Chicken Bones Suggest Polynesians Found Americas Before Columbus

[BigFatMeanie]

Originally Posted by SeattleUte

What's your point? Do you claim the earth is 6,000 years old? Is that it?

Dude, I don't know you personally and I generally try to avoid attacking other posters. The being said, I think you are a complete asshole based on the persona you portray on this board. Your constant bashing of, snide remarks abouts, and underhanded digs at religion/faith/mormonism are getting rather old. BDB doesn't need me to defend her nor did she ask me to but I'll go ahead and do it:

Nowhere did BDB claim that the earth is 6,000 years old. She expressed some skepticism (of which you are a big proponent when it suits your purposes) about RCD and about its accuracy as the objects in question get older and older.

Unless I'm mistaken, the maximum radiocarbon age limit is somewhere around 60K years at which point you can't distinguish between the carbon decay in the object and that of background radiation. Thus, BDB's skepticism about RCD in general, while not pertinent to the chicken bones discussed in this thread, is not entirely unfounded or unreasonable.

The bottom line is that scientists rely on faith just like other people do. Only with scientists it's not faith in supernatural stuff - it's faith in their framework: faith in theories, hypotheses, logic, and their own judgement. No, I don't think RCD is wrong or unreliable or completely inaccurate. I don't think science is evil and I don't believe the earth is 6,000 years old. That being said, I don't treat someone that is expressing polite skepticism about a specific scientfic precept as kooky or whacko or silly or a nut or a moron or completely ignorant/stupid/uneducated.

If your goal is to educate/enlighten you would be much more effective if you condescended from your lofty position every once in a while and tried to talk to people on their own terms, tried to understand what they are saying, and tried to value them as individuals even though they may not think like you do. As it is, your general assholiness seems to get in the way and makes me not want to listen to anything you have to say.