Buz's refutation of all radiometric dating methods

Schraf, I run a full time business besides a lot of other activities and would appreciate that you not try to dictate as to how much time I
devote to these threads. If I want to do a thread and feel I have time to add to the ones I'm currently involved in, I'll I'd like to make that decision myself.However, I know this's buggin you so before I hit the sack I'll post this from the acknowledged link for you to ponder and anyone to comment on. It is a very interesting subject and I'd like to be able to give it more time. I'll try and do the best I can but may be slow responding much of the time. Ok bud?

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Past, present and future together
Consider then. Radiometric dating methods (those measuring geologic time by rate of radioactive decay) have been used to date formations that could be associated with Noah’s Flood. These dates supposedly prove these formations are millions of years old rather than thousands. Yet we find that different methods can yield radically different results.

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As The Science of Evolution explains: “Several methods have been devised for estimating the age of the earth and its layers of rocks. These methods rely heavily on the assumption of uniformitarianism, i.e., natural processes have proceeded at relatively constant rates throughout the earth’s history . . . It is obvious that radiometric techniques may not be the absolute dating methods that they are claimed to be. Age estimates on a given geological stratum by different radiometric methods are often quite different (sometimes by hundreds of millions of years). There is no absolutely reliable long-term radiological ”clock’” (William Stansfield, 1977, pp. 80, 84).

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The potassium-argon [K-Ar] dating method, used to date lava flows, also has problems”as shown by studies of Mount St. Helens. “The conventional K-Ar dating method was applied to the 1986 dacite flow from the new lava dome at Mount St. Helens, Washington. Porphyritic dacite which solidified on the surface of the lava dome in 1986 gives a whole rock K-Ar ”age’ of 0.35 + OR - 0.05 million years (Ma). Mineral concentrates from this same dacite give K-Ar ”ages’ from 0.35 + OR - .06 Ma to 2.8 + OR - 0.6 Ma. These ”ages’ are, of course, preposterous [since we know the rock formed recently]. The fundamental dating assumption (”no radiogenic argon was present when the rock formed’) is questioned by these data.

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“Instead, data from this Mount St. Helens dacite argue that significant ”excess argon’ was present when the lava solidified in 1986 . . . This study of Mount St. Helens dacite causes the more fundamental question to be asked”how accurate are K-Ar ”ages’ from the many other phenocryst-containing lava flows worldwide?” (Stephen Austin, “Excess Argon within Mineral Concentrates from the New Dacite Lava Dome at Mount St. Helens Volcano,” Creation Ex Nihilo Technical Journal, Vol. 10, No. 3, 1996, pp. 335-344).

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In layman’s terms, these volcanic rocks that we know were formed in 1986”less than 20 years ago”were “scientifically” dated to between 290,000 and 3.4 million years old!
Such examples serve to illustrate the fallibility of the dating methods on which many modern scientists rely so heavily.

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Search | United Church of God

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Problem is, buz, you shouldn't expect K-Ar ages from Mount Saint Helens, or Surtsey or other recent eruptions to be accurate. That was understood for many many years before the Mount Saint Helens samples were taken. Using K-Ar on such samples was like trying to measure the size of a shrew using a surveyors' chain.
In other words, the samples were not scientifically dated at all, because the choice of method was not appropriate.

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It would seem to me that when you're talkin hundreds of millions to billions of years, you're then still measuring the shrew with a surveyor's chain, for a month or 4500 years are both nothing stood up to these hyper huge figures.I guess that's why you're claiming it's only good for half a mil years. Then comes the problem of how do you know anything alegedly half a million years old has been read accurately. Nobody was there to verify.[This message has been edited by buzsaw, 06-22-2003]

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why is it that if a scientific theory is wrong its always a "mistake" or thrown right out the door and new ways brought in?

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Kinda like the doctors who bury their mistakes.

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But if you use the chain on something that you don't know how long it is, and you get a length of mutliple chains, isn't that enough to assume that the object is multiple chains long? Nothing shorter than a chain would give you multiple chains when you measured it; nothing younger than one half-life of carbon-14 (for instance) would give you a measurement of mutiple half-lives when you radiocarbon dated it.

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Apples and oranges. With the chain you can observe the length of what you're measuring and observe the chain to make the judgement. Not so with carbon 14 half life. You can't observe the ratio of your carbon chain to the thing you are measuring before you begin as you can with the chain and object.[This message has been edited by buzsaw, 06-22-2003]

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The lower age given is 64.4 mya. Now, assuming a 6,000 year old YEC earth is what YECs perceive as 100% of available time, then 60 years is 1%. This means that all the above methods, were ALL (1,085,000-100 = ) 1,084,900% inaccurate. Let me reiterate, the YECs requires these FOUR different, corroborating methods to be over ONE MILLION PERCENT INNACURATE.

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I have never stated that the earth is a young earth -- just that life on earth is young. As I have stated before on several occasions, Genesis 1:1 is simply saying that whenever the heavens and the earth was made, God made them. It doesn't say how he did it, but that he did it. I posted this, I believe in my old "forever universe" thread where I claim that the universe had no beginning perse. Each thing in the universe had it's beginning as God saw fit to make it and when. He's forever been creating and destroying things in the universe to suit his good pleasure.[This message has been edited by buzsaw, 06-23-2003]

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I think that I am more interested in learning how it is that you can explain, if ALL of the dating methods are bogus, how they can be bogus in such an unlikely way as to date the single rock sample dated with several of them at the same age?

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Again, I'm not claiming rocks and other inorganic matter are young.

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Then, what about fossils and such found within those rocks? How could a fossil be younger than the stone matrix within which it was found?

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If the lava, limestone, sand, or whatever makes up the layers or rock beds, existed before the organism buried in it existed, that doesn't make the organism the same age as those elements into which it becomes buried, does it? If I bury a dead carcas in the earth, that doesn't make it the same age as the earth.

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No, but if you do something to make the rock read "new" as in make it from fresh lava, create a new sedimentary layer in a flood, etc., then anything buried in it is the same age as the rock in which it is buried.

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Imo, that's nonsense. We all know that if, I say if, there was a flood 4500 years ago, that the inorganic material it is fossilized in is not a mere 4500 years old. And for sure, no modern dating method is going to register the material it is encased in at 4500 years. That just ainta gona happen. Maybe herein lies the lie. The young organic thing is pullingfor a youthful read and the inorganic old stuff is pulling for an aged read on the meter, bogasizing (bussism ) the whole dating process.

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What you're saying is that the stone was created in the flood and then somehow an organism that is much younger than it managed to get impregnated in it without disturbing any of the layers above it.

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Say what?? If you're talking the kinds of softer stones like limestone and shale, etc, or stuff like lava, these are created by things like sediment, heat and layers, are they not? The organisms become fossilized by sudden burial in these sediments or lava flows, etc which harden over the milleniums.

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Speechless. Me, that is. This is utterly astounding.
If your faith is incapable of surviving even a minimal education in science, and if you need miracles to hold your ideas together, then why are you trying to argue materialistic explanations for events that have already been explained very well? By doing so, you are (unnecessarily, it seems) entering an area in which you CHOOSE to know very little, and trying to argue with the best of the best! (I speak not of myself here) How is that worth your while? How does debating make any difference in anybody's mind when 1)yours has been made up and your conclusion reached, before you possess even a small fraction of the available knowledge; and 2)ours are too "brainwashed" and "corrupted" by factual learning to accept these evidence-free opinions of yours?

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This is getting extremely frustrating, going round and round in discussions that always end in "Buzsaw, learn about geology" and a reply of "won't bother, it's all in the interpretation anyway." There is plenty of hard data to be had, if you really care about the TRUTH, and it's available without the interpretive aid of professional scientists, if you really want it that way. Some very basic learning would stop you from making statements like the one above, because it just doesn't make sense. Not just imo, but in the opinion of just about anyone who cares enough to educate themselves about the subject.

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Zephyr, you begin by saying you're speechless and then proceed to go on and on about how stupid buzz is. What's the matter? Can't refute the specifics of my statements? Why don't you be nice and simply cut n paste the specific statements I make which you deem to be erroneous and refute those individual statements if you can. Isn't that the way these exchanges are suppose to work?

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No, of course not - and your act of burying would leave telltale signs of digging.

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So what's the digging got to do with scientific dating methods?

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And radiometric clocks only start counting from the time the stone became stone. So the age of the lime material has no bearing on the tested age of the limestone it forms. The clock is reset.

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So at time of burial the clock sets both the aged limestone and the then young organism at zero. That's what you're saying?

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So, when we find fossils totally imbedded in stone (aka, in matrix), isn't it reasonable to assume the fossil can't be younger than the stone? If not, how do you propose that a fossil was inserted into rock hard, uh, rock? Remember the radiometric dating dates the time since the hardening of the stone, not the age of the matter itself.

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Yes, of course it can be younger than the stone it's buried in. At the time it was buried the stone wasn't stone, but was much older than the organism which was buried in it. The fact that the inorganic material compacted and hardened doesn't make it any younger when the organism was buried in it. If you used your sophisticated dating methods on the inorganic material at the time of burial, it'd likely show much age. Right?[This message has been edited by buzsaw, 06-24-2003]

Mark, would you like to comment on this statement?

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A key issue for Mesozoic paleontologists, and one that has been bandied
about on this list innumerable times in the past, is the K/T boundary. The
Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary was, and is, as are almost all Phanerozoic
boundaries, based on the disappearance of some taxa and the appearance of
others. It _is_ not, and never _has_ been, based on the appearance of a
layer of soot, iridium-rich clay, coal, tektites, shocked quartz, or any
other geological marker. Nor it is based on any igneous material that can
be dated to 65 million years ago. In fact, that initial date of 65 million
years (which has fluctuated rather greatly over even the last 50 years) was
based on a radiometric assessment of rocks _previously_ pinpointed as
containing the K/T boundary _based_on_fossils_. The absolute dating
techniques were used to provide an absolute age for an _already_identified_
time boundary. Yes, the actual numbers have shifted over time, due in part
to refinement of various radiometric techniques and in part due to
refinement of the fossil-based boundary with new discoveries and better
correlations, but at no time has anything geologic (radiometric or
otherwise) overshadowed the fossil record as the definition of the K/T
boundary. Absolute techniques only aid in the _resolution_ of the
fossil-based time boundaries; they do not replace it.

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Source:
Jerry D. Harris
Dept of Earth & Environmental Science
University of Pennsylvania
240 S 33rd St
Philadelphia PA 19104-6316
Phone: (215) 573-8373
Fax: (215) 898-0964
E-mail: jdharris@sas.upenn.edu
and dinogami@hotmail.com
http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~jdharris

According to Harris, the age seems to be undetermined and controversial. He also seems to minimize the significance of the impact of the heavenly object and the tektites which Mark considered to be determinate in interpreting the boundary.

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It seems that you are trying to use quote mining in lieu of an understanding of geology and physics, and not very successfully.

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Geologists and physicists mentally locked into the illogical TOE tend to downplay simple logic and common sense in much of what they have become able to swallow, ideologically. So I'm not all too convinced that one must know everything about to these things in order to debate some of the issues. Obviously, I must borrow a lot from quotes to make up for my lack of education, but so what? Who cares if what I use is not all original?Having said the above, I found this forum link page which is a K/2 debate, between creatos and evos. I pretty much concur with the arguments Karl has made on this page concerning the k/t boundary. Some of his argument includes quite a list of species which survived the k/t including living fossils and reptiles close enough to the smaller dinos that if the order of dino's (much greater than that of modern reptiles) died off, including the small ones, why didn't the others go with them? He also challenges them with the fact that if the k/t event did indeed wipe out about 75% of life world wide, why ALL of the dinos gone and so many others got through it quite unscathed?http://www.carm.org/evolution_archive/fossils_coccoliths.htm[This message has been edited by buzsaw, 06-25-2003][This message has been edited by buzsaw, 06-25-2003]

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At the end of the Cretaceous, the number of dinosaur taxa had declined from 30 to about 12. Across the K/T boundary the number fell to 7; so some dinosaurs did survive into the Tertiary, but these died out very quickly.

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It never ceases to amaze me how you people fire off these statements allegedly having gone on 60 million years ago in such detail as if you were discussing historical record of the civil war. You've all become so comfortable with these astronomical figures in the scores of million to billions that I do believe you've lost all sense of just how awfully long ago this was and how awfully much time there has been for the unknown factors to have happened undected by mere modern finite fallible humans. Then you so pompously give creatos unceasing heck for alleging all this order and complicated intricacy was designed by intelligence, using the data we have pertaining to a few thousand years ago.

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This is incorrect. Most of the dinosaurs were extinct before the K/T event, which finished off much of the remainder.

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Again, how can you be so sure?This admission, from an old earth evo Berkeley link. Please expecially note item #3 pertaining to K/T:

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Complications: Now we're heading into the tough stuff; the reasons why we have no conclusive answer to the mystery of the K-T event. Several complications that make work hard for the scientist/detectives trying to crack this case:

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1: The Fossil Record - It's not perfect, as you may know; that's why paleontologists keep finding new fossils: so much is hidden in the rocks! Most data on the K-T event comes from North America, which is one of the few areas known that has a somewhat continuous fossil record (remember, fossils are only formed under certain rare conditions, and are only found in sedimentary rocks). The infamous Hell Creek locality in Montana is one such continuous site enclosing the K-T boundary. UCMP researchers have led and continue to lead expeditions to Hell Creek, gathering fossils from the rich fossil beds. The secret to the K-T event may lie within our collections; who knows! Anyway, we don't know much about what was occurring in the rest of the world at the time of the K-T event. The marine fossil record gives us great hints about what was occurring within the sea, but how applicable is that to what went on in the terrestrial realm?
2: The Nature of Extinction - Extinction is not a simple event; it is not simply the death of all representatives of a group. It is the cessation of the origination of new species that renders a group extinct; if species are constantly dying off and no new ones originate through the process of evolution, then that group will go extinct over time no matter what happens. New dinosaur species ceased to originate around the K-T boundary; the question is, were they killed off (implying causation, especially a catastrophe), or were they not evolving and simply fading away (perhaps implying gradual environmental change)?

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3: Time Resolution - Determining the age of rocks or fossils that are millions of years old is not easy; carbon dating only has a reasonable resolution when used with organic material that is less than about 50,000 years old, so it is useless with the 65 million year old K-T material. Other methods of age determination are often less accurate or less useful in certain situations. So we don't know exactly when the dinosaurs went extinct, and matching events precisely to give a picture of what was happening at a specific moment in the Mesozoic is not easy. Thus, the ultimate question of a gradual decline of dinosaurs vs. a sudden cataclysm is almost intractable without a wealth of good data.

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The Great Mystery: Background[This message has been edited by buzsaw, 06-25-2003]

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The specifics are starting to seem pointless, which was the whole point of my post. I'm losing interest in telling you about specifics because you don't seem to acknowledge them most of the time. You seem bent on viewing everyone who disagrees with you as a brainwashed slave of the evo paradigm. But many of us were taught what you were and, through honest pursuit of the truth, realized we had been deceived. It's rather insulting to hear your blanket dismissals, and kills the spirit of good faith debate.

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Well, I guess such a response is easier than the trench warfare of rigorous debate.