Longitivity of a Shark: if only Radiocarbon was reliable

Koot van Wyk (DLitt et Phil; ThD) Visiting Professor, Kyungpook National University, Sangju Campus, South Korea, Conjoint lecturer of Avondale College, Australia

Scholars counted the years of a shark in Greenland and found it is 400 years old. It must be, they thought since this shark only grows 1cm per year. They dated it with radio-carbon dating systems and concluded that the shark was born between an earlier date and a later date, probably. The earlier date would be 1501 and the later date is 1744 for its birth.

BBC article online http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-37047168

Just when I got excited about the subject of “longitivity and the Bible” and skeptics rejecting that Adam could be in the 900’s and Noah was born in 3190 BCE and the Flood came in 2692 BCE and Noah lived after the flood to the age of 950 years. It is just half more than the fish of our day.

Just when I got excited and layback about this concept scientists came forward with, I read the last paragraph of the BBC 12^th of August 2016 blog indicating how the age was calculated for the fish.

It is better to let the BBC blog speaks: “Another author of the study, Prof Christopher Ramsey, director of Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit at the University of Oxford, said that radiocarbon dating could be used to determine the ages of other animals, but was not likely to be chosen as the primary method.

"For many animals we have other methods to determine age," he said.

"Also, the radiocarbon method is not very precise, and so is only really relevant for very long-lived species."

He added that the statistical method used to determine the sharks' ages was Bayesian statistics.

"Bayesian statistics were first worked out by the Rev Bayes in the 18th Century. This means he will have been working on this when some of these oldest sharks were young."

You cannot get it better. Out of the horse’s mouth. A famous professor and co-worker on this age determining team admitted some serious limitations: 1. Radiocarbon dating is not reliable. 2. The dating is based upon Bayesian statistics worked out by a cleric in the middle of the 18^th century but used widely in science in jurisprudence for the past 200 years.

What is Bayesian Statistics?

In the Wikipedia blog a reference is cited giving the key idea: “One of the key ideas of Bayesian statistics is that ‘probability is orderly opinion, and that inference from data is nothing other than the revision of such opinion in the light of relevant new information’”.(1)

The basic tenet is that truth is not absolute but based on an estimation of probabilities and that estimate can be adjusted with better or more data later but as for now that is how things are. In fact, another article worked on fallacies of prosecutors and defendants as well as the fallacy of the jury utilizing Bayesian statistics and from that article a sentence is worth looking at: “Despite the wide acceptance of Bayesian reasoning as a logical means of formalising uncertainty, it has been regarded with great scepticism in courtrooms.”(2) Bayesian scholars allocate something as uncertain and then try to set up a system of logic to formalize and order reasoning to bring probabilities as a new means to suggest truth that may not be truth or absolute truth but just present perceived truth within a range of possibilities but not exact.

Evolution is such a case.

Dating of Homo Naledi, the skeletons of pigmy-like, Zika virus attacked, individuals been dumped or fled from killing due to their handicap situation in one of the caves in the Transvaal region of South Africa found in 2014-2015 was released in June 2016.(3)

See bibliography below for article where photo appeared.

Microcephalism that is greatly known to all due to the Zika virus, is not considered at all by these scientists.(4) The fallacy of radiocarbon dating systems is that it is not reliable says the professor and furthermore it is only for old remains. But, what the professor did not say, is that it is based on the fallacy that everything in the world remained the same for millennia so that climate did not change, no adaption of species to environmental disasters occurred in fact everything was always uniform so that the axiom of Uniformatism is that essence of the unreliability of the claims of this “science of uncertainty” or Bayeristic probabilities of uncertainty and belief.

They love Wittgenstein over a thousand. They like paradoxal truth. They reject absolute truth and reject God’s revelation to mankind although they even have to admit like Richard Dawkins to Ben Stein in the interview, that a signature in nature indicates that there must have once been an Intelligent being “who also came about by evolution” (Dawkins) “who created us”. Atheist, nihilist, a few times remarried and with an agenda to downplay creationists, and downplay God, but he admits that creation is a scenario to be considered.

How long is it going to take science to realize that they are been conned into a fallacy tunnel by Uniformatistic theorists, by Evolutionistic models built on that premise, what the Lyell glasses is all about in his geological design. One system skew overlapping another skew system overlapping another and so on until they all starting to believe in this network of overlappings, deceived themselves and now deceiving others whom they teach or talk to.

Even though no evolution happened on Mars and no evidence of it either, nor the Moon, they keep avoiding the Creation issue connected to our world and the Creator Who made it possible, and Christ Who wants to solve the sin and deterioration problem of this world.

(1) Edwards, W.; Lindman, H.; Savage, L. J. (1963). "Bayesian Statistical Inference for Psycho-logical Research". Psychological Review. 70: 193–242. doi:10.1037/h0044139 (quote: pp 519-520). Cited as per Dennis Fryback's preface in O’Hagan, A.; Luce, B. (2003). "A primer on Bayesian Statistics in Health Economics and Outcomes Research" (PDF). Bayesian Initiative in Health Economics & Outcomes Research and the Centre for Bayesian Statistics in Health Economics. Retrieved June 9, 2015.

(2) The “Jury Observation Fallacy” and the use of Bayesian Networks to present Probabilistic Legal Arguments Norman Fenton and Martin Neil Computer Science Department Faculty of Informatics and Mathematical Sciences Queen Mary and Westfield College, London E1 4NS. and Agena Ltd 11 Main Street Caldecote Cambridge, CB3 7NU email: norman@agena.co.uk Version 5.0, 27 March 2000. Retrieved: http://www.eecs.qmul.ac.uk/~norman/papers/jury_fallacy.pdf

(3) Mana Dembo, Davorka Radovcic, Heather M. Garvin, Myra F. Laird, Lauren Schroeder, Jill E. Scott, Juliet Brophy, Rebecca R. Ackermann, Chares M. Musiba, Darryl J. de Ruiter, Arne Mooers, Mark Collard, The evolutionary relationships and age of Homo naledi: An assessment using dated Bayesian phylogenetic methods. DOI: 10.1016/j.jhevol.2016.04.008. Retrieved at https://www.ucl.ac.uk/human-evolution/news/homo-naledi-bayesian-statistics-june-2016

(4) Koot van Wyk, “Homo Naledi finds in RSA and micro-cephalism: Short Notes”. (13^th of September 2015). http://www.egw.org at Van Wyk Notes number http://www.egw.org/zboard/324625