Relic bone attributed to Saint James, 'brother' of Jesus, radiocarbon dated to 214 - 340

[AV1611VET]

The church makes a mistake sponsoring fakes of any sort,
don't you think so?

And not just a church:

 

[Friedrich Rubinstein]

I think you'll discover that it's you who has no clue about dating methods.

Ah, so you know it better? Go ahead and tell me about it.

 

[Ponderous Curmudgeon]

Ah, so you know it better? Go ahead and tell me about it.

Well unless you can explain why nuclear reactors don't really work and medical radio imaging doesn't work, it is probably a misunderstanding on your part. Here is an overview of some basics. Feel free to come back with some more specific questions.

 

[Estrid]

I think you'll discover that it's you who has no clue about dating methods.

Ya think?.

 

[essentialsaltes]

Ah, so you know it better? Go ahead and tell me about it.

You can start here with a primer I wrote.

 

[Estrid]

Yes, so why sponsor anything like this?

To fool the gullible i suppose.

 

[sjastro]

In anticipation of the "What about the presence of carbon isotopes found in some dinosaur fossils?" from creationists, it's all about contamination.

 

[Friedrich Rubinstein]

You can start here with a primer I wrote.

Your link only leads to some potassium/argon dating and it's not even accurate. It has been shown that significant amounts of argon can indeed be present when the rock was formed. Just look at the lava flows of the eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1986 for example. It contains much more argon than what could've occured by radioactive decay only.

 

[Occams Barber]

Your link only leads to some potassium/argon dating and it's not even accurate. It has been shown that significant amounts of argon can indeed be present when the rock was formed. Just look at the lava flows of the eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1986 for example. It contains much more argon than what could've occured by radioactive decay only.

This is an old claim debunked years ago.

The short response from the Talk Origins Archive is:

1. Austin sent his samples to a laboratory that clearly states that their equipment cannot accurately measure samples less than two million years old. All of the measured ages but one fall well under the stated limit of accuracy, so the method applied to them is obviously inapplicable. Since Austin misused the measurement technique, he should expect inaccurate results, but the fault is his, not the technique's. Experimental error is a possible explanation for the older date.
   
2. Austin's samples were not homogeneous, as he himself admitted. Any xenocrysts in the samples would make the samples appear older (because the xenocrysts themselves would be old). A K-Ar analysis of impure fractions of the sample, as Austin's were, is meaningless.

For the full technical explanation of where Austin got it wrong go to:

Young-Earth Creationist 'Dating' of a Mt. St. Helens Dacite: The Failure of Austin and Swenson to Recognize Obviously Ancient Minerals (noanswersingenesis.org.au)

OB

 

[Occams Barber]

You can start here with a primer I wrote.

Thank you for your isoducks. It made things simple enough that even I could understand.

OB

 

[Shemjaza]

Hmm. I either misunderstand your comment or you have no clue of dates/dating methods. There are no dinosaur bones from 100 million years ago. All dinosaurs found contain C-14 which means they're not older than 60,000 years.

I'm pretty sure that this is blatantly false. Do you have a source?

And "radiocarbon over and over proves to be useful and accurate"? The method does not even work on living organisms, how do you want to know that it works on those who died a long, long time ago?
The radiocarbon method dated a freshly killed seal 1300 years ago, living clam shells were supposedly 2300 old and snail shells dated 27,000 years back.
Environmental conditions affected the C-12/C-14 ratio in these of known age. When testing a sample of unknown age from a largely unknown environment, how can we exclude similar sorts of effects?
We can't.

The effects of the ocean on radio carbon testing are known and can be accounted for... but there have been instances of fraudsters and liars misrepresenting the origin or use of radiocarbon in ways that it cannot work.

 

[Friedrich Rubinstein]

This is an old claim debunked years ago.

The short response from the Talk Origins Archive is:

1. Austin sent his samples to a laboratory that clearly states that their equipment cannot accurately measure samples less than two million years old. All of the measured ages but one fall well under the stated limit of accuracy, so the method applied to them is obviously inapplicable. Since Austin misused the measurement technique, he should expect inaccurate results, but the fault is his, not the technique's. Experimental error is a possible explanation for the older date.
2. Austin's samples were not homogeneous, as he himself admitted. Any xenocrysts in the samples would make the samples appear older (because the xenocrysts themselves would be old). A K-Ar analysis of impure fractions of the sample, as Austin's were, is meaningless.

For the full technical explanation of where Austin got it wrong go to:

Young-Earth Creationist 'Dating' of a Mt. St. Helens Dacite: The Failure of Austin and Swenson to Recognize Obviously Ancient Minerals (noanswersingenesis.org.au)

OB

Stating that the dating method cannot "accurately measure samples less than two million years old" does not make the argon go away. And it's not the only case with argon being present when the rock formed. It's the same with the Sunset Crater in Arizona, Mt. Ngauruhoe in New Zealand, the Hualalai Vulcano on Hawaii, Mt. Kilauea and others.
This phenomen is also not limited to the potassium/argon method. Lead is also present when the rocks form which calls the uranium/lead method into question.

Dating methods can only be verified if they work on rocks of known age. They don't. There is no way to argue that they work on rocks we don't know the age of - and whether daughter elements were present at formation.

 

[sjastro]

Thank you for your isoducks. It made things simple enough that even I could understand.

OB

No wonder I didn't get it, I misread isoducks for disco ducks.

 

[loveofourlord]

It's funny how dating methods can't be 200 years off when measuring religious artifacts but if dating methods are a couple of million years off when dating dinosaur bones it is called "standard deviation".

I'm not saying those bones are from James, I'm just pointing out the prejudiced way of thinking.

because....you know different methods. the method for determining dinosaurs has a bigger error margin, because the elements used have a much bigger length of time to deteriate. and there is a issue of too small a amount left you can end up with background noise giving errors. hence the old, "30 million year old dinosaurs said to be thousands of years. As the only carbon left would be in the machine and air.

 

[loveofourlord]

Hmm. I either misunderstand your comment or you have no clue of dates/dating methods. There are no dinosaur bones from 100 million years ago. All dinosaurs found contain C-14 which means they're not older than 60,000 years.

And "radiocarbon over and over proves to be useful and accurate"? The method does not even work on living organisms, how do you want to know that it works on those who died a long, long time ago?
The radiocarbon method dated a freshly killed seal 1300 years ago, living clam shells were supposedly 2300 old and snail shells dated 27,000 years back.
Environmental conditions affected the C-12/C-14 ratio in these of known age. When testing a sample of unknown age from a largely unknown environment, how can we exclude similar sorts of effects?
We can't.

yeah, nice spreading of that lie :> There would be no carbon in there, so any readings would show what particles were left from previous samples, notice how those dinosaur bones are always at the limits of testing.

 

[NxNW]

The radiocarbon method dated a freshly killed seal 1300 years ago, living clam shells were supposedly 2300 old and snail shells dated 27,000 years back.

And airplane crashes prove that human flight is impossible.

 

[loveofourlord]

Hmm. I either misunderstand your comment or you have no clue of dates/dating methods. There are no dinosaur bones from 100 million years ago. All dinosaurs found contain C-14 which means they're not older than 60,000 years.

And "radiocarbon over and over proves to be useful and accurate"? The method does not even work on living organisms, how do you want to know that it works on those who died a long, long time ago?
The radiocarbon method dated a freshly killed seal 1300 years ago, living clam shells were supposedly 2300 old and snail shells dated 27,000 years back.
Environmental conditions affected the C-12/C-14 ratio in these of known age. When testing a sample of unknown age from a largely unknown environment, how can we exclude similar sorts of effects?
We can't.

ahhhh yes the good old claim with zero information to explain what it means. Seals and clams and snails all have the same issue it's a well known effect and WHY YOU DON"T USE THEM TO CARBON DATE." it's due to source of most of their carbon, they get it from older sources and not from the air as much.

Got to love the laziness of creationists just repeating a age old claim without understanding it, this is why creationists are a joke. A modicum of knowledge shows why your claims are so much nonsense.

 

[sjastro]

Stating that the dating method cannot "accurately measure samples less than two million years old" does not make the argon go away. And it's not the only case with argon being present when the rock formed. It's the same with the Sunset Crater in Arizona, Mt. Ngauruhoe in New Zealand, the Hualalai Vulcano on Hawaii, Mt. Kilauea and others.
This phenomen is also not limited to the potassium/argon method. Lead is also present when the rocks form which calls the uranium/lead method into question.

How to deal with extraneous argon in dating is found in the K-Ar dating and Ar-Ar dating links.
Since we are now on the subject of dating rocks with lead, which lead isotope are you referring to when rocks are formed, ²⁰⁶Pb, ²⁰⁷Pb or ²⁰⁸Pb?
Perhaps you are unaware of the distinction but it makes no difference if the isotope is not part of the decay process.
The two important isotopes are ²⁰⁶Pb, and ²⁰⁷Pb.
U-Pb dating involves the decay pathways; ²³⁸U → ²⁰⁶Pb and ²³⁵U → ²⁰⁷Pb.
Even though ²⁰⁸Pb is the most common Pb stable isotope at over 50% abundance, like any other Pb isotope which is not a daughter nucleus in the decay process, it will not skew the result as the ratio of daughter to non daughter nuclei can be determined by methods such as mass spectrometry.

An alternative method scientists employ is to date meteorites using Pb-Pb dating instead of U-Pb dating.
Pb-Pb dating involves the ratio of the daughter nucleus ²⁰⁶Pb or ²⁰⁷Pb to the non radiogenic isotope of lead ²⁰⁴Pb.

Since the Earth was formed along with the solar system, meteorites are used as a way of dating the Earth through calcium aluminum rich inclusions (CAl).
CAls are formed in the matrix of the meteorite and along with the Pb isotopes are effectively sealed from the environment and not contaminated.

The age of meteorites originating from the asteroid belt are in the same range as the ages of the oldest rocks dated on Earth, around 4.4-4.5 billion years old.

Incidentally the oldest meteorite dated is Australia’s Murchison meteorite.
The 7.5 billion years old silicon carbide particles in the meteorite are presolar grains before the Sun and solar system formed.

Dating methods can only be verified if they work on rocks of known age. They don't. There is no way to argue that they work on rocks we don't know the age of - and whether daughter elements were present at formation.

Since you claim the dating process is in question how do you define a rock of a known age?

 

[Job 33:6]

Stating that the dating method cannot "accurately measure samples less than two million years old" does not make the argon go away. And it's not the only case with argon being present when the rock formed. It's the same with the Sunset Crater in Arizona, Mt. Ngauruhoe in New Zealand, the Hualalai Vulcano on Hawaii, Mt. Kilauea and others.
This phenomen is also not limited to the potassium/argon method. Lead is also present when the rocks form which calls the uranium/lead method into question.

Dating methods can only be verified if they work on rocks of known age. They don't. There is no way to argue that they work on rocks we don't know the age of - and whether daughter elements were present at formation.

Actually there are ways to investigate the question of if daughter elements were present at formation. One such method involves looking at the crystalline lattice of minerals that contain these elements. Ie: some daughter elements do not properly "fit" into the lattice of parent mineral structures.

It's like, if you could imagine building a house out of rectangular "parent" legos, and some of the rectangular parent legos decay to ball shaped "daughter" legos. It becomes apparent that daughter elements had not originally been present, given that they're locked inside lattices in which they do not properly fit or connect to other legos.

Daughter elements can be trapped within crystalline structures in which they do not belong. Kind of like cinderella going to the ball and staying after midnight. It becomes apparent that cinderella shouldn't be there, just as daughter elements shouldn't, unless they had slipped into the lattice as a parent element upon the minerals original formation.

It's also worthwhile to consider that radiometric dating is performed using multiple samples. For example, k-t boundary dating has involved dozens of samples collected worldwide, analyzed by multiple independent research teams and utilizing different radioactive decay methods, all yielding identical results.

Creationist websites often make the argument that some experiments have yielded varying ages for individual samples, thus demonstrating innaccuracy of analytical methods.

However, the simple response is that sometimes tests are ran properly and sometimes they're not. It isn't radiometric dating that is flawed, but rather the people who conduct it. Which is why repeatability is important, and quality assurance / quality control (QA/QC) practices need to be properly conducted and open for review and critique. Something critics of radiometric dating cleverly (or deceptively) fail to discuss. Or perhaps critics simply aren't familiar with laboratory procedures (which is fair for most laymen).


But I'm sure Creationist websites don't bother talking about these concepts.

See below for examples of repeatability, in which the k-t boundary was dated dozens of time with repeated identical results, reported by dozens of labs world wide on samples of the boundary collected worldwide, using multiple different radioactive dating analytical methods. The data just can't be beat.

 

[Job 33:6]

Actually there are ways to investigate the question of if daughter elements were present at formation. One such method involves looking at the crystalline lattice of minerals that contain these elements. Ie: some daughter elements do not properly "fit" into the lattice of parent mineral structures.

It's like, if you could imagine building a house out of rectangular "parent" legos, and some of the legos decay to ball shaped "daughter" legos. It becomes apparent that daughter elements had not originally been present, given that they're locked into lattices in which they do not fit.

It's also worthwhile to consider that radiometric dating is performed using multiple samples. For example, k-t boundary dating has involved dozens of samples collected worldwide, analyzed by multiple independent research teams and utilizing different radioactive decay methods, all yielding identical results.

But I'm sure Creationist websites don't bother talking about these concepts.

Radiometric Dating Does Work! | National Center for Science Education