Carbon Dating Lab Got Owned by AiG

[D. Scarlatti]

One more time: Refute what? Refute that, "Clearly, such huge time periods cannot be fitted into the Bible without compromising what the Bible says about the goodness of God and the origin of sin, death and suffering—the reason Jesus came into the world."

Please.

Sum up the article, or else get back to your original point and explain how AiG "owned" Geochron and the AMS lab.

 

[seebs]

I don't think he's scared... but from my personal experience, the amount of time and effort it takes to show the problems with AiG material is simply not worth it. e.g., we've had ~300 posts on whether or not a given character is an 8, while the underlying point, that THE ENTIRE RIGHT HAND SIDE OF THE CHARACTER IN QUESTION IS A PHONETIC SYMBOL, is being ignored.

At this point, based on my experience with trying to encourage them to take an honest look at something, I would consider the site "nonsense until shown otherwise"; I would consider information from them to be suspect by default, simply because I have no evidence that they've ever been right about a serious issue, and I know that they are very slippery about their dodges.

(I note that, while you and Nick periodically mention the eight thing, neither of you seems to have thought clearly about what the implications are of the sigil in question being part of a phonetic compound; the entire question is thus rendered moot.)

 

[D. Scarlatti]

Glancing through the article, it appears to be a compendium of potential problem areas that technicians need to take into consideration when subjecting samples to radiometric analysis, including a couple of references to the notorious Messrs. Snelling and Gentry. Some specific, apparently documented errors are mentioned.

So what's to refute? As far as I'm concerned the best evidence for an ancient universe comes from astronomy anyway.

 

[RufusAtticus]

Rufus requires everyone to read Radiometric Dating: A Christian Perspective.

 

[wildernesse]

Earlier, the posts said that there was carbon dating of fossil wood. If the wood samples were fossilized, there would be nothing to use carbon dating on. Just a point.

--tibac

 

[Cantuar]

I'm getting tired of this creationist charge that radiometric dating is based on the unproven assumption of constancy of decay rates. This is such a central part of nuclear physics and has been tested and tested, and they're shrugging it off as an unproven assumption, as if it's just one of those things that some mad scientist dreamed up one day and the rest of the field blindly believed without a murmur.

Here's some stuff about Dr Snelling and his attempts to discredit radiometric dating. Fancy sending young rock for K-Ar testing and blaming the test method when the results were off. It's like saying that because a bathroom scale can't weigh a human hair, it can't weigh a human.

http://www.island.net/~rjbw/CreationScience.html

 

[npetreley]

Originally posted by RufusAtticus
The ages for the wood is about at the upper limit determinable by C-14 dating. I wonder how much confidence the lab placed in their findings.

Quite a bit, it seems.

The radiocarbon (14C) results are listed in Table 1.8 It is immediately evident that there was detectable radiocarbon in all wood samples, so that the laboratories’ staff had neither hesitation nor difficulties in calculating 14C ‘ages’. When subsequently questioned regarding the limits of the analytical method for the radiocarbon and any possibility of contamination, staff at both laboratories (Ph.D. scientists) were readily insistent that the results, with one exception,9 were within the detection limits and therefore provided quotable finite ‘ages’!8 Furthermore, they pointed to the almost identical d13C results (last column in Table 1), consistent with the carbon being organic carbon from wood, and indicating no possibility of contamination. So the results in Table 1 are staunchly defended by the laboratories as valid, indicating an ‘age’ of perhaps 44,000–45,500 years for the wood encased in the basalt retrieved from the drill core.

In stark contrast to the ‘age’ of the wood are the potassium-argon (K-AR) ‘ages’ of the basalt (see Table 2).8 It is readily apparent that there are significant variations in the results, as evident in the calculated ‘ages’ of the outcrop 2 sample provided by each laboratory. The problem of obtaining consistently ‘acceptable’ K-AR ‘ages’ is also highlighted by the observation that both outcrop and both drill core samples probably represent the same basalt flow in each respective location (hence the calculated average ‘ages’ in the last column of Table 2.10 The staff of both laboratories (again Ph.D. scientists) defended their analytical results,8,11 and did not hesitate to affirm that these basalt samples are, according to their radioactive K-AR ‘dating’, around 45 million years old.

 

[RufusAtticus]

I wonder if the laboratory was informed of the geological depth at which the sample was found. Deep earth radiation can replenish C14 that would otherwise decay.

Reguardless, I would still like to see the original reports from the laboratories.

 

[D. Scarlatti]

From How accurate is Carbon-14 dating?

"Christians, by definition, take the statements of Jesus Christ seriously. He said, 'But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and female' (Mark 10:6). This only makes sense with a time-line beginning with the creation week thousands of years ago. It makes no sense at all if man appeared at the end of billions of years."

Fact: Not all Christians are YECs. AiG refuted (indeed this is Ken Ham's central claim and AiG's reason for being).

"Creationist researchers have suggested that dates of 35,000 - 45,000 years should be re-calibrated to the biblical date of the flood."

and

"When a 'date' differs from that expected, researchers readily invent excuses for rejecting the result."

Irony, anyone?

 

[JGMEERT]

Umm, there are several problems with AIG's 'experiments. I've actually corresponded with the director of Geochron labs about one incident. You can read about Snelling's mistakes http://gondwanaresearch.com/hp/crefaqs.htm

Cheers
Joe Meert

 

[Chris†opher Paul]

we've had ~300 posts on whether or not a given character is an 8, while the underlying point, that THE ENTIRE RIGHT HAND SIDE OF THE CHARACTER IN QUESTION IS A PHONETIC SYMBOL, is being ignored.

seebs-

The biggest problem you had, at least in the beginning, was the "eight," which is the only part I responded to on the subject.

 

[LiveFreeOrDie]

Originally posted by s0uljah
Morat and Scarletti-

Care to refute this:

http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs2002/carbon_dating.asp

I'll just restrict myself to the portion regarding 14C dating.

The amount of cosmic rays penetrating the earth’s atmosphere affects the amount of 14C produced and therefore dating the system. The amount of cosmic rays reaching the earth varies with the sun’s activity, and with the earth's passage through magnetic clouds as the solar system travels around the Milky Way galaxy.

The strength of the earth’s magnetic field affects the amount of cosmic rays entering the atmosphere. A stronger magnetic field deflects more cosmic rays away from the earth. Overall, the energy of the earth’s magnetic field has been decreasing,[5] so more 14C is being produced now than in the past. This will make old things look older than they really are.

Wrong. Data from several sources contradicts AiG's claim that the Earth's magnetic field is decaying. The assertion that more 14C was generated in the past is therefore bogus.

Also, the Genesis flood would have greatly upset the carbon balance. The flood buried a huge amount of carbon, which became coal, oil, etc., lowering the total 12C in the biosphere (including the atmosphere—plants regrowing after the flood absorb CO2, which is not replaced by the decay of the buried vegetation). Total 14C is also proportionately lowered at this time, but whereas no terrestrial process generates any more 12C, 14C is continually being produced, and at a rate which does not depend on carbon levels (it comes from nitrogen). Therefore, the 14C/12C ratio in plants/animals/the atmosphere before the flood had to be lower than what it is now.

Unless this effect (which is additional to the magnetic field issue just discussed) were corrected for, carbon dating of fossils formed in the flood would give ages much older than the true ages.

A long discourse presupposing the historicity of a global flood for which there is no emprical evidence. Pardon me if I find this argument less than persuasive.

Creationist researchers have suggested that dates of 35,000 - 45,000 years should be re-calibrated to the biblical date of the flood.

What a surprise. What is the evidence that supports this recalibration other than their desire to conform to a literal interpretation of the Bible?

Such a re-calibration makes sense of anomalous data from carbon dating—for example, very discordant ‘dates’ for different parts of a frozen musk ox carcass from Alaska and an inordinately slow rate of accumulation of ground sloth dung pellets in the older layers of a cave where the layers were carbon dated.

I'm not too concerned about discordant dates reported in creationist journals.

Also, volcanoes emit much CO2 depleted in 14C. Since the flood was accompanied by much volcanism, fossils formed in the early post-flood period would give radiocarbon ages older than they really are.

Again, what flood?

In summary, the carbon-14 method, when corrected for the effects of the flood, can give useful results, but needs to be applied carefully. It does not give dates of millions of years and when corrected properly fits well with the biblical flood.

"In summary, if we scale the 14C results to fit the time scale of the biblical flood, then the 14C results fit well with the time scale of the biblical flood."

 

[Sky]

Edit: Wrong thread.

 

[npetreley]

Originally posted by seebs
I don't think he's scared... but from my personal experience, the amount of time and effort it takes to show the problems with AiG material is simply not worth it. e.g., we've had ~300 posts on whether or not a given character is an 8, while the underlying point, that THE ENTIRE RIGHT HAND SIDE OF THE CHARACTER IN QUESTION IS A PHONETIC SYMBOL, is being ignored.

And you consistently ignore the fact that what is now considered a phonetic is subject to etymology, which shows that it originated as a combination of eight+mouth. And you not only ignore that even the oracle bone script shows "ship" to be a combination of "boat+eight+mouth", but you have convinced yourself of some fantasy that the "eight" in the combination was once complex and was later simplified in spite of the fact that the oracle bone script shows the eight as two simple strokes.

I would recommend to anyone who is interested in studying pride and denial that they examine your persistent attitude and behavior regarding this Chinese symbol. You just don't seem to be able to get over the fact that you were not only proven wrong, but handed a humliating defeat.

Your behavior on this topic is also an excellent example of why it is impossible to convince someone through intellectual arguments or even scientific evidence that evolution is a fairy tale. As always, this is and will be a spiritual battle, not an intellectual one. If it weren't for how much fun it is to participate on these forums, I wouldn't be here, because I have no illusions about changing the minds of the spiritually blind with intellectual arguments.

 

[Morat]

  That was the thread you utterly abandoned after being shown that either 'ji' or 'ba' was suitable (depending on the style of writing), which implies the "eight" bit wasn't all that important, and when Karlgren's etymology clearly showed it was "marsh at the foot of the hills" for the phonetic.

   Or did you quit the thread when we got into the character for 'create' which is completely indefensible? I can't remember...

 

 

[Sky]

Originally posted by Morat
  That was the thread you utterly abandoned after being shown that either 'ji' or 'ba' was suitable (depending on the style of writing), which implies the "eight" bit wasn't all that important, and when Karlgren's etymology clearly showed it was "marsh at the foot of the hills" for the phonetic.

   Or did you quit the thread when we got into the character for 'create' which is completely indefensible? I can't remember...

 

 

What are you talking about? What does this have to do with carbon dating or the age of the earth?

 

[Morat]

  You're absolutely right: Nick, if you want to discuss this, I believe you started (and abandonded) three threads on it. Go pick one of them up.

  It has nothing to do with C14 dating, Sky.

 

[seebs]

Originally posted by Sky
 

What are you talking about? What does this have to do with carbon dating or the age of the earth?

Nothing direct. There is a popular claim, dating back to a 1979 book, that Chinese characters "prove" the relatively recent YEC interpretation of Genesis. As an example, they claim that the Chinese character for boat has symbols meaning "eight + people + vessel", and that it refers to the story of Noah. In fact, depending on the font, the squiggle they interpret as an 8 could be any of a handful of characters, and in most fonts, it's clearly not an eight (the sites making this claim generally use a way of writing the character which is different from what I've seen in Chinese dictionaries). More importantly, the entire side of the character that they claim means "eight people" is a *PHONETIC* component, which refers to something else entirely, and the symbol in question would have been put there long before it acquired the meaning of "eight".

This is relevant because Nick likes to claim that the existance of fonts in which that character looks like an eight is proof that the entire thing is true as claimed. It's fairly depressing, really.
(For reference, we've asked several native speakers. If you draw the character the way the YEC web sites draw it, and ask "is this an eight", yes, it's an eight. If you ask a native speaker to draw the character, and ask "what's this thing", you get other answers, and the character is typically drawn differently.)

 

[TheBear]

If there is one fundamental issue on which most archaeologists can generally agree, it is the importance of chronology in studying the past. Although one of the most important contributions that archaeology can make is the study of cultures over long time spans, control of the time dimension is crucial in almost all kinds of archaeological research. In studying the archaeological record, the archaeologist needs to differentiate those materials that are contemporary and those that reflect the passage of time. Given the importance of establishing the temporal relationships of archaeological remains, it is not surprising that until the introduction of dating techniques from the physical sciences (e.g., chemistry and nuclear physics), issues of chronology dominated archaeology.

Archaeologists can now access a wide variety of techniques to estimate the age of archaeological remains, and can now turn their attention to issues other than chronology. Yeah!!!


John

 

[Chris H]

AIG really makes Christians look extremely stupid.

They could do better things for the body of christ than bashing science.

Chris H