[HN Gopher] William Cowper and the Age of the Earth [pdf] (2019)
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William Cowper and the Age of the Earth [pdf] (2019)
Author : hwayne
Score : 15 points
Date : 2024-10-02 20:50 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.charlespetzold.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.charlespetzold.com)
| theodorejb wrote:
| Why did people assume that strata were deposited over eons and
| represent different ages? Many of these layers can be viewed in
| the Grand Canyon, and there is a notable lack of erosion between
| them. As I see it, these paraconformities are a strong evidence
| that there were not large gaps of time between the strata - they
| must have been laid down rapidly over a relatively short period
| (e.g. by a great flood).
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| You could start with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratigraphy
| and go from there.
|
| For the upper bound:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clair_Cameron_Patterson#Measur...
| pushcx wrote:
| TalkOrigins.org has many detailed rebuttals to creationist
| lies. This one hybridizes two topics, or maybe it's a garbled
| version of CD210.
|
| Grand Canyon: https://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CH/CH581.html
| https://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/icr-science.html
| https://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CD/CD210.html
|
| Erosion: https://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CD/CD610.html
| https://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CD/CD620.html
| cossatot wrote:
| It was assumed (correctly) by not long after Cowper's time that
| the strata were of different ages because of the different
| fossil assemblages in them, but of course no one had any data-
| derived numbers to put on the different eras.
|
| Furthermore, there is abundant evidence for erosion between
| many of the layers in the Grand Canyon, and they don't look
| anything like flood deposits, which are generally chaotic
| (unsorted, discontinuous bedding, etc) because of the high
| energy in the environment during deposition. Paraconformities
| indicate a cessation of deposition, which is often accompanied
| by erosion. They are 'para' conformities not because of the gap
| in time between the layers, but because there wasn't major
| deformation of the Earth's crust during that time (this means
| substantial tectonic activity), which would cause regional
| tilting of the lower (older) rocks. Throughout much of the
| middle of the country, there are young sediments deposited in a
| paraconformable relationship on top of rocks that are 400
| million years old (making up the surficial bedrock of the
| region), because there hasn't been major tectonic activity in
| the region since those 400 million year old rocks were
| deposited (and indeed, for close to a billion years before that
| in much of the midcontinent).
| PeterWhittaker wrote:
| As much as I like poetry, why do we attribute to a poet that
| which we owe to a most observant and introspective canal digger
| who felt free to question dogma and received wisdom?
|
| William Smith deserves so much of our respect. Cf, e.g.,
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Map_that_Changed_the_Wor...,
| which summarizes the most excellent book.
| pushcx wrote:
| We don't. The article explains and credits the scientific
| research that the poet is referring to. And to answer your
| question a second way: because that research came decades
| earlier than Smith's work.
| alamortsubite wrote:
| Slightly OT, but Cowper street in Palo Alto is named after
| William Cowper. So a fun shibboleth (and as OP points out) is
| that the name is pronounced KOO-per.
| sgt101 wrote:
| My uncle believed in bible chronology. He believed it so much
| that he learned to program computers (to calculate and explore
| patterns in dates) and then built a series of web sites
| culminating in https://www.biblechronology.com/
|
| When he died he had assembled a team of people who worked on it.
| The site is now suffering from a bit of rot (the videos don't
| serve anymore) but he has been dead for six years so I suppose
| that's no surprise. I don't know if his "gang" still maintain it,
| but someone must be paying for the domain and hosting I suppose.
|
| The time and energy he committed to this are astonishing to me,
| he was a talented man - he had the option to be a partner at
| Arthur Anderson (progenitor of Accenture) before becoming a CFO
| at a series of small banks and building societies. His career was
| firmly on the up, he worked for one of the precursors of what
| became RBS in the 1980's. If things had gone differently perhaps
| he would have muzzled "Fred the Shred" and we'd all be the
| richer, especially his kids. But, at some point a conviction and
| faith gripped him and he gave up everything for his bible
| project. He died penniless.
|
| I wonder, because I don't understand, because I just see
| numerology and over interpretation, does it mean he was wrong? I
| think so, but perhaps that's just my faith talking.
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