, it is either way.
If you can’t logic better than religious people, then you’re the problem.
madeinthebackseat@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
We can’t know anything with 100% certainty. We can always imagine some razzle-dazzle, imagined scenario to counter the rational explanation if we like.
The point of the scientific method and logical reasoning is to pick the explanation with the most evidence.
merc@sh.itjust.works 4 weeks ago
The existence of a god is something that can’t be disproven. You can always find gaps in knowledge and explain the gap by saying a god / multiple gods did that. As gaps narrow with more knowledge, you can always just say that the holy books were just a metaphor in this one case, but the rest of it is literally true.
It gets even more complicated when you run into people who refuse to believe in any science, or anything outside their own personal experience.
Personally, I believe the Earth is a sphere. I’ve been to Australia, Europe, Africa, Asia and North America. The time the flights took and the routes the in-flight maps showed make sense for a spherical earth. So did the scenes visible out the windows, and the day/night cycle. The mere existence of time zones and seasons strongly suggests the Earth is a rotating sphere tilted slightly off vertical. But, it could be that I’m living in a Truman Show world, where everything is a lie designed to make me believe something that isn’t true. I haven’t personally done all the math, all the experiments, etc. to prove the Earth is a sphere. And, if this were a Truman Show world, the producers of the show could mess with my experiments anyhow.
For someone who doesn’t want to believe, there’s really nothing you can do to make them believe. The world really relies on trust and believing Occam’s Razor.
jlou@mastodon.social 4 weeks ago
If we assume that god, by definition, must be omniscient, there is actually a way to disprove the possibility with the following paradox:
This sentence is not known to be true by any omniscient being.
There are also more traditional arguments like the problem of evil
psycho_driver@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
How did the matter that constitutes the universe come into being? What was the single point that signifies the beginning of time? What set time in motion? Will time continue after the death of the universe?
None of it is worth trying to wrap a tiny little monkey brains around as far as I’m concerned. Go have a pint and listen to music that makes you happy.
LilDumpy@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Real question: Is the decay of uranium the only natural way to produce lead? If so TIL.
expatriado@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
you can also lead by example
tdawg@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Instructions unclear. Got diagnosed with lead poisoning
0ops@lemm.ee 4 weeks ago
Booooooo (jk lol)
Gork@lemm.ee 4 weeks ago
No. Nucleosynthesis of lead within stars generated from supernovae make up the bulk of the existing lead on Earth. Uranium decay does provide some additional lead inventory but would be fairly small in comparison.
But the presence of it in the first place within second generation stars proves that lead is billions of years old.
Rooskie91@discuss.online 4 weeks ago
When supernovas explode they’re responsible for most exotic elements larger than iron. So it’s either that or radioactive decay.
Skanky@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
No. God can produce as much lead as he wants. Duh!
affiliate@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
unfortunately i don’t believe in uranium or numbers higher than 200, so this argument doesn’t work on me
hexabs@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Don’t give up, you can still change their mind.
Just from 4000 to 200.
affiliate@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
the only problem with that is i’d need to change their mind again next year
sweetpotato@lemmy.ml 4 weeks ago
I genuinely don’t understand how uranium can exist a-priori in this argument but lead not? I might be missing something.
Pazuzu@midwest.social 4 weeks ago
The original post only gave half the explanation. It’s not that lead exists in general, it’s that lead exists within zircon crystals.
Under normal circumstances that would be impossible, zircon crystals strongly reject lead atoms as they form. There’s no way to stuff lead into the crystal lattice in the quantity we find them there. But uranium and zircon go together just fine, we just have to wait for it to decay into lead. The trouble is it takes ~4.5 billion years for just half of those uranium atoms to turn into lead. So any zircon crystal we find with half as much lead as uranium must be roughly that old
Jyek@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
But that still doesn’t change the belief that a creator could have created the universe in whatever state it currently exists in. That’s why these arguments never go anywhere with hard core young earth creationists. It’s also not worth the energy arguing with them because they often believe that anyone trying to convince them otherwise is an antichrist trying to lead them astray.
xx3rawr@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
This the explanation I’m looking for. OP didn’t make sense to me, lead could be created in supernovae and shit just like every other heavy element
sandbox@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Yeah, it’s not at all a compelling argument.
Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Isn’t it more about being able the view the whole life cycle of lead, which takes more than 4000 years.
mosiacmango@lemm.ee 4 weeks ago
“God put all of that there, and then made it work to ensure we had quality lead gasoline, pipes and paint to poison our brains with.”
BallsandBayonets@lemmings.world 4 weeks ago
When I was being raised as a young earth creationist, the earth was supposedly 12,000-20,000 years old. Then it was 10,000 years old. Then only 6,000. After I outgrew that nonsense, I joked that in a few decades YECs would say that their god created the earth in 1980, and anyone older than 40 are agents of the devil sent to test your faith.
gnutrino@programming.dev 4 weeks ago
Of course, the universe was actually created in 1970 and anyone claiming to be older than 54 is an agent of Microsoft sent to test your faith in Unix.
thanks_shakey_snake@lemmy.ca 4 weeks ago
Ahh, hence why there are no negative Unix timestamps.
nossaquesapao@lemmy.eco.br 4 weeks ago
The universe was created along with the release os temple os. Everything before are just memories implanted on us.
leftzero@lemmynsfw.com 4 weeks ago
Earth will be created in 2036. This is just a rehearsal.
InverseParallax@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Yeah, this is broken because all lead did not have to come from polonium, that’s how half-lives work.
It’s still 100% bullshit in every way, someone just needs to have chatgpt4 sort out the current mass fraction to explain why, I’m way too lazy to argue against insanity.
ClassifiedPancake@discuss.tchncs.de 4 weeks ago
You can throw as much science at them as you want. God could have just created everything in whatever state he wanted to. Same thing with the virgin mary discussion. Who cares if it makes sense scientifically, god can just make a fertilized egg appear. How lame would god be if he could not do that? This is the basis christians start from, wo why even bother trying to debate that?
yarr@feddit.nl 3 weeks ago
Here’s the bad faith argument:
At the moment of creation, God placed some partially decayed metals on the planet to fool the non-believers.
This is basically why the existence of dinosaur bones doesn’t bother them either – they just hand-wave it away.
pyre@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
the answer completely disregards the fact that people who even remotely understand how these things work wouldn’t believe stupid shit in the first place. there are so many ways for this guy to just dismiss this.
how would you even know, you can’t have studied these for billions of years
who says lead only can exist in this manner
what is this is true but god also made lead along with the earth
etc etc… this is very weak if the goal is really try to convince this guy to look into some things rather than smell your own farts.
NegativeLookBehind@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Lol, look at this guy, trying to use science and facts to disprove my fairytale. What a joke!
iAvicenna@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
I assume someone saying this is a creationist and can just say god created Earth already with the lead in it. Therefore it is a pointless discussion.
Linsensuppe@feddit.org 4 weeks ago
Can someone explain to me why lead cant exists like that and HAS to come from another element? Why cant it just… exist?
T156@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
The problem with that argument is that it falls into the Last Thursdayist problem.
It could just as well be argued that the lead was created instantly in that state, or mid-decay.
Bobmighty@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Engagement bait.
frezik@midwest.social 4 weeks ago
I’m not even sure how you get to 4000 years old from biblical literalisim.
FreakinSteve@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
All young Earth creationist should be exiled to a remote desert island to die
cogitase@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 weeks ago
Lead 204 is entirely primordial and the other isotopes found on earth would be found at roughly the same concentration were all of the lead on earth primordial. It’s the excess ratios of the other isotopes of lead that can be attributed to radioactive decay. That is a substantial proportion of the lead on earth, but to say the “existence of lead” is proof of the age of the earth is entirely incorrect.
Mercuri@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I typically use the fact that there are trees older than 4000 years old based on tree ring data. Or that there are stars in the sky further than 4000 light years away that we can see in the sky.
That usually makes them say something like how their God created an world that was already aged. So I usually counter with the fact that would make their God a lier and deceiver.
Some hold firm and say God did to to test faith. Others back pedal and try to blame it on Satan. That Satan scattered all this false evidence just to make us question the notion that Earth is 4000 years old to make people lose faith in God. And then I have to laugh at how stupid their argument is and how weak their God is.
Object@sh.itjust.works 4 weeks ago
Is this even a real tweet? If it is, why even bother trying to recreate it in paint?
Pixlbabble@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
Göbekli Tepe
rimjob_rainer@discuss.tchncs.de 3 weeks ago
Where is the proof about these magic numbers? Checkmate atheist. /s
m3t00@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
round numbers are always made up. change my mind
kitnaht@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
I mean, the existence of lead doesn’t necessarily prove the age of the earth so much as that those elements have existed for that long.
HOWEVER – you’re basically guaranteed to find lead in uranium deposits found around the earth, and the ratio of lead/uranium is how we calculated the 4.6 billion years.
Uranium is formed in Neutron stars or Supernova, so at the very least - the uranium found on earth itself is 4.6 billion years old. Whether “Earth” was “Earth” back then, who knows. This could be pre-moon? Could be before the earth even cooled down to have a solid outer layer? So the estimate is bound to be off by a little…
Just not by 4.5 billion years.
I’m pretty sure just soap has been around for more than 4k years.
Cutecity@hexbear.net 4 weeks ago
This proof is partial though. This assumes there is only 1 way of obtaining lead. What if lead appeared from fusion in stars younger than that.
humanspiral@lemmy.ca 4 weeks ago
But the half life of polonium 210 is just 138 days. other is a few days. radium 226 is 1602 years. Why couldn’t the earth have started with a lot of radium 226? Checkmate round earthers.
Rooskie91@discuss.online 4 weeks ago
The tragedy is that humans aren’t convinced to change their minds by facts like this. They’re convinced by good stories from their friends and family.
JackbyDev@programming.dev 4 weeks ago
“God made the world with lead in it”
Hope@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Not to argue for creationism, but this argument sucks. Lead can be produced by fusion in stars, not just through decay of heavier elements. But even that’s besides the point, since if you believe some entity created the universe, surely said entity could have created whatever ratio of lead to uranium they wanted.
(Not so fun fact: the environmental impact of leaded gasoline was discovered by trying to estimate the age of the earth using the radio of lead to uranium in uranium deposits, but the pollution from leaded gasoline was throwing the measurements off.)
wise_pancake@lemmy.ca 4 weeks ago
Also this doesn’t say anything about the Earth.
Plus you can’t keep give a liberal reading of the bible to be:
That doesn’t have to imply the earth is 4000 years old. Even the original wording could be read as eon instead of day.
krashmo@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
The Bible is a couple thousand chapters long. The creation story is the first two chapters. It’s pretty obviously only attempting to establish that God created the universe in some ambiguous way and move on with the story. That doesn’t stop people from inferring all sorts of things from what is essentially a poem.
Buelldozer@lemmy.today 4 weeks ago
Most people don’t know that the Hebrew word “yom” (day) can be and is used to denote wildly different lengths of time.
If anyone is interested you can read a fine destruction of the stupid “Young Earth” argument at the link I provided.
The “Young Earth” people, both Christian and Jew, are trying to shoe horn something into the Bible that doesn’t fit and doesn’t need to exist. It’s nothing more than a desperate attempt to hold onto an old, wrong headed, and man-made theory.
Mac@mander.xyz 4 weeks ago
Simple answers for simple minds
Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
The original wording can’t be read as eon instead of a day because plants and trees can’t last for an eon before the sun is created.
PaintedSnail@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
This is why you can never disprove creationism sufficiently to convince a young Earth creationist. The hypothesis is unfalsifiable.
Clinicallydepressedpoochie@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
The obvious solution is to make a science that is unfalsidiable. Then argue about who would win, like superman vs goku.
TaTTe@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Also I’m amazed by how people don’t seem to understand what half-life is. It’s not the time it takes for an atom to decay. It’s the time it takes for half of the atoms to decay, meaning there will be some U-238 that decay into Ra-226 in just a couple of seconds.
So even if the Earth was created 4000 years ago with uranium but not lead (for some weird reason), some of that lead would have decayed into lead by now.
zante@slrpnk.net 4 weeks ago
Yes but this is a 16 year who watched a YouTube and owns noobs
StaticFalconar@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Well there’s also no way to disprove that everything was created last Tuesday including the memories of things/events happening before last Tuesday.
conciselyverbose@sh.itjust.works 4 weeks ago
The weirdest part to me is thinking the timeless omnipotent god that the Bible explicitly says considers a thousand years less than nothing actually literally meant that he created everything in what we’d perceive as 7 days when talking to whatever arbitrary scribe wrote down the creation myth for him.
Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
If it wasn’t a day then how did all the plants and trees live without sunlight?
Forester@yiffit.net 4 weeks ago
So it’s more like God appears to this guy named Abraham and tells him the story and then his great! Great! Great! Great! Great! Great! Great! Great! Great! Great! Great! Great! Great! Great! Great! Great! Great! Great! Great! Great! Great! Great! Great! Great! Great, great great grandchildren wrote it down.
Empricorn@feddit.nl 4 weeks ago
Also, we could be way off on the age because we just don’t know. Sure, we can collect data and extrapolate for billions of years and assume that all elements have always decayed at the same rate, but short of living through it and accurately measuring it with modern instruments, molecules-to-man “macro” evolution can’t actually be proven.
This is why, using the Scientific Method, it is still a theory. A theory accepted by most scientists, but still. There’s a certain arrogance in declaring solved something we can’t actually know for 100% certainty.
tatterdemalion@programming.dev 4 weeks ago
I thought carbon dating of fossils was our best argument against the 4000 years myth.
pearsaltchocolatebar@discuss.online 4 weeks ago
God could have put the fossils there with the right carbon isotopes.
You can’t use logic to disprove belief in magic.