Geological dating techniques

[Gene2memE]

Hello SZ.

I will accept a radio dating as long as there is no contamination of the sample. I reject all radio dates until the samples are 100% free of contamination. I once saw a radio carbon dating of a dead sea scroll, four tests delivered four different results?

How big was the variation in dating? 10 years? 50 years? 100 years? 500 years?

What margins are you willing to accept before you'd consider radiocarbon dating accurate?

 

[NothingIsImpossible]

Then you have just admitted that you are not thinking rationally. Are you sure that is the route that ou want to go?

What is there to think about? If God is real then mans guessing doesn't matter. And in the end when I die Gods not going to be giving me a test on this stuff. Christians know the answers, non-christians don't accept the answers because they fear God may be real. So having science give answers, even if incorrect ones make them feel better. Like I've said before, if non-christians really didn't believe God was real, they wouldn't be wasting their time at a christian forum. For example I don't believe allah is real, thus I don't care to go to a muslim forum. I have better things to do.

Not if the evidence is clear and can be interpreted consistently. And be tested. Guess what? Those concepts can and have been tested. Science does not work in a vacuum. If a person cannot justify his concepts they are not accepted.

But if the ideas of how to do the tests to achieve said results are made by man, how can we be sure its right? Such as carbon dating. Its done by a machine that was programmed by men who think they put in the right data. So when it does what it does, we assume it must be correct. What if the way we programmed it was wrong? Its all man made devices using man made coding using man made ideas. I'd also point to the fact that you say if a person cannot justify his concepts... well science used to justify that we were the center of the universe and that we could not fly. Look how that turned out.

I remember the recent news about gravity waves. They said it could change some things we previously thought were right/wrong. Again mistakes.

You clearly do not know what a scientific theory is. A scientific theory is an idea that explains a wide number of problems. It also has to be testable. A concept does not become a theory until it been tested many times by many different scientists. In the world of science laws do NOT outrank theories. That is a common misconception.

I point to my previous replies above. Mans trying to prove stuff that may not be able to be tested. Like the big bang, can you really prove it happened? Alot of it is simply guessing. "Well everything seems to be speeding away so it points to the fact there was a big bang and everything expanded outwards!". And interestingly enough science does seem stumped though on what existed before the big bang. So you can tell us how everything started but not what existed before it? Now with God, nothing existed before Him. He just existed. But since we are human this idea makes no sense to us. We see things in terms of time and not being able to make something out of nothing. Hence Gods intelligence is beyond ours.

Yep, that is going to happen. But guess what? The changes in science tend to get smaller and smaller as we get closer and closer to the "correct" idea. There is no going back to old myths.

Well I do agree that as time goes on we do learn more and get closer to answering some things. But I do believe even if given millions of more years, we will not be able to figure out everything. But what if science does figure out that somethings have no real answers and may possibly only lead to one answer..... we were created. What does science do then?

Which is why in some ways I like when people thought about the big bang, because really to some degree one could say God created a "big bang" since He brought everything into being from nothing and in a flash (well 7 days). Sounds like a big bang to me.

Actually it is a never ending cycle of more and more accurate answers. You are looking at the little bit of uncertainty and clinging to a concept that was shown to be wrong a long long time ago.

I've yet to been shown how it has been proven wrong. Heck even non-christian historians for example showed Jesus was a real person. If it was all fake then Jesus shouldn't exist at all in history since it was just a fake tale written by men.

That may be true. God may be that way. But the Bible is a work of man. Even in your myth God could not get it right. How does an imperfect created creature write a perfect book?

God speaks through them so of course what the write is perfect. Not sure why thats hard to understand really. As for God not getting it right, what is "it"? Creating us and we biting the apple? Well we were given free will, it was our choice do bite it. Had nothing to do with Him. He is a God that keeps His promises and can't lie. So to interfere and be like "WAIT. I'm taking that apple away so you don't mess up!" would be going against His promises of free will.

Sort of like how parents let their kids (who are adults in this situation) make mistakes. A parent cannot really do much to stop an adult child from doing bad things. Its up to them and they live the consequences.

Beliefs in god(s) are constantly changing though. The beliefs you have today are a product of the culture in which you were born. If you were born in a different culture or a different time, you may well profess an entirely different belief system.

For example, there was a time when polytheistic beliefs were the dominant view. That shifted over the last couple thousand years towards monotheistic beliefs. Who knows how things will continue to shift in the future.

But given all the supposed proof that God is a lie, why is christianity still around? Why is the word still spreading so much around the planet? There have probably ben tens of thousands if not more "religions" through time that have died off. Seems christianity must be real and true if its still here.

To be fair though the bible does say more people will leave it or fall for fake christians and hence the whole "Go away, I do not know you!" thing. Now whats interesting is if we do see an anti-christ whome the world seems to love. How would you explain this person and his/her popularity? Because most everything in the bible has come true except for like one or two prophicies right before His return. Then we get into prophicies during revelations.

I will accept a radio dating as long as there is no contamination of the sample. I reject all radio dates until the samples are 100% free of contamination. I once saw a radio carbon dating of a dead sea scroll, four tests delivered four different results?

The dating of the dead sea scroll is a mere touch over two thousand years ago, a recent sample in the realm of history. How can we trust carbon dating for any sample further back in history?

This is a great post, not sure how I missed it. I have noticed the weird results with things. Such as when you watch science says "We think this thing happened between 35,000,000 to 50,000,000 years ago. Um.... thats a awfuly big "Not sure when" gap. How can we trust since terrible devices that apparently are constantly in accurate.

 

[Herman Hedning]

Hello SZ.

I will accept a radio dating as long as there is no contamination of the sample. I reject all radio dates until the samples are 100% free of contamination. I once saw a radio carbon dating of a dead sea scroll, four tests delivered four different results?

The dating of the dead sea scroll is a mere touch over two thousand years ago, a recent sample in the realm of history. How can we trust carbon dating for any sample further back in history?

Since many scrolls and fragments have been found at Qumran, are you sure those four tests were not of different scrolls? The dating is supported by other archeological finds, in particular coins, and all the dating techniques give a total span of 700 years from 400 BCE to 300 CE.

 

[klutedavid]

One has to look at materials on a case by case basis. Grasping at straws in not an honest technique. That is what you are trying to do right now.

Hello SZ.

Just asking if any scientific dating techniques are free from the risk of contamination?

 

[klutedavid]

Hello HH.

Thanks for your keen interest.

Since many scrolls and fragments have been found at Qumran, are you sure those four tests were not of different scrolls? The dating is supported by other archeological finds, in particular coins, and all the dating techniques give a total span of 700 years from 400 BCE to 300 CE.

Positive HH, the Great Isaiah scroll was carbon dated four times, all dates were before the era of the Christ. Hence the messianic prophecies hold, which is great news for anyone who may have thought, that the prophecies were added after the event.

Almost the entire text of Isaiah in your Old Testament, is almost word for word within the Great Isaiah scroll. The carbon dates range from 350 BC to 150 BC from memory. You can look it up in wikipedia under 'Isaiah scroll' to check if you want.

 

[Herman Hedning]

Hello SZ.

Just asking if any scientific dating techniques are free from the risk of contamination?

Contamination mainly occurs before the dating process, so it is difficult to avoid. If the Qumran scrolls had been hermetically sealed when they were written and left untouched until today, then the result would be better. In case you are interested, here's a description of how the carbon datings performed at University of Arizona, 1995 was done. https://journals.uair.arizona.edu/index.php/radiocarbon/article/viewFile/1642/1646

 

[lesliedellow]

In the documentary "Is Genesis History", they mention that all geological dating techniques are wrong, or misleading if you will. The narrator states a few times during the documentary that geological dating is a fundamental question, but unfortunately, no arguments are given to support the idea.

They seize upon something like a 3% margin of error, and try to turn it into something more like a 30,000% margin of error.

 

[pitabread]

But given all the supposed proof that God is a lie, why is christianity still around? Why is the word still spreading so much around the planet? There have probably ben tens of thousands if not more "religions" through time that have died off. Seems christianity must be real and true if its still here.

Hinduism is older than Christianity and it's still around. Why are you a Christian and not a Hindu?

 

[Steve Petersen]

Hinduism is older than Christianity and it's still around. Why are you a Christian and not a Hindu?

Add Buddhism to the list. Shintoism, Taoism and on and on.

 

[DogmaHunter]

Yes science is wrong about dating things. I mean think about it for a minute. When you think of God and how smart He is, then think of our scientists.... they are nothing in terms of smart. God is about 10,000,000,000,000,000 times smarter.

So when a less intelligent human scientist creates a tool based on various data they "think" may be right and then use this flawed tool to date stuff that can date stuff based on what the data the scientists put into the tool.... does that seem like it could be accurate? No. I'm not saying all science is wrong obviously. I mean we know how babies are made and we know how humans grow because we can literally see and study the subject. But we can't guess the age of anything at all because there is no real way to observe it in crazy long lengths.

I mean unless a scientist has been around 65 million years, how we can claim that is the age of anything? At this point we are just throwing darts at a dart board and hoping some things we land on somehow line up. I'd also add the devil is good at what he does, so maybe hes using things to throw science off so he can get us to doubt God. That is his goal after all. What better way then to have science tell us the age of the everything, how we came about, how the universe came about...etc.

In the end we can't really say we as christians have total evidence of certain things (like Genesis stuff), but we required to have faith and believe nothing is impossible with God. So with that in mind no scientists can ever make me believe what they say is true about something like if the flood happened or how long it was or when earth was made...etc. Because even if I were to put faith aside, I realize humans are "dumb and flawed" compared to the intelligence of God. I mean He created everything after all.

Circular argumentation to arrive at an assumed conclusion, isn't really a convincing argument.

 

[DogmaHunter]

Literally everything on this planet, points to an earth FAR older then a mere few thousand years.

And many of such things don't require any crazy physics or deep knowledge on how atoms and decay works.

For example... go to the permafrost at the pole and drill an ice core.
You'll find that it is layerd with "snow ice". Snow ice is the result of snow falling during the winter and being compressed into an ice layer. So the amount of layers equals the amount of winter/summer cycles.

A typical ice core holds hundreds of thousands of such layers. That's hundreds of thousands winter/summer cycles.

Another example are the several layers of salt deposits under the mediteranian. These several layers indicate that the mediteranian has dried up and refilled multiple times throughout history.

The formation of these layers, takes millions of years.

Then there are things like canyons being the result of slow erosion by rivers, the very existance of things like coal and oil fields, etc etc etc.

ALL of which points to processes that necessarily take a very very long time.

In short, the amount of evidence for an old earth is VAST.
The amount of evidence for a young earth is simply non-existing.

 

[Subduction Zone]

Hello SZ.

Just asking if any scientific dating techniques are free from the risk of contamination?

Again, if one knows what one is doing, yes. If one is totally incompetent one can screw anything up.

 

[NothingIsImpossible]

Hinduism is older than Christianity and it's still around. Why are you a Christian and not a Hindu?

Add Buddhism to the list. Shintoism, Taoism and on and on.

Well it would be impossible for these religions to be older given the fact God created man and this the first religion is really Judaism.

Circular argumentation to arrive at an assumed conclusion, isn't really a convincing argument.

Well it doesn't really matter what wording someone uses to try and get out of the argument (such as pointing out fallacies for example). Nothing will ever change me and my views. Just as nothing may ever change your views. Hence the normal atheist vs christian stalemate.

 

[pitabread]

Well it would be impossible for these religions to be older given the fact God created man and this the first religion is really Judaism.

Hinduism predates Judaism or at the very least arose around the same time, albeit amongst a different population. The Vedic scriptures are considered to be among the world's oldest religious texts.

You didn't answer the question though : why aren't you a Hindu?

 

[Subduction Zone]

What is there to think about? If God is real then mans guessing doesn't matter. And in the end when I die Gods not going to be giving me a test on this stuff. Christians know the answers, non-christians don't accept the answers because they fear God may be real. So having science give answers, even if incorrect ones make them feel better. Like I've said before, if non-christians really didn't believe God was real, they wouldn't be wasting their time at a christian forum. For example I don't believe allah is real, thus I don't care to go to a muslim forum. I have better things to do.

Once again you are simply not being rational. There are countless possible "God"s, you are merely assuming that the version that you believe in is correct. And there may be no gods at all. I am here because some Christians try to harm others by trying to get their false beliefs into schools and into laws. It has nothing to do with whether or not God is real.

But if the ideas of how to do the tests to achieve said results are made by man, how can we be sure its right? Such as carbon dating. Its done by a machine that was programmed by men who think they put in the right data. So when it does what it does, we assume it must be correct. What if the way we programmed it was wrong? Its all man made devices using man made coding using man made ideas. I'd also point to the fact that you say if a person cannot justify his concepts... well science used to justify that we were the center of the universe and that we could not fly. Look how that turned out.

Those tests can be checked and rechecked. If you are going to be that skeptical about things that we can actually check you should be a raging atheist. Once again you are showing that you are thinking irrationally. And the fact that we can communicate demonstrates your error.

I remember the recent news about gravity waves. They said it could change some things we previously thought were right/wrong. Again mistakes.

And the only one making "mistakes" is you. Just because you do not understand what was said does not mean that others are making mistakes. You are projecting your incompetence upon others.

I point to my previous replies above. Mans trying to prove stuff that may not be able to be tested. Like the big bang, can you really prove it happened? Alot of it is simply guessing. "Well everything seems to be speeding away so it points to the fact there was a big bang and everything expanded outwards!". And interestingly enough science does seem stumped though on what existed before the big bang. So you can tell us how everything started but not what existed before it? Now with God, nothing existed before Him. He just existed. But since we are human this idea makes no sense to us. We see things in terms of time and not being able to make something out of nothing. Hence Gods intelligence is beyond ours.

There is no "proof" in science. You can't even "prove" gravity. And no, guessing is what you do. You really need to quit bearing false witness against your neighbor. Yes, we can all see that you do not understand. That does not mean that no one understands.

And if you are going to move the goal posts to God I will ask you who made God? The same answer that you give can be applied to the universe. There really is no need for your God.

Well I do agree that as time goes on we do learn more and get closer to answering some things. But I do believe even if given millions of more years, we will not be able to figure out everything. But what if science does figure out that somethings have no real answers and may possibly only lead to one answer..... we were created. What does science do then?[/quite]

So what? Knowing more is always better than knowing less. You seem to be afraid of the real world and want not only to hide your head, but for everybody else to hide their heads as well.

Which is why in some ways I like when people thought about the big bang, because really to some degree one could say God created a "big bang" since He brought everything into being from nothing and in a flash (well 7 days). Sounds like a big bang to me.
[/quoite]

The seven day myth has been refuted. Like it or not you are an evolved being. You can still be a Christian and not believe the myths of Genesis.

I've yet to been shown how it has been proven wrong. Heck even non-christian historians for example showed Jesus was a real person. If it was all fake then Jesus shouldn't exist at all in history since it was just a fake tale written by men.

That is only because you are not willing to learn. Yes, Jesus probably was a real person. But the Jesus story is separate from the Adam and Eve myth. You can still be a Christian and accept science.

God speaks through them so of course what the write is perfect. Not sure why thats hard to understand really. As for God not getting it right, what is "it"? Creating us and we biting the apple? Well we were given free will, it was our choice do bite it. Had nothing to do with Him. He is a God that keeps His promises and can't lie. So to interfere and be like "WAIT. I'm taking that apple away so you don't mess up!" would be going against His promises of free will.

I am sorry, but that does not fly. Did you forget that according to your myth God screwed up creation? You don't even seem to understand the myth. The "apple" had knowledge of right and wrong. According to the myth God made Adam and Eve without knowledge of right and wrong. Tell me, would you kill a puppy for peeing on the floor? A puppy has no knowledge of right and wrong.


And another point, if God cannot lie then there was no Adam and Eve. There was no Noah's Ark. The evidence clearly tells us that those events never happened. Your God would have had to make that evidence according to your beliefs. That would make him a liar by your standards if the Noah's Ark story was true.

Sort of like how parents let their kids (who are adults in this situation) make mistakes. A parent cannot really do much to stop an adult child from doing bad things. Its up to them and they live the consequences.

Parents can't have a hissy fit and kick their children out of the house the first time that they mess up either. Yet according to your beliefs that is what your God did.

You can't both give him power and knowledge and then excuse him from the bad acts that he did.

But given all the supposed proof that God is a lie, why is christianity still around? Why is the word still spreading so much around the planet? There have probably ben tens of thousands if not more "religions" through time that have died off. Seems christianity must be real and true if its still here.

Who said that there was proof that "God is a lie"? You are merely making the mistake of assuming a book that does not claim to be perfect is perfect. The Bible is filled with flaws and errors. That does not mean that "God lied">

To be fair though the bible does say more people will leave it or fall for fake christians and hence the whole "Go away, I do not know you!" thing. Now whats interesting is if we do see an anti-christ whome the world seems to love. How would you explain this person and his/her popularity? Because most everything in the bible has come true except for like one or two prophicies right before His return. Then we get into prophicies during revelations.

What are you talking about now? The Bible is filled with failed prophecies. It has very very few successful ones.

This is a great post, not sure how I missed it. I have noticed the weird results with things. Such as when you watch science says "We think this thing happened between 35,000,000 to 50,000,000 years ago. Um.... thats a awfuly big "Not sure when" gap. How can we trust since terrible devices that apparently are constantly in accurate.

No really. Perhaps you should be trying to learn how those people know what they know. Wallowing in ignorance will not get you anywhere.

 

[Subduction Zone]

Well it would be impossible for these religions to be older given the fact God created man and this the first religion is really Judaism.


Well it doesn't really matter what wording someone uses to try and get out of the argument (such as pointing out fallacies for example). Nothing will ever change me and my views. Just as nothing may ever change your views. Hence the normal atheist vs christian stalemate.

No, once again, that is a myth. Man evolved. The science that you won't let yourself learn tells us that this is so.

 

[Astrophile]

I will accept a radio dating as long as there is no contamination of the sample. I reject all radio dates until the samples are 100% free of contamination. I once saw a radio carbon dating of a dead sea scroll, four tests delivered four different results?

Can you give a link or a reference? Can you say what the four different dates for the scroll were?

 

[Astrophile]

Hello SZ.

I will accept a radio dating as long as there is no contamination of the sample. I reject all radio dates until the samples are 100% free of contamination. I once saw a radio carbon dating of a dead sea scroll, four tests delivered four different results?

The dating of the dead sea scroll is a mere touch over two thousand years ago, a recent sample in the realm of history. How can we trust carbon dating for any sample further back in history?

The Piltdown skull yielded a radio-carbon age of about 600 years. Do you think that that age is correct, or is the skull really older or younger?

 

[klutedavid]

Hello Astrophile.

You asked.

Can you give a link or a reference? Can you say what the four different dates for the scroll were?

The Isaiah Scroll, designated 1Qlsa and also known as the Great Isaiah Scroll, is one of the seven Dead Sea Scrolls that were first recovered by Bedouin shepherds in 1947. The scroll is written in Hebrew and contains the entire Book of Isaiah from beginning to end, apart from a few small damaged portions. It is the oldest complete copy of the Book of Isaiah known,[1] being 1100 years older than the Leningrad Codex, and the most complete scroll out of the 220 found at Qumran. Pieces of the Isaiah Scroll have been carbon-14 dated at least four times, giving calibrated date ranges between 356-103 BC; there have also been numerous paleographic and scribal dating studies placing the scroll around 150-100 BC.[2][3] (wikipedia)

 

[klutedavid]

The Piltdown skull yielded a radio-carbon age of about 600 years. Do you think that that age is correct, or is the skull really older or younger?

Hello Astrophile.

I have no idea, sounds like a leading question.