Discussion of the CMI-AS debate (Meldinoor, NosyNed, Slevesque, Arphy only)

There were two analogies:
In one it was just a bunch of random clocks in a store where over half agreed.
In the second it was clocks with different technologies. One scenario given was them all agreeing.
So there has never been a case where the most of the clocks did not agree. No clock ever, ever tells the "correct" time since they all have some degree of error. Some have infinitesimally tiny errors.But that is a nitpick which might be important another time.Two items:
If you are forced to make your best judgment on the "correct" time what would you pick in each case?
More importantly, what if we are interested in the elapsed time since they were last set in some way? How confident are you in picking clocks which have stayed in sync since then? Please explain. That makes no sense to me. We are still talking about the clock analogy I thought. You said something might impact the clocks and now you jump to geology? Does that mean you were never talking about the clocks analogy when you were referring to impacts?

We don't actually have or have to have a correct clock as we usually think of it since in no case are we really measuring the time of day. What we are measuring is a duration.We use one clock with a more invariant duration to determine errors in the duration of another. It seems we can also determine the variation in duration of our most accurate clocks but I don't know the details and I'm not sure they are relevant here. At the extremes I think it isn't the variation in durations that produced errors but in how we read out the results and that is understood well enough to put error bars on the readings. It sounds like you won't trust any time measurement at all then. So you might as well step out of this debate since it is about a time measurement in the end. (and at the moment about helium diffusion as a measurement method which is known to have a lot of variables that throw it off so you don't trust it at all and can tell slevesque that now).Since at no time has any one carefully counted time duration for more than years or maybe a few decades you suggest that there are no methods for measuring durations that you will accept. Please be more clear about that.Personally I wouldn't trust a person ticking off days (or any other interval ) over many of the other methods since I know for a fact that individuals are enormously unreliable at that kind of thing. Of course it is true that they are not necessarily in sync. At no time can we have 100 % confidence in any method (including your very weak counting by a person present). However, we are attempting to arrive at what can be considered to be the best conclusion we can some to with the facts at hand. The conclusion may be arrived at with a high degree of confidence or a lower one but it is often still possible to come to a interim conclusion that is somewhat better than "I have no clue."In the case of the clocks I would give a rather high degree of confidence if all the types of clocks agreed, very high in fact. Why wouldn't you? You haven't read far enough. If you do you'll find that the method you like -- counting intervals is used to determine absolute dates and the counting methods agree with radiometric dating methods which also agree with calendar dates given by people who "were there". It is [b]not/b just the minimum dates that are given. It is actual matches between widely varying methods that are the "correlations" being discussed.If you wish to disagree with this you're going to have to actually read the information supplied. We have months so it isn't a rush. I have reading of my own to do on the helium diffusion method too. The analogy here will carry over to the geological examples we will actually be discussing. Arm waving that there might be something affecting them all to produce the same error doesn't cut it here or there. You don't need to know the details of any of the workings of the clocks to realize there is very, very, very, very unlikely to be something to affect all of them to produce a wrong duration that all agree. That is enough for me to assign a high level of confidence in the conclusion until further facts come in. If it isn't for you; if you require 100 % confidence before you stop saying "We have no clue." then you will never have a clue. Enjoy the weekend. There is no deadline to all of this (other than I am getting a bit older :S).

The entire experiment depends on using helium diffusion as a good time measuring method. It can be used as such but is know to be loaded with difficulties of getting it right.Humphrey's made errors in his calculations which he dismisses as not answering the huge difference between the diffusion time he gets and the times form radiometric measurements. This misses the point. The errors mean that his predicitions are not matched with the observations. The location he choose is an area of extra non radiogenic helium that may or may not be a coincidence but it is not handled in his paper. Other YEC writers (Gentry) note that there could be excess non radiogenic helium involved. This result should certainly be viewed within the entirety of dating work where it sticks out as a very, very unlikely outlier.The RATE research concluded that radiometric methods do in fact yield an old earth. They simply decided that this can not be right and somehow, someday an explanation will be found. They have no such explanation. We know that helium diffusion dating is an uncertain proposition for a number of perfectly clear reasons.We also know that if decay was much faster in the past then the heat produced is prohibitive to life on earth. The RATE group agrees with this but decides that there must be a way for it to be handled but don't know what it is.From that point on they are not doing science. They need a miracle.