An honest question for creos regarding dates and dating

CK: Don’t get me wrong, I’m not actually on your side, and you haven’t convinced me of anything yet. But we are called to examine our faith, so that’s what I’m doing. I have the time right now to engage in this conversation, so I’m taking advantage of it.I have to admit that Loudmouth and the whole non-creationist circle have a good argument. There is a lot of data on your side, and a lot of people. But a popular idea doesn’t make it correct. There are creation scientists out there that seem to have good data, knowledge, and experience to back them up, at least from my lay point of view. But there are less of them, probably less money, so there is less data. If the sides were more 50-50, and non-creationists had data this convincing, I’d be tempted to swing to that side.One problem I have is each side accusing the other of misleading and incomplete information. I don’t see where either side has any direct personal gain from my ‘taking’ their side, so I think everyone really believes what they are saying. So someone is lying or just plain wrong. Maybe it’s somewhere in the middle? Certainly neither side is completely innocent of complete honesty. I don’t mean anyone specific, just some people in both camps not being completely above board over the years.I know two ‘scientists’. One is a chemist; another physicist. Both are Christians. One of them is a creationist that falls between the YEC and OEC (I don’t know what Old Earth Creationists call themselves). Certainly they are not idiots. I know a Christian that was a physics professor for almost 30 years. I think at the U of M. I can’t believe he’s an idiot. Why do these guys that are so smart, that travel in the scientific circles, still believe in creation? Are they blind to the evidence because of their faith, or is there something more that that you aren’t seeing? Creationists can’t completely agree on the evidence. Do all non-creationist agree on everything? I hardly doubt it. That point alone doesn’t make either side wrong, but tells me it’s not clear cut like it’s made out to be.I doubt I’ll be able to sort it out myself, but I’d like to try, and get a better understanding of the other side of the controversy. Who knows, maybe I’ll swing over to your camp, or somebody will swing over to mine.

The really compelling thing about the Lake Suigetsu varves to me is the internal correlation: the more layers you count, the less carbon-14 you see. The varves are assumed, as a (probably pretty well supported) initial hypothesis, to be laid down one per year. The leaves and bug parts from counted layers are independently measured for C14 content, and the utterly uncorrected dates from them, not even considering the known fact that C14 production and storage has varied over time, match up within 10% or better. And the researchers ran 50 (!) blanks from down around 100,000 varves deep, and found "undetectable above background" C14 in all of them.How can just this matchup in data be explained in a young earth scenario? And let's not even worry about the correlations of Suigetsu to ice cores, tree rings, corals, stalagmites, varves in the Cariaco Basin off Venezuela.....just the internal correlation alone for now.

Coragyps: In a nutshell, I don't know. I admit it's compelling evidence. I made the point earlier that more research would be needed before young earth scenerio could be proposed. The varves in the Green Rivers beds look like good evidence, until they did more investigation and found some things that needed explaining. If more research was done, and no evidence was found in support of young earth, this would remain something unexplainable from a Biblical point of view.

fredsbank,This is a nice discussion we are having here. It is rare that we see a creationist who is as civil as you are. Kudos.

quote:

---

I looked up Rate’s lab report for Mt. St. Helens. Here is what I found:

​

They give a detailed description of the sample collection and preparation
They sent the samples to Geochron Laboratories of Cambridge, Massachusetts
The results were detailed measurements of the elements in question.
RATE explained the formula, how the numbers were applied, and the years that were represented.

​

It’s very detailed and doesn’t appear to be lacking data in any way.

---

What Austin and others fail to mention is that the samples contained peices of older rock that would obviously cause the dates to be way off. From http://www.tim-thompson.com/plaisted-review.html : In other words, Austin used samples that even a geologist would reject before the dating was ever done. Therefore, Austin's work does nothing to invalidate K/Ar dating since he used samples that cannot give reliable dates for young rocks due to inclusion of older rock. You have to ask yourself if he did so in ignorance or if he knew the rocks were not datable but included them anyway assuming that his audience (non-technical christians) wouldn't know the difference.

quote:

---

I looked at their whole website. I found their ‘services’ page. I couldn’t find anything about AR or K measurements. Although they mention it on other pages, I assume it must be a basic service, so they didn’t even mention it on their services page. Plus, the RATE report, as well as your comments above, say they supplied measurements of these elements, so they must be able to do them.

---

Yeah, I was unable to find a source for the 3 million limit as well. I remember reading it somewhere, but my memory could be failing so who knows. Anyway, the quality of the samples are enough to discredit the study so the precision of the lab is really a moot point.

quote:

---

I see your point that it was dishonest to use a dating method that is known to cause incorrect dates of such a young age. The point I believe they were making, and the one they did make, was that since the earth is only 6000 years old, all the samples that use dating methods that only measure 1 ma or older are wrong.

---

If I made the statement "since the world was created last tuesday with the appearance of age, the Bible doesn't matter anyway" could I then ignore all of their data? Of course not. Also, there are dating methods that date younger ages, such as C14, and those dating methods correlate with other methods in such a way that it lends credence to all of the dating methods. For example, imagine if I had calipers and a yard stick. Using the calipers I verify that the inch marks on the yard stick are accurate. Therefore, if I want to measure something 24 inches long with the yard stick, I know that this measurement is accurate with measurements within the range of the calipers. Again, it is the correlation between radiometric and non-radiometric dating techniques that are the best support for the accuracy of both.

quote:

---

In addition, I did find an article with strong detailed criticism of creationist arguments about dating infallibility. I thought you’d be proud of me for reading something out of the creationist circles. It’s a pretty detailed and the arguments sound good. The only problem is he is accusing Woodmorappe of the same things the creationist accuse them of, sending us back to he said, she said. I’d like to find a creationist rebuttal that really addresses the issues Henke raises.

---

Woodmorappe is claiming that if a dating method is off by 1% at 250 million years that it is not a trustworthy dating method. I happen to disagree, as would most people. This is how Woodmorappe argues his position (from the cited website): The problem is that K/Ar needs to be off by thousands of a percent in order for a 6,000 year old earth to be a reality. Instead, the errors are in the 1-4% range. Woodmorappe hopes that by selectively quoting (otherwise known as quote mining) he will be able to fool his audience into thinking that there are great discrepencies in the dating technique when in fact the discrepencies are very minor (1 to 4%). In my own work I shoot for under 5% sample to sample variation, as does most of the scientific community. In other words, these error ranges are well within accepted variances.

quote:

---

How did the flood sort out different isotopes of radiogenic elements so that rocks lower in the geologic column consistently date older than rocks higher up? How did this sorting occur so that any given species is sorted into rocks that have a consistent radiometric age? Was potassium-40 concentrated with the mammals for some reason? Does uranium-238 run uphill faster than lead-206?

---

--The only possible situation is a period of accelerated radioisotopic decay concurrent with the deposition of the geologic column. Of course, as far as I can see, this creates the worst problem imaginable for YEC's who want to scientifically establish the feasibility of their position--where did all the heat go? The heat resultant from 0.5 Ga of readioisotopic decay without a significant period of heat transfer to compensate it implies total annihilation. I believe I did some mean surface heat flux calculations way back when and calculated that mean surface heat flux on the earth would be higher than that of the sun--if not I know it would at least be inconceivably high.--I think I did a few calculations here as well: http://www.promisoft.100megsdns.com/.../radioisotopeheat.htmThis message has been edited by TrueCreation, 08-20-2004 10:52 PM

Hi, FB. What Ice Age? I don`t remember reading of an Ice Age in the Bible. Don`t you mean God created glacial grooves, moraines,etc, as part of his cunning plan to make the earth look old?
Since you are a computer tech, let me tell you there is no such thing as electron theory, circuit design, all the formulas that electronic engineers have been fooling themselves with for decades. It is God at work inside the components. With His angels, of course. :-)

And, Fred, if this was the only thing or one of only a few, then you might have a case for waiting for more evidence to come in. However, it is one of many different "somethings" unexplainable. So many that there is only one reasonable conclusion to draw.

quote:

---

I have to admit that Loudmouth and the whole non-creationist circle have a good argument. There is a lot of data on your side, and a lot of people. But a popular idea doesn’t make it correct. There are creation scientists out there that seem to have good data, knowledge, and experience to back them up, at least from my lay point of view. But there are less of them, probably less money, so there is less data. If the sides were more 50-50, and non-creationists had data this convincing, I’d be tempted to swing to that side.

---

I'm not sure how far you want to pursue this logic, Fred...Is there any point at which you would abandon theory becuase of the overabundance of data against it?

quote:

---

I know two ‘scientists’. One is a chemist; another physicist. Both are Christians. One of them is a creationist that falls between the YEC and OEC (I don’t know what Old Earth Creationists call themselves).

---

Why do you put quotes around the word "scientists?"

quote:

---

Certainly they are not idiots. I know a Christian that was a physics professor for almost 30 years. I think at the U of M. I can’t believe he’s an idiot.

---

I know a lot of evolutionist christians. Probably the reason that some are creationists is because they have not come across a conflict in their particular field of work.

quote:

---

Why do these guys that are so smart, that travel in the scientific circles, still believe in creation?

---

I think you mean 'creationism' here.

quote:

---

Are they blind to the evidence because of their faith, or is there something more that that you aren’t seeing? Creationists can’t completely agree on the evidence.

---

Not sure what you mean here. An example might help. Evidence is evidence.

quote:

---

Do all non-creationist agree on everything?

---

EVERYTHING? You set the bar pretty high here. Do you do the same for creationists?

quote:

---

I hardly doubt it. That point alone doesn’t make either side wrong, but tells me it’s not clear cut like it’s made out to be.

---

I think you are looking for the absolute truth. In that case, you need to look elsewhere. Science does not pretend to describe EVERYTHING, despite what YECs say about it.

quote:

---

I doubt I’ll be able to sort it out myself, but I’d like to try, and get a better understanding of the other side of the controversy. Who knows, maybe I’ll swing over to your camp, or somebody will swing over to mine.

---

We are here to help.

TrueC
Nice paper you wrote. I had to read it twice to make sure I understood it. Some of that math is still beyond me thoughStill, the problem of the heat is a good question. Not sure what happened to it. I have a theory, but no evidence to back it up, and I’d have to do more checking to make sure if it even fits the facts. Even if it does, it still isn’t appropriate for this thread since it would rely partly on the Gap Theory.

NT: I don’t think the ice age is mentioned in the Bible. I don’t think it’s even hinted at. There are plenty of things that the Bible doesn’t mention. I doubt that God created the groves etc intending to make the earth look old.However, according to the Bible, God created Adam and Eve as adults. So if you were to visit them two days after they were created, you wouldn't find price tags and packaging as God hurried to tidy up after unpacking the new earth and people he just got from Target. You would have seen plants, animals, rock formations, etc. Everything you saw around you would appear to have been there for years or more. How else could there be trees (maybe with tree rings), fully grown animals, etc? The external evidence would have been very convincing. This wasn’t done to deceive you, but to create a fully functioning world. I don’t know how to create a planet, but the physical processes could have left marks (like an abundance of radio isotopes with half-lives of millions of years), so on closure inspection, you might find things that make it look older than it was.I’m not trying to extend a theory on the origins on the earth. I’m explaining why God would have made the earth look old, without that being the intention, but a side effect. This eliminates the deceit theory I hear occasionally, and that you are propagating.

Yeah, I understand your point. I’ve already admitted the amount of evidence you have is much greater than the YEC has. However, I don’t agree that there is only one conclusion to draw. If there was, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.

fredsbank Smart people are not,contrary to what you may think,less susceptible to errors in thinking and this is the reason for peer review processes.In point of fact,a smart person may be even in a greater danger of this problem since the arguements he forms to buttress his position can be more involved and convoluted and,therefore,harder to derail from their mind. If you would like to get a start in checking out the various levels of investigation not just in evolution but also in many other disciplines concerning many different aspects of the world check out this site.http://www.origins.tv/darwin/creationism.htm#CreationismLet me know if you gain any help from this and always ask questions.

Edge:

quote:

---

I'm not sure how far you want to pursue this logic, Fred...

​

Is there any point at which you would abandon theory becuase of the overabundance of data against it?

---

The point I would abandon my faith is if you could prove something beyond a doubt. For all your evidence, only some it is completely unexplainable from a YEC perspective. I understand that all your evidence corroborates each other, but it’s still only calculations and equations of the amounts of various elements, isotopes, etc. And most of the visual evidence (like varves, tree rings, geological formations like the grand canyon) potentially have alternate explanations that fit a young earth. If the earth was created supernaturally, evidence of this would be hard to come by, and the process of creation could have left old earth evidence.

quote:

---

Why do you put quotes around the word "scientists?"

---

I quoted the word ‘scientist’ because I don’t know the full extent of what they do, and I don’t know if you would consider them a scientist. I have a stereotypical image in my head of an old guy with lab coat in a lab with bubbling liquids in glass tubes. The guys I know don’t fit that image, so it seemed somehow appropriate to quote the word. It didn’t really mean anything, just seemed appropriate at the time.

quote:

---

Not sure what you mean here. An example might help. Evidence is evidence.

---

What we’ve been talking about in this thread is the evidence of an old earth. Varves, tree rings, etc. Why don’t creation scientists agree with this evidence? Is it their faith, so they ignore the evidence? When I say they can’t agree with the evidence, I mean you have tree ring counts of 40,000. That is evidence. The YEC says there was more than one ring per year. You say one ring per year because you have carbon dating elsewhere that matches up. Why this different interpretation? They don’t YEC consider the corroboration (like carbon dating) significant. Why? Faith? The question is actually more rhetorical, because I was getting to the point that creationists can’t agree on everything, just like non-creationists can't agree on every explanation.

quote:

---

EVERYTHING? You set the bar pretty high here. Do you do the same for creationists?

---

When I ask if non-creationists agree on everything, I don’t mean down to the atomic level of every bit of knowledge. I mean on geological formations, varves, etc. For example, I don’t mean does everyone agree that an electon has a negative charge. I’m not trying to nitpick. I’m not setting the bar higher than I do for creationists. I admit they don’t agree 100% on everything. For example, there are various explanations on why we can see stars millions of light years away, if the earth is only 6000 years old. One YEC things one thing, others thing another explanation is valid. They can't agree.

quote:

---

I think you are looking for the absolute truth. In that case, you need to look elsewhere. Science does not pretend to describe EVERYTHING, despite what YECs say about it.

---

I know science can’t describe or explain everything. I wasn’t trying to suggest that. My point is that doesn’t mean old earth is wrong, just because it doesn’t explain everything. But likewise, young earth isn’t wrong, solely based on the fact that we can’t explain everything. And the fact that there is controversy tells me that all this evidence you have, that you all say plainly shows old earth, isn’t the whole story.

This is a good example. It might help to tease out the real deep differences.(as a nit the tree rings don't go back that far I don't think but that is not material)There are two separate points in this paragraph ( you need to pratice making real paragraphs btw ). They are the accuracy of the tree ring counting and the way in which the two camps interpret data with this as an example.Let's do the simple on first:The YECs discard the tree ring dating because they claim (and I think correctly) that trees can produce more than one ring a year. This is an excellent example of the kind of so-called "thinking" that is done. It is, even if you think about it for only a bit with only a small part of the data available utterly rediculous.What is required to be able to disregard the tree ring counts is that many, many different kinds of trees under different climatic conditions grow two (or more )rings per year. This is not the case and (apparently, I don't know) these extra rings are discernable.Wait, it gets worse. These extra rings must occur in such a fashion that historic dates still line up correctly when they can be determined. They must also occur so often as to over come the fact that sometimes no good ring is produced by a tree.And, worse, they must occur enough to cut down the meansure ages by about a factor of two. But they don't. They are rather rare and don't occur (IIRC) at all in some species and not in some locations.Now after they must somehow still correlate with other dating of the rings.Simply saying that some trees, sometimes have more than one ring a year just doesn't begin to touch the actual data available. [b]But that is all that the creationists do.{/bAs for your suggestion that the other things have alternative explanations perhaps you would like to put them forward. Those explanations are, to my knowledge, no more well founded than the disregarding of tree ring data.You comment about "but it’s still only calculations and equations of the amounts of various elements, isotopes, etc. " worries me. It suggests that evidence that is a bit harder to understand is therefore something you can wave away. Sorry that is exactly the kind of "thinking" that we are used to seeing. This is exactly why we fight those who think there is an alternative view that should be taught in schools.It isn't just the biological, geological or any other specific disciplines that would be damaged by such an idea. It is the very ability of students to think clearly at all that would be damaged. If this level of "thought" was allowed we would be doing students a terrible disservice. It is worrisome that you, who appear to be smarter than many who come here, (not naming names or giving intials ...) can't see how terribly weak this is.Calculations and equations are exactly what you need as part of your evidence for a young earth. If you can't actually produce numbers to show how the measurements could be interpretted differently then you are in exactly the same place as somebody espousing a longest land meridian (not naming names again) but without even knowing the length that is it supposed to be!! Exactly! It isn't that they don't consider it significant. They don't consider it at all because they have no idea of what to say about it. Here is another point. These two "disagreements" are not equivalent. Within the various scientists there will be very hot disagreements in somethings. However, after a time a consensus is developed and the disagreements become one of peripheral details. The core is agreed on.In the creationist camp they are making up wild ideas that, at best, sound good to the uneducated. They don't much care if the ideas have any merit at all. From this a bunch of utterly disparate ideas are put forward. It isn't a disagreement on details it is a complete disagreement on fundamentals. Wrong! The controversy is only generated by the YECs. The YEC view isn't wrong because it doesn't explain everything. It is wrong because some of the data is contradicted by it. It can in fact explain almost nothing without a bunch of "maybe"s with no emperical support whatever.If you wish to explore this further you will have to take each issue in great detail. You will find, I promise, that as more details are exposed the OEC view becomes stronger and the YEC view weaker. The YEC idea was tossed 200 years ago. Even then the meagre evidence for it was weak. It has gotten much, much, much worse since.I don't want to be in any way insulting. I hope you can believe that. But you have simply no idea about the depth and breadth of the evidence that you are attempting to interpret and argue against. You haven't seen more than the tiniest tip of the iceberg floating deep in the ocean of knowledge.On top of the pure volume of base facts that you'd have to deal with there is the correlation between the various branchs of science and the facts and the interpretations of them. They have been forced by rigorous discipline to be mutally consistant. The creationists views are not.

Actually Ned brings up a very important point - there is actually not any element of "controversy" debate going on - it only exists on creationists site. Another example of this is the "theory in crisis" chestnut. Creationists have been been saying for about 120 years that evolution is in crisis and that more and more scientists are turning away from it - an idea that is a load of old crap.This message has been edited by Charles Knight, 08-23-2004 06:19 AM