Dating Question For Members

In Message 39 of the Great Debate between Moose and me, I posed the following question:

quote:

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If any given beach sand were dated via the same method old rock is dated, what would the dectection show as the date of the beach sand which was dated?

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Would the sand rock date old or very young? Would each grain of sand have a different date or would the aggregate of sand in a given beach area show an aggregate date?("Detection" changed in quote for clarity. )

Thanks for the replies, folks. What led up to my question was Moose's statement that fossils were dated from the time of deposit of the organism.From searching, I learned that most fossils consisted of sedimentary rock and were void of original organic matter. This raised the question in my mind as to why the aggregate age of the rock or sand grains in the sediment would not be calculated as the age of the fossil rather than the time the organism was deposited.If Moose is correct, in that fossils are dated from the time of deposit, why wouldn't that apply to sea shore sand and for that matter, even a house built of stone, some of which had aged fossils in it.I am considering this as a possible problem in dating methodology.

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BUZSAW B 4 U 2 C Y BUZ SAW.
The Immeasurable Present Eternally Extends the Infinite Past And Infinitely Consumes The Eternal Future.

Subbie, unless you have something constructive to contribute to this topic I'd appreciate it if you'd find something else to do.

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BUZSAW B 4 U 2 C Y BUZ SAW.
The Immeasurable Present Eternally Extends the Infinite Past And Infinitely Consumes The Eternal Future.

But the sedimentary rock consist of aged grains of sediment much older than the organism which formed the sediment into a fossil. It's all particles of rock compacted into sediment instead of loose, for example, in an ant hill or a beach.I would assume that since the organic organism is no longer there that what is being calibrated would be the old particles of the sedimentary rock.Since beach sand is mostly quartz, perhaps a better example would be an ant hill. When I was young I was a geophysical rod man on the Sweetwater wilderness of Wyoming. The large ant hills out there consisted of all sorts of rock, including enough beautiful little red garnets that I robbed the ants of their garnets and saved a bottle of them.Suppose that during a catastrophe thousands of years ago, an ant hill was buried and became sediment with a leaf in it becoming fossilized. Over the millennia the leaf ceased to be and the sediment formed the fossil. Why wouldn't the dating method calibrate the rock particles making up the sediment of the fossil rather than the time the rock became sedimented?In short, if dating methodology would date the ant hill by the rock in it, why wouldn't the fossil sediment be dated by the same rock making up the sediment?We know the ant hill rock was deposited by the ants at the time they existed as ant hills. But dating methodology would not tell us when ant hills are formed, any more than it would tell us when a rock house was built. Why should it be different with the sedimented rock?Since beach sand is mostly quartz, perhaps a better example would be an ant hill. When I was young I was a geophysical rod man on the Sweet water region of Wyoming. The large ant hills out there consisted of all sorts of rock, including enough beautiful little red garnets that I robbed the ants of their garnets and saved a bottle of them.Supposing that during a catastrophe thousands of years ago, an ant hill was buried and became sediment with a leaf in it becoming fossilized. Over the millennia the leaf ceased to be and the sediment formed the fossil. Why wouldn't the dating method date the rock particles making up the sediment of the fossil rather than the time the rock became sedimented?

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BUZSAW B 4 U 2 C Y BUZ SAW.
The Immeasurable Present Eternally Extends the Infinite Past And Infinitely Consumes The Eternal Future.

I'll rephrase my statement for clarification. After the leaf formed the sediment leaf mold, over the millennia the leaf mold fossilized so as to form the fossil,I would assume that minerals or surrounding sediments would have dated older than the organism forming the fossil.The question remains, why would the old minerals, sediment rock or whatever makes up the sediment date the time of the deposit of the leaf forming the fossil any more than the time of a present ant hill calculation by modern calculation for dating old rocks date the time the ant hill was made/deposited by the ants?ABE: As to your title comment, the title date had nothing to do with either kind of dates one might eat. Edited by Buzsaw, : No reason given.

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BUZSAW B 4 U 2 C Y BUZ SAW.
The Immeasurable Present Eternally Extends the Infinite Past And Infinitely Consumes The Eternal Future.

That would, of course, be true assuming a relative uniformitarion hypothesis, but not necessarily from a catastrophic hypothesis.

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BUZSAW B 4 U 2 C Y BUZ SAW.
The Immeasurable Present Eternally Extends the Infinite Past And Infinitely Consumes The Eternal Future.

I understand this fully, Jar, but you seem to be ignoring what I wrote. Catastrophes disturb formations. No? Formations which are relatively suddenly created by catastrophes are disturbed formations. No?

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BUZSAW B 4 U 2 C Y BUZ SAW.
The Immeasurable Present Eternally Extends the Infinite Past And Infinitely Consumes The Eternal Future.

A lot of that depends on how one interprets the data and from what premise. To delve into that would be to delve in another flood debate and I don't want to go there in any depth in this thread, nor do I think admins would look favorably on that.I want to get back to the questions in my mind about radiometric dating methods which scientists use to date fossils. I'm not satisfied that anyone has adequately answered those questions.For example I asked why the dating methodology doesn't calculate the date of the sediment particles formed by the leaf into a fossil formation just like it would calculate an old date for the rock pieces in the ant hill on the earth's surface.One answer was that the glue including mineral and whatever factored in, but that doesn't make sense to me, in that the aged glue itself would not necessarily record when the organism was deposited. It would seem that the radiometric dating of old rocks would calculate the aggregate age of the elements in the sediment rock, since no organic organism matter would be present in the fossil rock.

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BUZSAW B 4 U 2 C Y BUZ SAW.
The Immeasurable Present Eternally Extends the Infinite Past And Infinitely Consumes The Eternal Future.

Hi Lyx2no.If the flood happened, the dating data recorded would be off due to unknown pre-flood consistency of the atmosphere elements and that in organisms. That, along with this matter of dating sediment rock making up fossils leads me to think dating methodology has a problem.Dating methodology has a lot to do with interpreting observed data in the strata, and frankly, as well as whether the flood event happened. There's just too much corroborating evidence verifying the Biblical record for me to discount the Biblical flood. This, along with the problems I see with dating methodology and other debatable flood related arguments keep me in the floodist camp.I'm not being stubborn as most think. I'm just being honest with myself. I can't deny what I think is logical and what makes sense about observations just to be scientifically correct in the eyes of conventional science types.Common sense says loudly to me that if the same radiometric dating is used on the ant hill and the fossil, and the radioactive dating allegedly calibrates when the thing being dated was deposited/formed, both the modern ant hill and the fossil are going to show old dates on the meter.Thus if a fossil was formed by the flood, 4500 years ago, the radioactive dating is going to date the older rock sediment formed by the organism and not the organism which formed what is being dated.

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BUZSAW B 4 U 2 C Y BUZ SAW.
The Immeasurable Present Eternally Extends the Infinite Past And Infinitely Consumes The Eternal Future.

Dr Adequate, I thought most fossils are formed in sedimentary rock. Would you mind elaborating about that as well as "It wouldnt?

OK, Dr Adequate, I've been thinking this through and doing some reading. So it appears that as per my OP question, what is being dated in order to determine the time the organism was deposited is the intrusive igneous rock which is above the fossil.This seems to imply that the igneous rock likely originated from the earth's mantel and rose by plate tectonics so as to be above the fossil.So it appears that what would ultimately determine the age of the fossil is whether the plate tectonic activity was relatively sudden via catastrophe or over the millions of years, inch by inch.What think you?

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BUZSAW B 4 U 2 C Y BUZ SAW.
The Immeasurable Present Eternally Extends the Infinite Past And Infinitely Consumes The Eternal Future.

From what I read, the intrusive igneous originated from the hot mantel of the planet's core. I would assume that plate tectonics would be one cause of the rise of the intrusive igneous from the mantel to above the fossil. How else does it end up above the fossil sediment being studied?

Which raises more questions. What forces cause the lava to rise to the extent that it raises the plates?How far above the planet's mantel does the magma rise before it becomes cooled enough to harden into intrusive igneous rock?If it is the cooled magma rock that is tested by the radiometric dating, does it date differently than the rising magma and if so, why?

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BUZSAW B 4 U 2 C Y BUZ SAW.
The Immeasurable Present Eternally Extends the Infinite Past And Infinitely Consumes The Eternal Future.

Yes. I thank you and so many who've been good spirited and informative in this thread. It's all giving me a lot to mull over and try to make sense of.

Thanks, Taq and Dwise. More food for thought.