Is there evidence that dating methods MUST be invalid?

In Message 39 almeyda wrote: Now, "fallible" is one thing, and "must be invalid" is quite another kettle of fish. "Dating methods are based on assumptions" is, of course, not evidence that "dating methods must be invalid"; everything we do in our lives is based on assumptions, and validity is based on the accuracy of the assumptions. And, of course, "assumption" in science does not mean "untested"; I discussed the foundations of radiometric dating in a moderatly long post in another forum at TheologyWeb Campus .So my questions are:1. What is your evidence that dating methods are fallible?2. What is your reference for your claim about Eugneie Scott?3. Finally and especially, what evidence do you have that dating methods must be invalid? The fact that the methods are founded on (severely and continuously tested) "assumptions" is not such evidence, a few erroneous results (especially when the reasons for the errors are known but suppresed by creationists) are not such evidence.I don't suppose that almeyda will produce any substantive reply, but I feel the need to make the challenge.{edited to make the link to Almeyda's message better}This message has been edited by JonF, 06-09-2004 11:10 AM

I'm not really taking the negative ... but he's almost certinaly not arguing that "the laws of basic algebra don't work"Nitpick: Earth's oldest known rocks (assemblages of minerals) are Acasta Gneisses in northwestern Canada near Great Slave Lake and are 4.03 billion years old. Earth's oldest known minerals are zircons from the Narryer Gneiss Complex in Western Australia and are 4.4 billion years old.The generally accepted 4.55 billion year age of the Earth is derived from Pb-Pb isochron analyses using meteorites which were and are exceptionally low in U (such as Canyon Diablo, the cause of Meteor Crater in Arizona) as primordial lead references.I doubt that Almeyda has any idea of what dating methods are, how they work, or how he's arguing against them. He just doesn't like them.Very few creationists argue against the laws of algebra (although I've discussed dating one who did, loud and long). There are two types of common arguments; the one that points out erroneous results (especially erronous results obtained by creationist cheating) and claims that a few erroneous results destroy the credibility of all results (which is so silly that I'm not going to go into it any more), and the one which attacks the "assumptions" of the methods. Indeed, if any of the "assumptions" of a particular method are wrong in a particular case, the method is going to produce the wrong answer through perfectly valid algebra.I suspect that Almeyda would, if he ever shows up here, argue the latter way. I conclude this because of his reference to assumptions.However, such arguments are fruitless. I suggest that you read the link in the first message. There is only one "assumption" that underlies all radioisotope dating methods and could possibly cause all determinations to be wrong; the "assumption" of constant radioactive decay rate. We do, of course, have gobs of evidence of such constancy, although creationists still try to invoke accelerated radioactive decay as an "explanation" for their young-Earth fantasies. They typically ignore that vast amount of heat that would be produced, and they also ignore the fact that all life would be wiped out by the increased background radiation.

Your entire post is just a series of unsupported assertions. Facts and data and formal and logical analyses of facts and data are evidence.I will respond to a few items: Professor of Biological Sciences. Maybe he knows what he's talking about, maybe he doesn't. But that particular statement is flat-out wrong, no matter who said it. There is no evidence of the possibility of noticable fluctuations in decay rates under conditions encountered or encounter-able on Earth. On the contrary, we have lots of evidence that decay rates have not fluctuated. Sylas once posted an excellent list that doesn't even include all the evidence but does hit all the high points:

• Observations of nuclear reactions in distant stars and distant galaxies (for which the reactions took place thousands or millions of years ago).
• Inferences about nuclear processes in the very early universe before galaxy formation.
• Cross checking of dates against other non-radiometric dating methods.
• Cross checking of radically different radiometric methods.
• Study of residues from the Oklo natural nuclear reactor, active nearly two billion years ago.
• Theory of quantum mechanics, which is itself one of the most precisely studied and tested models in physics. Radioactive decay is a process that is well understood. We know a great deal about the relevant forces and the structure of atoms, and how and why they decay. In fact, I would say radioactive decay is substantially better understood than gravity. This illustrates the principal that confidence in scientific models is related also to how well the underlying principals are understood.
• Testing of a range of conditions in which decay might vary. If decay rates have varied, then can we reproduce the conditions under which this occurs? In some cases, yes; and none of them make any difference to dating technique

Age determinations on a given geological stratum will rarely, if ever, differ by hundreds of millions of years. They may differ by a few poercent for good and well-understood reasons. Geologists and "evolutionists" are not disturbed by uncertainties inherent in radiometric dating. Note that your source cut off the quote in the middle of a sentence with no indication of that fact; that's dishonest quote mining. The full sentence is "The uncertainties inherent in radiometric dating are disturbing to geologists and evolutionists, but their overall interpretation supports the concept of a long history of geological evolution. {emphasis added} Absolutely untrue. If one comes up with a date that is anomolous and can't come up with a good explanation why it is anomolous, that's very publishable and will certainly be published. And, obviously, such "living fossils" are significantly different from their fossil relatives, and are not used as index fossils. Another false and unsupported assertion, and slanderous as well. You insult all scientists. Let's see your evidence for this claim. Very poor presumption, and obviously false to those who actually know something about how the tests are carried out. Many labs are for-profit, all labs have a budget. They don't make money unless they make efficient use of their equipment. If they don't have some crude idea of how old the specimen is, they can't set their equipment to measure in the right range; they may have to try several runs to get the appropriate settings, and they lose money. (The guess doesn't have to be real close, they can put up with being off in a few cases, but they can't handle having to make multiple runs on all samples, for purely economic reasons).In the particular case of potassium-argon dating, if the sample is suspected to be young they need to do a heroic cleaning of the mass spectrometer to remove all the residual argon that they can, because they will be trying to measure a very very small amount of argon. If the sample is expected to be old, they can put up with a little contamination from leftover argon because its effect will be unnoticable. And if the sample is expected to be old but really is young, they will be able to tell after the measurement that the argon that they measured may be largely from leftover argon, and they will have to clean the mass spec and run the sample again ... more money down the tubes.Typical AIG propagand, full of lies of omission and comission. E.g.:

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These include the assumption that decay rates have never changed. In fact, decay rates have been increased in the laboratory by factors of billions of times.

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One decay rate (not rates) of a type of decay that is involved in only one of several dozen radioisotope methods, and that method is not widely used has been increased in the laboratory by factors of billions of times only under conditions which would vaporize the entire Earth and everything on Earth long before the required temperature was reached.Or:

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Instead of questioning the method, he would say that the radiometric date was not recording the time that the rock solidified. He may suggest that the rock contained crystals (called xenocrysts) that formed long before the rock solidified and that these crystals gave an older date.3 He may suggest that some other very old material had contaminated the lava as it passed through the earth. Or he may suggest that the result was due to a characteristic of the lavathat the dyke had inherited an old ‘age’.

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None of these suggestions would be made or accepted without evidence for the suggestion. For example, nobody would suggest xenocrysts unless xenocrysts were found (if the sample can be examined) or were likely to be found (if the sample were not available for examination, which pretty much happens only with samples taken by creationists).

Yes, and they essentially always do. E.g. see http://www.gate.net/~rwms/AgeEarth.html and One of the main objections to radiometric dating (the latter is currently not available). Unsupported assertion. Where's your data? Exactly how often are inconsistent dates obtained? So Snelling claims. But the samples are not available for others to view, the details have not been published in a form that others can evaluate. As of now is just another unsubstatiated claim.Almeyda, you are missing the entire point of this thread. Even if Snelling's results are correct, it's one anomolous date per tens of thousands of consistent dates. Even if Snelling is corect, it's not evidence that dating methods must be wrong; at best it's evidence that dating methods are occasionally wrong.In the very first post I wrote "... a few erroneous results ... are not such evidence." Yet you insist on posting unsupported quote-mines and a very few supposed erroneous results. Face it ... you have no eviden that radioisotope dating methods must be wrong, the best you have some evidence that they occasionally are wrong. BZZZT! Wrong. Thank you for playing. A specimen older than 50,000 years should have very little C-14 left over from when the specimen formed, but there are other possible sources of tiny amounts of C-14; the amount of C-14 present in a specimen older than 50,000 years depends on the history of that specimen. Other possible sources of C-14 are unimportant in younger specimens, because the C-14 left over from formation swamps any other possible sources, but in older specimens it's the other way around.

You have not replied to many of the issues raised in this thread. You just pop up, post a copy of something you grabbed at some other web site, and ignore the responses and refutations until you pop up and post another copy of somebody else's work. This is not how discussion is carried out.You have claimed that dating methods regularly produce inconsistent results. Produce evidence or abandon the claim.You have claimed that when a date differs from that expected, "evolutionists readily invent excuses for rejecting the result". Produce evidence or abandon the claim.I notice you have not read the link that I provided in the first message of this thread. You really should; it's not long, and reading and heeding it would have avoided you wasting a lot of time. You are just regurgitating the same old creationist propaganda.But you really should indicate when you are pasting somebody else's words. It's polite, legally required, and acknowledges that you are not willing to actually think about the issues; rather, you just regurgitate the same old lies without question. Your message is a copy of material from RADIOACTIVE AGE ESTIMATION METHODS - Do they prove the earth is billions of years old? (or any of a few other places where this is copied) with a few minor changes in the first few lines.. You are misinterpreting the word "assumption". In this context it means "Something taken for granted or accepted as true without proof within the context of the method". It does not mean "accepted as true without any proof whatsoever". Your mistake is common, that is why I prefer to use "premises" instead of "assumptions".However, most of your listed "assumptions" are not assumptions used to any great degree in radioisotope dating! I do get tired of the same old claims that were out of date fifty years ago ... False. I discussed this in detail at the post linked to in the first message of this thread. The vast majority of methods used today or recently are either isochron methods, in which this premise/assumption is not used (the amount of initial daughter is a result of the method) or concordia-discordia methods in which the amount of initial daughter is fixed at near-zero by the physics of solidification of zircons and the other minerals with which these methods are used. Also see the "age-diagnostic" discussion below. False. How isochron methods avoid this issue is discussed at Isochron Dating. I don't know of any good Web reference on why lead incorporation into zircons is so restricted, but it's so and you could verify that with any good geology department at a university. False. Isochron methods and concordia-discordia methods are what Dalrymple calls "age-diagnostic" methods, meaning that they produce both an age and an indication of how reliable that age is.In the case of most isochron methods, if the material was not a closed system, the analysis is almost certain to produce a "no age" result. That is, the procedure detects open system behavior and will not produce an age if the system has not been closed.Argon-Argon and concordia-discordia methods detect open system behavior just as isochron methods do, but they have an added advantage; they often produce a valid date even if the system has not been closed.It is possible that these methods will occasionally be fooled by random action that happens to act just right; it is not possible that they are fooled always or even often. Now, this one is actually close to true ... but, when you come right down to it, it's false too. You're zero for four.This premise/assumption does underlie all radioisotope dating methods, and there are no checks of it within the context of radioisotope dating methods. However, it has been checked six ways form Sunday outside the context of radioisotope dating, as I pointed out in message 12 of this thread:

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There is no evidence of the possibility of noticeable fluctuations in decay rates under conditions encountered or encounter-able on Earth. On the contrary, we have lots of evidence that decay rates have not fluctuated. Sylas once posted an excellent list that doesn't even include all the evidence but does hit all the high points:

• Observations of nuclear reactions in distant stars and distant galaxies (for which the reactions took place thousands or millions of years ago).
• Inferences about nuclear processes in the very early universe before galaxy formation.
• Cross checking of dates against other non-radiometric dating methods.
• Cross checking of radically different radiometric methods.
• Study of residues from the Oklo natural nuclear reactor, active nearly two billion years ago.
• Theory of quantum mechanics, which is itself one of the most precisely studied and tested models in physics. Radioactive decay is a process that is well understood. We know a great deal about the relevant forces and the structure of atoms, and how and why they decay. In fact, I would say radioactive decay is substantially better understood than gravity. This illustrates the principal that confidence in scientific models is related also to how well the underlying principals are understood.
• Testing of a range of conditions in which decay might vary. If decay rates have varied, then can we reproduce the conditions under which this occurs? In some cases, yes; and none of them make any difference to dating technique

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So, "evolutionists" are not extrapolating or assuming when we say that radioactive decay rates are constant; we are stating a conclusion based on a wide variety of physical and theoretical evidence.

What about the many times that Sylas' list has been posted (e.g. in this thread see Message 12), or the "assumption" has been discussed? Have you done any research into the items that he mentioned?What about the fact that cobalt decayed at the same rate that it did almost 200,00 years ago, as shown by supernova SN1987A (see The Constancy of Constants?Have you read the discussion of the general issue at Have physical constants changed with time??Have you read Isaac's discussion of the issue at Claim CF210?Have you studied the Oklo reactor and considered what it means, such as those at Natural Fossil Fission Reactors? If decay rates were different, the reactor would not have operated.Of course, I know the answer to all those questions. You are the one who "don't seem to want to hear of it".

And they involved a decay mode that is involved in only one radioisotope dating method.

Which explicitly acknowledges Radioactive Age Estimation Methods - FLAWED" from ChristianAnswers.net as their source. I found a more primary reference than you did! Neener neener neener!