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August 27th, 2012
11:31 AM ET
Bill Nye slams creationismBy Eric Marrapodi, CNN Belief Blog Co-Editor (CNN)–Famed TV scientist Bill Nye is slamming creationism in a new online video for Big Think titled "Creationism Is Not Appropriate For Children." "Denial of evolution is unique to the United States," Nye begins in a YouTube video posted on Thursday. The video quickly picked up steam over the weekend and as of Monday morning had been viewed more than 1,100,000 times. Nye - a mechanical engineer and television personality best known for his program, "Bill Nye the Science Guy" - said the United States has great capital in scientific knowledge and "when you have a portion of the population that doesn't believe in it, it holds everyone back." "Your world becomes fantastically complicated if you don't believe in evolution," Nye said in the Web video. Creationists are a vast and varied group in the United States. Most creationists believe in the account of the origins of the world as told in the Book of Genesis, the first book of the Bible. CNN’s Belief Blog: The faith angles behind the biggest stories In the creation account, God creates Adam and Eve, the world, and everything in it in six days. For Christians who read the Genesis account literally, or authoritatively as they would say, the six days in the account are literal 24-hour periods and leave no room for evolution. Young Earth creationists use this construct and biblical genealogies to determine the age of the Earth, and typically come up with 6,000 to 10,000 years. Your Take: 5 reactions to Bill Nye's creationism critique The Gallup Poll has been tracking Americans' views on creation and evolution for the past 30 years. In June it released its latest findings, which showed 46% of Americans believed in creationism, 32% believed in evolution guided by God, and 15% believed in atheistic evolution. During the 30 years Gallup has conducted the survey, creationism has remained far and away the most popular answer, with 40% to 47% of Americans surveyed saying they believed that God created humans in their present form at one point within the past 10,000 years. Survey: Nearly half of Americans subscribe to creationist view of human origins "The idea of deep time of billions of years explains so much of the world around us. If you try to ignore that, your worldview becomes crazy, untenable, itself inconsistent," Nye said in the video. "I say to the grownups, if you want to deny evolution and live in your world, that's completely inconsistent with the world we observe, that's fine. But don't make your kids do it. Because we need them. We need scientifically literate voters and taxpayers for the future. We need engineers that can build stuff and solve problems," he said. Creationists' beliefs about the origins of the Earth are often a narrow focus, based in large part on religious beliefs, and while they reject evolution as "just one theory," they often embrace other fields of science and technology. Follow the CNN Belief Blog on Twitter In "The Genesis Flood," the 1961 book that in many ways help launch the Young Earth creationism movement in the United States, the authors write: “Our conclusions must unavoidably be colored by our Biblical presuppositions, and this we plainly acknowledge." Their goal for the book was to harmonize the scientific evidence with the accounts in Genesis of creation and the flood. The idea of creationism has been scorned by the mainstream scientific community since shortly after Darwin introduced "The Origin of Species" in 1859. By 1880, The American Naturalists, a science journal, reported nearly every major university in America was teaching evolution. "In another couple centuries I'm sure that worldview won't even exist. There's no evidence for it. So..." Nye ends his video. soundoff (14,640 Responses)« Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 Next » |
  About this blog
The CNN Belief Blog covers the faith angles of the day's biggest stories, from breaking news to politics to entertainment, fostering a global conversation about the role of religion and belief in readers' lives. It's edited by CNN's Daniel Burke with contributions from Eric Marrapodi and CNN's worldwide news gathering team.  |
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Why do people refuse to get on board and join the 21st century.
Someone should tell the atheists that. Their hate speech feels like the Inquisition.
to Mec:
Watch the news. You don't see atheists burning books (like the Koran) out of fear or attacking abortion clinics. You guys are the Inquisition.
Creationists can squeeze their eyes shut, put their fingers in their ears, and shout incantations into the wind with all their might, and it will not change the reality of biology.
Good luck jousting with windmills, religious zealots, I really can't stand to read any more of your willed ignorance.
Unfortunately, the anti-intellectualism movement in America is only getting stronger... I seriously doubt that the idea of creationism will be gone in 200 years or ever for that matter. Children in Louisiana are currently reading tax-payer financed Biology textbooks that cite the Loch Ness Monster as evidence against evolution: http://www.scotsman.com/the-scotsman/scotland/loch-ness-monster-cited-by-us-schools-as-evidence-that-evolution-is-myth-1-2373903
Oh my god, I'm too scared to go to that link. I give up. ::shakes head::
Religion is the tool to enslave mankind. Those that think religion is devine are the enslavers as well as the enslaved by the narrowness of thier views.
Children should not be subject to religious programming. Religion is something that should be sought after as an adult.
Otherwise there is no real choice. Just children doing what they are forced to do and blindly accepting, and even violently defending, an ideology that is not even their own.
There is a great deal of consideration to be made here no matter what your faith is.
hahaha...."denial of evolution is unique to the united states"? I'm pretty sure you're wrong, Bill. Regardless of atheism or belief in a religious set of beliefs or a deity, evolution has no scientific merit, which is why its still classified as a theory. If people took the time to really read Darwin or other scholars on the theory of evolution, they would see why it is not a fact. In addition, the idea that religion and religious beliefs will die out eventually is an antiquated belief that became popular in the US in the 1960s. When one looks at the writings of Peter Berger and other scholars who believed in this theory in the 60s and 70s, they will see that even these scholars no longer believe that. Spirituality and religion will continue to adapt and be present in people's lives. Not only does history teach us this but recent world events teach us this as well, such as the failure of the Soviet state to eradicate religion from their citizens' everyday lives. Religion does not equal fundamentalist conservatives like Mitt Romney despite what the media would have us believe. Every once in a while, its good to step outside and think outside the box.
Gravity, physics, light, chemistry....etc. Are ALL THEORETICAL. Do you deny all of them too? Is water not comprised of H2O just because it's a "theory"? If the basis of your argument is formed around evolution being dismissable because it's a theory then you'd better just stay away from hospitals, automobiles, microwave ovens, computers and a whole host of other "scientific" achievements based on "theories", because they probably aren't real.....you know "real" and "true" like everything in the Bible has been proven to be. Dumba$$es!
Gravity is also a theory. You misunderstand what is required to become scientific theory. Evolution itself is fact – species change over time. Whether all life can be explained by evolution is never going to be fact because you would need a time machine for that. It is however, consistent with all rational observations.
Studies show that children raised with no exposure to religion are less tolerant people as a whole. I am very grateful to have been given a base to leave / alter / contemplate / come back too / discuss / revisit at different stages of my life – even crack up about. Singing and praying with people is almost always good and quiet time is missing. Remain open. In other words, Practice what YOU preach.
Theory is the scientific community's way of humbling offering their best assessment with what they know.
Versus following the writing of some guys way back when who swear God told them so, and therefore it's FACT.
I'll take theory...
^^^^ This ^^^^
The hordes of scientific reductionist fundamentalists that populate the current academic scientific environment is truly horrifying. I can't decide which is worse, their unwarranted triumphalism or the philosophical illiteracy that causes them to lionize such small-beer philosophers as Karl Popper.
I guess as long as there's enough nut-job religious wackos on the cnn front page often enough, they can keep telling the Galileo story to their children over and over.
Christians spend so much time and energy fighting against science, against equality, and against freedom and spewing hateful rhetoric and then wonder why there is backlash against them. Their leaders are either completely clueless or just plain evil, yet people continue to follow them by the millions. It's very odd.
Atheists spend too much time and energy fighting religion, against moral thinking, against freedom of expression, and spewing hateful rhetoric. Actually that sounds better than your's and is actually more true.
To Mec. Morality is in the eye of the beholder. I believe in equality, freedom of choice, and freedom of spirituality, and I call this moral. Christians believe in restricting the rights of gays, women, and non-Christians in the name of their religion and call it moral. I call that evil.
For what it's worth, many, many Christians do not reject evolution and do not spend vast amounts of effort fighting science, certain political persuasions, and the like. I agree with you that far too many do, but as a pastor, please take my word for the fact that many do not and are equally frustrated with you that the Christians who get the most press are the ones who spend the bulk of their energy protesting those who see the world differently. One faction of Christians do not represent the whole, and none of these things are central to what Christianity is all about anyway.
You can only say this if your sampling of Christians is from the front page of CNN. There are thousands of counter-examples to everything you say, but that's not the story society wants to tell about religion. 'Fred Phelps is out again?? Dispatch the helicopters!!!'
Our so called "Scientists" keep talking like this and we wonder why America is going down the drain.
In Luke 10:21 the Bible clearly states – At that time Jesus, full of joy through the Holy Spirit, said, "I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for this was your good pleasure.
I really pity people like Bill Nye who cannot understand this very basic thing, yet we call them Scientists
huh?
Why do creationists and pseudoscience whackos always use the term "so-called scientists?" These are real scientists, guys. You are not.
So your god tricks people, and that is proof he is real....ooooookkkkk.
Cult logic.
Sooo–scripture is your argument here. This article really did fly completely over your head didn't it?
I don't believe in your God, just like an ever-growing segment of the population! Just because you believe in a mythical creature does not mean you should be allowed to do permanent psychological damage to your children. Let them grow up and make the decision on their own!
what a putz
understand what? a story soemone told to try and teach poeple to get along that was later perverted by the catholic church to control people? The bible is so far from the truth its riidiculous. Heres some truth about the bible. The old testament was written by a group of religious scholars at the order of a christian roman emperor who didnt like people have different views of and practices that they all called christianity. so him and his religious scholars wrote the old testament to fit their views. later king james decided the bibleneeded more so he did the same thing. Him and his group of religious scholars got together and decided what stories and what versions of those stories and how they could change some of them to fit their veiws and voila you get the new testament.
Rob, butt out of my family. Know-it-all AO.
just passing through...
I'm no Christian and I'm certainly not a creationist, but if a school wants to teach creationism, they have every right to do so. The liberals worship education spending, but they don't realize that they are giving government the ability to control what people believe by removing any religious teaching from public schools. And they convict conservatives of jamming their beliefs down everyone's throat?
They do not have that right. Look at the 1st amendment for details.
Only if it's a religious school. Religion has no place in a public school, especially in science class.
I have no problem with schools teaching creationism...in philosophy classes. But it doesn't belong in science classes because there is NO scientific evidence to back it up, nor will there ever be. This is not because God didn't create the earth (I believe He did), but because you simply cannot prove that He did. Its an unprovable concept, and therefore it should not be taught in science classes, which aim to study those things that have been proven by scientific theory.
Actually when you insert religious teaching into government operated schools, you are literally controlling what people believe. To give people freedom to decide what they want to believe on their own terms, you should be limited to providing facts.
Max if you want religion taught in school you are a moron. You are worried what the gov't teaches but the gov't teaching unfounded religious belief wouldn't bother you.
Public schools are not allowed to take a position on what religion someone should be. They do not mention if there is a God or isnt a God. This is because people disagree on the idea of God. Imagine how evangelicals would feel if Muslim teaching and prayer was put forth in school. Also imagine how they might feel if a conservative catholic espoused the idea that protestants are not members of the true christian faith because they dont have apostolic succession from the disciples. The public schools are doing the right thing by leaving religion to the parents to teach unless you believe the schools should dictate religious belief now?
since when does liberalism imply belief in evolution? or vice versa?
This is about evolution, moving ahead, progress, and doing so with a vision. Far right Conservatism don't have a vision so yes sometimes you need to have the liberal pill jammed down your throats because you don't know what's good for you.
The government is explicitly not supposed to impose religion on people, and teaching religious stories as true in a public school would be doing just that.
Do you advocate teaching all Creation Stories as scientific theories, or just the Christian one?
Whoa. I never heard of that carbon dating stuff before but did a quick google search and found out that you all know what you're talking about. I guess my logic was faulty after all. I now believe in evolution. I'm sorry for my ignorance. Friends?
Wow that's great.
If you are really telling the truth then you are a perfect example of what the human mind can achieve. You have escaped the chains binding your intellect and you are now free to become great.
lol "whyarethereso..." apparently even a forum troll like you can be naive enough to miss sarcasm.
Depends. Are you the original DA, or a hijacker trying to be funny?
Wow, if you didn't catch the sarcasm there, you are the one with the inferior intellect. LOL
Thats alright! have a beer.
I am the same one. I am not being sarcastic, I did indeed have a revelation. Evolution is the truth.
Nice try, DA. The day I see someone's personal convictions changed on a forum message board is the day I will believe the universe "poofed" into existence from nothing.
While I enjoy intelligent discourse on forums such as these, I have come to the obvious conclusion many years ago that these forums are not a test of ones intelligence but of ones endurance.
Why is it so hard to believe that I can change my mind? You're probably 99% right but I fall in the remaining 1%.
II cringe when I see the percentage break down... If that many people believe in "a hope and a prayer" ;o) there is no hope for humans... It's 2012!
First off, you have to understand what you are asking a god fearing (always loved that)..person to do. 1. Give up their ticket to heaven? 2. Understand that they will never see their family and friends again? 3. And realize that they will not be living in a heaven like magical world?
Who is going to let go of that golden road apple? Hell, I would give anything to BELIEVE that.. but I can hand over my rational and common senses.. It's to big a price to pay. The truth is "you can never shake the true believer"...
BTW.. what GOD are we speaking up? There is HOW MANY "approved Gods" on earth? Why is YOUR god the one while you believe the others are wrong? Of course the other religions feel the same way in reverse.. It you god-lovers could get together and agree on at least one God... but come on... YOU ALL CAN'T BE RIGHT – Correct?
Adjust.. You are gong to die, that's life, you are not going to be transported to 64 Virgins.. Sorry? That's not your religion? Shame!
Religion was created to keep people in line. Do good "go to heaven". Do bad "go to hell"... It's real simple... Your minds are under control. Us Darwin fans are not – WE ARE FREE!!!
And by the way... I resent and don't accept the name "Atheist"... If I say there is a purple dragon in my back yard.. and you don't see it. Are you then a "Dragon'ist"?? Or a "unbeliever"? No.. I would be crazy and you wouldn't.. Real simple.
Also, the last time I saw the news.. .all the holy rollers are continuing to KILL each other.. In the NAME OF GOD? Don't believe me? Then "off with their heads".. Now where have I heard that.. Not at a Darwin meeting that I recall..
Now all you Holy's snap out it.. you are making planet Earth look bad!!
Hate to break it to those of you who believe in God, but all the really smart people know it and I'm going to say it:
GOD DOESN"T EXIST
STOP HOLDING MANKIND BACK WITH YOUR STUPID IRRATIONAL BELIEFS
The Bible, a stupid book of unknown origin and certainly little reliability, is not a reputable source of evidence.
Evolution is backed by science which actually deals with the world we live in.
Why do only very few people see how pathetic it is believe in a religion? Religion is just people trying to explain their problems in some ignorant way while at the same time trying to become "part of something bigger:" a connection with some illogically omnipotent being.
WAKE UP!
Mankind knows way more about our universe now then ever before and it was still a stupid idea to believe in God thousands of years ago when we didn't know as much. I suggest that everyone who believes in God should stop blindly following the beliefs of the uneducated people of the past and really really think about what makes the most sense:
That if it ain't backed by science it's not true! Evolution is backed by science. Creationism is backed by idiots.
And PLEASE stop bringing gravity into this. That's just grasping for straws.
Proof? Oh wait, you don't need proof, do you? Only us who believe in God need proof. Sounds rather hypocritical, wouldn't you think? Yet, instead of believing in a Creator and Intelligent Design, you, the science and fact believer, go against the very basic rules of your same scientific beliefs and claim the Universe was NOT created, it just poofed into existence from nothing.
I believe in God AND science. Stop trying to claim there are only two sides to this argument. More importantly, stop trying to claim you know facts about something no one "on your side" can prove.
So let me summarize.....anyone who doesn't believe exactly like you do is stupid.
Could you please write a book of truth and science so we all know exactly what and how to believe. Here I thought we lived in America where we were free to believe as we wish. Silly me.
Just do me one favor, please explain with all your best scientific words, how the body with all its intricacies and functions came to be. Please explain with all your intelligence how the planets secured their positions in the galaxy. Please explain how the earth stays the perfect distance from the sun so as to sustain life. I'm sure those things are easily explained with your amazing scientific understanding.
HOW DARE YOU Lance.
I've been looking for proof since I was six when my parents put into church and told me to believe in all these religious tall tales. It is you people who fail to deliver proof. Stop being so stupid. How does you function when your brain spews out random nonsense like that. I know that I am right and that all creationists and believers of God are wrong. Either realize your stupidity or get left behind on the path to intellectual superiority.
Troll = troll.
Have fun fishing. I am cutting bait. I can see you're not about intelligent discourse at all, you're about trolling.
Oh yes, the intellectually superior liberals who think that being gay is completely normal even though the anatomies don't line up. The intellectually superior liberals who think its just fine to kill the unborn because a baby might be an inconvenience.
It's comical how you are so insecure in your atheism that you have to keep saying how smart you are and how dumb those are who disagree with you. If you were confident in your beliefs, you wouldn't feel so threatened by those who believe differently from you.
Ryan –
It's hard to be intellectually threatened by idiots who have to retreat into mysticism when challenged. Being threatened by the christian Taliban in America who want to turn the country into a theocracy is an entirely different story.
Wow 46% of our country also can decide who our next president is. The world gets scarier every day.
I agree with what Bill Nye said. I don't believe that "god's" hand had anything to do with us being here. I raised my family in such a way that they should experience religion and went to a catholic school and observed religious holidays. Today, my children(13 and 16 years of age do not believe in a higher being, but to beileve in what are "christian values." These values are universal to many religions. We still observe christmas and easter and celebrate the life of Jesus as a mortal being, and the son of joseph and Mary. The way Jesus lived his life impacted greatly on humanity.
Ditto
There's a part of me that wishes that every ignorant redneck that fights the teaching of evolution would have to forfeit any health care or medical treatments that have any basis in evolution. Sure would solve the problem quickly, and the look on their faces at the hospital when they realize that almost all modern medical care would be denied for them because proceeds from the assumption of evolution on some level – classic!
I'm sure that is a great idea in your little liberal mind. Anyone who doesn't agree with you should be punished.
But.......to suggest that anyone who receives welfare should be tested for drugs or be required to work is blasphemy!
Classic
Ryan, no, he did not say deny care to those who don't believe as he does. He said if you deny the gains that research and medical technology brings, and believe that everything happens for a reason, then rely on that, rather than technology.
Ryan simply wants to take advantage of the science he denies. He doesn't understand the hypocrisy of his position, or maybe he just doesn't care. Christians are like that. Go to the doctor to get medicine, then thank god when the medicine works.
Alicia, I told you before!
SHUT UP YOU IDIOT!
Believe what you want to believe. Don't tell me how to raise my kid. Btw, most Christians don't dispute evolution by definition rather the Theory of Evolution. No matter what view point you take, to tell people what they shouldn't tell their kids about creationism is arrogant and narrow-minded on his part.
Sure, get them to believe in the Easter Bunny and Leprechauns while you are at it. After all, if they find a Leprechaun's stash, maybe they'll share with you.
I fail to see how YOU beliefs have to do with the offspring you produce.
I don't think anyone is saying not to teach them about creationism, but teach them about evolution as fact so they understand how we actually came to be.
Science is based on facts. Theory of evolution is based on facts and is able to make predictions, much like theory of gravity. Creationism is faith, not facts. Therefore, teach your kids science in science class. Teach them creationism in religion class, if you must. Just don't confuse creationism with science, because by definition it is not.
So, you wouldn't say a word against any parent raising their kids to be racist, anti-Semitic, woman-beaters, or something else you'd consider problematic for their fitting in with society later in life? Face it, we as a society have every right to tell parents that some things are just not in society's best interest to teach their children. If we don't we'll only end up paying for it later, just like Nye said.
The only way to believe in Creationism is to completely ignore all the facts and research. Ignorance is faith. Faith is ignorance.
Evolution is a silly idea...just childish.
And both are "bliss", as the saying goes. Thus, home schooling. Keep kids uninformed about the actual science in the hopes that they have a blissful life not having to forcibly suppress their better judgment in order to accept creationism, right?
it takes faith to believe in evolution. Believe it or not, you can test change as it happens due to natural selection. However, the theory of evolution has yet to produce the evolution of species as it pertains to one species turning into another. All so called evidence cannot reproduced thus cannot be tested scientifically. The very faith you criticize is similar to what you're saying from your viewpoint.
David
Evolution science has been used to predict new fossil discoveries and create effective medicines, amongst other things. It's been proven to "work", which creates confidence in it's validity. Confidence in something because it works is not faith.
David –
Educate yourself. You clearly know nothing about evolution. There is a wealth of hard scientific data that supports the Theory of Evolution. You are exhibit A for why we need to teach evolution to our children – if we don't they might end up with your poor understanding of science.
Creationism is OBVIOUSLY the SCIENTIFIC explanation for how the earth was created.
For example, you all disagree with us that the earth is 6-10,000 years old because of you think fossils are millions of years old. But, don't you evolutionists just find the age of the fossils from by dating the rocks you find around it??? Can’t you all just realize that is circular reasoning?
You would think that there would be better ways of finding the age of fossils by now.
DA,
Yes there is a better way called carbon dating. Do some research.
Actually, it's not circular reasoning. They have found several different ways to date the age of things. And, well, they support each other. Even when used to date things that we have a hard date for.
Yes, there is a better way of dating fossils. It's called CARBON DATING. You need to read other sources than the sources you are obviously only using.
Besides the dinosaurs and other fossils:
As per National Geographic's Genographic project:
https://www3.nationalgeographic.com/genographic/
" DNA studies suggest that all humans today descend from a group of African ancestors who about 60,000 years ago began a remarkable journey. Follow the journey from them to you as written in your genes”.
"Adam" is the common male ancestor of every living man. He lived in Africa some 60,000 years ago, which means that all humans lived in Africa at least at that time.
Unlike his Biblical namesake, this Adam was not the only man alive in his era. Rather, he is unique because his descendents are the only ones to survive.
It is important to note that Adam does not literally represent the first human. He is the coalescence point of all the genetic diversity."
For your $99 and a DNA swab:
"Included in the markers we will test for is a subset that scientists have recently determined to be from our hominin cousins, Neanderthals and the newly discovered Denisovans, who split from our lineage around 500,000 years ago. As modern humans were first migrating out of Africa more than 60,000 years ago, Neanderthals and Denisovans were still alive and well in Eurasia. It seems that our ancestors met, leaving a small genetic trace of these ancient relatives in our DNA. With Geno 2.0, you will learn if you have any Neanderthal or Denisovan DNA in your genome."
DA
Still, the rocks ARE millions of years old. That's the point. So, unless we uncover evidence of ancient transporter devices that could have placed 10,000 year old dinos within solid rock we'll just assume they died at the same time the rocks were formed, see?
DA – just because YOU don't understand how geologic strata are dated doesn't mean they're not. That's some classic willed ignorance – "I don't have a clue about this, therefore I will dismiss it based upon my expertise."
Whoa. I never heard of that carbon dating stuff before but did a quick google search and found out that you all know what you're talking about. I guess my logic was faulty after all. I now believe in evolution. I'm sorry for my ignorance. Friends?
Also, Duck Soup rules. You know your movies.
FYI folks, carbon dating cannot date things that are millions of years old.
You might be right Donna but it does prove that the Creationists are wrong with the dating of the earth. As a former evolutionist denier, I know what it is like to be wrong.
There's no "might be right" I am right. It's a fact. A scientifically proven fact that carbon dating can't date things that are millions of years old. And anyone who read about it should know that.
The whole point here is to focus on the value of evidence and scientific knowledge, and not to pass on rumors.
Donna, I'm not saying you're wrong. I don't know one way or the other. Cut me some slack, I agreed with the theory of creationism just a few minutes ago.
This article seems to agree that the earth is more than thousands of years old: http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/earth/geology/dinosaur-bone-age.htm
Dude, it would have been faster for you to verify what I said than it would have been to type that response. You said that you looked it up before, was that a lie?
http://www.actionbioscience.org/evolution/benton.html---–>
"Our understanding of the shape and pattern of the history of life depends on the accuracy of fossils and dating methods. Some critics, particularly religious fundamentalists, argue that neither fossils nor dating can be trusted, and that their interpretations are better. Other critics, perhaps more familiar with the data, question certain aspects of the quality of the fossil record and of its dating. These skeptics do not provide scientific evidence for their views. Current understanding of the history of life is probably close to the truth because it is based on repeated and careful testing and consideration of data.
The rejection of the validity of fossils and of dating by religious fundamentalists creates a problem for them:"
"Scientists can use different chemicals for absolute dating:
•The best-known absolute dating technique is carbon-14 dating, which archaeologists prefer to use. However, the half-life of carbon-14 is only 5730 years, so the method cannot be used for materials older than about 70,000 years.
•Radiometric dating involves the use of isotope series, such as rubidium/strontium, thorium/lead, potassium/argon, argon/argon, or uranium/lead, all of which have very long half-lives, ranging from 0.7 to 48.6 billion years. Subtle differences in the relative proportions of the two isotopes can give good dates for rocks of any age.
The first radiometric dates, generated about 1920, showed that the Earth was hundreds of millions, or billions, of years old. Since then, geologists have made many tens of thousands of radiometric age determinations, and they have refined the earlier estimates. A key point is that it is no longer necessary simply to accept one chemical determination of a rock’s age. Age estimates can be cross-tested by using different isotope pairs. Results from different techniques, often measured in rival labs, continually confirm each other.
Every few years, new geologic time scales are published, providing the latest dates for major time lines. Older dates may change by a few million years up and down, but younger dates are stable. For example, it has been known since the 1960s that the famous Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary, the line marking the end of the dinosaurs, was 65 million years old. Repeated recalibrations and retests, using ever more sophisticated techniques and equipment, cannot shift that date. It is accurate to within a few thousand years. With modern, extremely precise, methods, error bars are often only 1% or so."
Is what a lie? I never said that. You are wrong. Look it up. Carbon dating can date items more than a hundred thousand years old.