Updating The Theory of the Earth

[The Cadet]

You should consider ALL the evidence.

So should you. We have multiple lines of concordant evidence indicating that dinosaurs cannot possibly be in the tens of thousands of years old. And then we have one group of people using carbon dating to come up with discordant (unverified, unrepeated) dates, when we already know that given the other evidence we have, carbon dating will definitely come up with the wrong result. What's your source on this, again?

 

[Paul of Eugene OR]

Feelings can be deceptive. For example, I had the feeling that, based on a lot of research, I had given sound answers.
I would appreciate it if you could put your finger on what I said that gave you the feeling that I was laboring under a number of false assumptions about radiometric dating. Even better would be to quote a source which you think is a good argument against what I have said.

What gives us the feeling that your are laboring under a number of false assumptions about radiometric dating? First of all, you keep saying that most radiometric dating results are clearly wrong, and this because you don't like the answers you get from them. Second, you found people whose results you like, but they are clearly with you on why they want the answers they came up with. Third, you count on a method that can't do what is being asked of it, that is distinguish between tens of thousands of years old and tens of millions of years old, and claim it has done that. Fourth, you keep being told these things and keep doing them over and over anyway.

 

[Gene2memE]

I know you think you're giving sound answers, but a lot of what you're writing is Not Even Wrong.

It puts me in mind of this:

Even as a layman with a very basic education in the physical sciences, its clear to me that arguments about "adjustments to dating methods" and "scales so out of synch" and the "bigger scale so much more subject to modification" show you aren't remotely familiar enough with the subject matter to be critiquing it.

Your extension of the scales analogy is fundamentally flawed. If you knew enough about the subject, I dont think you would have made the continuation. Instead of one scale maxing out at 100 kg and a second at 20 million kg, there are more than 40 scales with greatly overlapping coverage, allowing for multiple independent verification. Radiometric dating is not a binary proposition.

I'll leave you with some Isaac Asimov: "When people thought the earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together."

 

[ddubois]

Anything can be questioned. But you need an actual valid reason to question things, especially when these things are supported by evidence.

Thank you for your response. I agree with your statement. I copied the following from Wikipedia, discussing the Younger Dryas, which cause temperature drops up to 15 degrees C that some scientists think was caused by an airburst, but if not, was sure caused by something pretty monumental:


"During the early 1990s, it became obvious with an increasing number of high-resolution radiocarbon dates associated with the Younger Dryas that this distinct paleoclimatic period is very difficult to date in detail using radiocarbon dating. Radiocarbon dating of samples on either side of the Allerød–Younger Dryas Boundary yielded dates that exhibited a very rapid age shift. Typically, they jump from 11,000 radiocarbon years BP to 10,700–10,600 radiocarbon years BP at the boundary. The 11,000 radiocarbon years BP dates clearly pre-dates the boundary. The first (oldest) overlying Younger Dryas radiocarbon samples often yielded ages of 10,700–10,600 radiocarbon years BP without any evidence of either an intervening unconformity or other evidence of erosion or nondeposition. Radiocarbon dates of terrestrial macrofossils and tree rings in Europe show that this decline in apparent radiocarbon age occurred over about a 50-year period."

I can think of at least two plausible causes of this: A significant event caused a change in the rate of decay, or more likely, a change in the ratio of c12/c14 before and after the event or events that caused the Younger Dryad. Can you think of a better explanation? There are other anomalies in carbon dating more recent in time which may have similarly been caused by other significant events.



Only if you can actually demonstrate that the rate of decay can be altered by such things.

I'm not a PhD scientist, but I am tempted to see if I can't eventually demonstrate some close degree of correlation between cosmic/volcanic events and radiometric dating anomalies.


Because the 100kg scale is known to not be appropriate.
And because the other large scales, that are valid, converge on the same answer.

1. Even if you limit the "100kg scale" conservatively to 47k years, a value midway in the range I described, say 30k, would mean it is it still three half-lives above the limit, or 8 times the minimum size. So you're idea that the range I described was virtually at the limit doesn't hold. So how can you say c14 dating is inappropriate at 30k years??

2. As for the large scales converging to the same answer -- they often do, but do not always agree as much as you imply.
And as I pointed out before, sometimes they are way off, as in the dating of recent lava flows. But even if they did agree, they could still be subject, and probably to a much greater degree, because of their longer time span, to the anomalies described above.

3. Also note that Ptolemy's earth-centric model of the solar system developed around AD150 based on 800 years of prior astronomic observations accurately predicted planetary movements and continued in use up through about AD1550. Just because something makes accurate predictions (which your "large scales" don't always do), doesn't necessarily mean it is correct.

So, again: because evidence.

Even though I suspect we are each convincing ourselves how right our own position is, I am really enjoying these conversations, and hope they continue. I really hope you respond to the question I ask in 1. above.

 

[ddubois]

What gives us the feeling that your are laboring under a number of false assumptions about radiometric dating? First of all, you keep saying that most radiometric dating results are clearly wrong, and this because you don't like the answers you get from them. Second, you found people whose results you like, but they are clearly with you on why they want the answers they came up with. Third, you count on a method that can't do what is being asked of it, that is distinguish between tens of thousands of years old and tens of millions of years old, and claim it has done that. Fourth, you keep being told these things and keep doing them over and over anyway.

My answers:
1. It is true that I think that large half-life radiometric dating results are wrong, and it is true I don't like the answers I get from then. Isn't it also true you think and feel the same about the c14 dating results produced by dinosaur soft tissue? How we think and feel should be ok if it is based on evidence. I think I have good evidence for disbelieving the large-half radiometric dating results, and for continuing the trend already started by secular chronologists to modify the results of c14 dating.
2. It is true I have found people whose results I like, and some of them are probably "with" me, though there is a great deal more disagreement among creationists than you may be aware of. Isn't it also true though that you have found people whose results you like, and you and they have a definite preference for the answers you and they want to see?
3. I don't quite understand your third point. At this point, we have some evidence which undermines conventional thinking on dating dinosaurs and some have proposed an hypothesis for how to further modify c14 dating. I would think such modification should be done similarly to way that has already been done to synch it up with tree ring dating. Once this is done, I would hope that the results will line up with what Biblical chronology. With rocks, some creationist scientists have recently developed a dating method using helium release from zircon crystals which does apparently agree with Biblical chronology. As for the existing long age radiometric dating methods, if things continue as they are going, they will probably need to be modified or scrapped as to me they are looking more and more out of tune with reality.
4. I think what you mean to say is that you tell us what you think is the truth, and we continue to do the same things in spite of it. Don't you think we think the same thing about you?

 

[ddubois]

So should you. We have multiple lines of concordant evidence indicating that dinosaurs cannot possibly be in the tens of thousands of years old. And then we have one group of people using carbon dating to come up with discordant (unverified, unrepeated) dates, when we already know that given the other evidence we have, carbon dating will definitely come up with the wrong result. What's your source on this, again?

I am sympathetic with your skepticism. The person who originally discovered dinosaur soft tissue couldn't believe it and repeated her tests multiple times. As to my source, it is reproduced in full below. It can be found under
Carbon-14 dating dinosaur bones,
newgeology.us/presentation48.html

Carbon-14-dated dinosaur bones are less than 40,000 years old

carbon-14 dating dinosaur bones carbon dated dinosaur fossils

date c-14 dinosaur fossil bones by c14 dinosaur bones fossils

Researchers have found a reason for the puzzling survival of soft tissue and collagen in dinosaur bones - the bones are younger than anyone ever guessed. Carbon-14 (C-14) dating of multiple samples of bone from 8 dinosaurs found in Texas, Alaska, Colorado, and Montana revealed that they are only 22,000 to 39,000 years old.

Members of the Paleochronology group presented their findings at the 2012 Western Pacific Geophysics Meeting in Singapore, August 13-17, a conference of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) and the Asia Oceania Geosciences Society (AOGS).

Since dinosaurs are thought to be over 65 million years old, the news is stunning - and more than some can tolerate. After the AOGS-AGU conference in Singapore, the abstract was removed from the conference website by two chairmen because they could not accept the findings.Unwilling to challenge the data openly, they erased the report from public view without a word to the authors. When the authors inquired, they received this letter:

They did not look at the data and they never spoke with the researchers. They did not like the test results, so they censored them.

Carbon-14 is considered to be a highly reliable dating technique. It's accuracy has been verified by using C-14 to date artifacts whose age is known historically. The fluctuation of the amount of C-14 in the atmosphere over time adds a small uncertainty, but contamination by "modern carbon" such as decayed organic matter from soils poses a greater possibility for error.

Dr. Thomas Seiler, a physicist from Germany, gave the presentation in Singapore. He said that his team and the laboratories they employed took special care to avoid contamination. That included protecting the samples, avoiding cracked areas in the bones, and meticulous pre-cleaning of the samples with chemicals to remove possible contaminants. Knowing that small concentrations of collagen can attract contamination, they compared precision Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS) tests of collagen and bioapatite (hard carbonate bone mineral) with conventional counting methods of large bone fragments from the same dinosaurs. "Comparing such different molecules as minerals and organics from the same bone region, we obtained concordant C-14 results which were well below the upper limits of C-14 dating. These, together with many other remarkable concordances between samples from different fossils, geographic regions and stratigraphic positions make random contamination as origin of the C-14 unlikely".

The theoretical limit for C-14 dating is 100,000 years using AMS, but for practical purposes it is 45,000 to 55,000 years. The half-life of C-14 is 5730 years. If dinosaur bones are 65 million years old, there should not be one atom of C-14 left in them.

Many dinosaur bones are not petrified. Dr. Mary Schweitzer, associate professor of marine, earth, and atmospheric sciences at North Carolina State University, surprised scientists in 2005 when she reported finding soft tissue in dinosaur bones. She started a firestorm of controversy in 2007 and 2008 when she reported that she had sequenced proteins in the dinosaur bone.Critics charged that the findings were mistaken or that what she called soft tissue was really biofilm produced by bacteria that had entered from outside the bone. Schweitzer answered the challenge by testing with antibodies. Her report in 2009 confirmed the presence of collagen and other proteins that bacteria do not make. In 2011, a Swedish team found soft tissue and biomolecules in the bones of another creature from the time of the dinosaurs, a Mosasaur, which was a giant lizard that swam in shallow ocean waters. Schweitzer herself wonders why these materials are preserved when all the models say they should be degraded. That is, if they really are over 65 million years old, as the conventional wisdom says.

Dinosaur bones with Carbon-14 dates in the range of 22,000 to 39,000 years before present, combined with the discovery of soft tissue in dinosaur bones, indicate that something is indeed wrong with the conventional wisdom about dinosaurs.

However, it has been hard to reach the public with the information. Despite being simple test results without any interpretation, they were blocked from presentation in conference proceedings by the 2009 North American Paleontological Convention, the American Geophysical Union in 2011 and 2012, the Geological Society of America in 2011 and 2012, and by the editors of various scientific journals. Fortunately, there is the internet.






The data: Carbon-14 in dinosaur bones

Dinosaur
(a)

Lab/Method/Fraction (b,c,d)

C-14 Years B.P.

Date

USA State

Acro
Acro
Acro
Acro
Acro
Allosaurus
Hadrosaur #1
Hadrosaur #1
Triceratops #1
Triceratops #1
Triceratops #1
Triceratops #2
Triceratops #2
Hadrosaur #2
Hadrosaur #2
Hadrosaur #2
Hadrosaur #2
Hadrosaur #2
Hadrosaur #3
Apatosaur

GX-15155-A/Beta/bio
GX-15155-A/AMS/bio
AA-5786/AMS/bio-scrapings
UGAMS-7509a/AMS/bio
UGAMS-7509b/AMS/bow
UGAMS-02947/AMS/bio
KIA-5523/AMS/bow
KIA-5523/AMS/hum
GX-32372/AMS/col
GX-32647/Beta/bow
UGAMS-04973a/AMS/bio
UGAMS-03228a/AMS/bio
UGAMS-03228b/AMS/col
GX-32739/Beta/ext
GX-32678/AMS/w
UGAMS-01935/AMS/bio
UGAMS-01936/AMS/w
UGAMS-01937/AMS/col
UGAMS-9893/AMS/bio
UGAMS-9891/AMS/bio

>32,400
25,750 + 280
23,760 + 270
29,690 + 90
30,640 + 90
31,360 + 100
31,050 + 230/-220
36,480 + 560/-530
30,890 + 200
33,830 + 2910/-1960
24,340 + 70
39,230 + 140
30,110 + 80
22,380 + 800
22,990 +130
25,670 + 220
25,170 + 230
23,170 + 170
37,660 + 160
38,250 + 160

11/10/1989
06/14/1990
10/23/1990
10/27/2010
10/27/2010
05/01/2008
10/01/1998
10/01/1998
08/25/2006
09/12/2006
10/29/2009
08/27/2008
08/27/2008
01/06/2007
04/04/2007
04/10/2007
04/10/2007
04/10/2007
11/29/2011
11/29/2011

TX
TX
TX
TX
TX
CO
AK
AK
MT
MT
MT
MT
MT
MT
MT
MT
MT
MT
CO
CO

(a) Acro (Acrocanthosaurus) is a carnivorous dinosaur excavated in 1984 near Glen Rose TX by C. Baugh and G. Detwiler; in 108 MA Cretaceous sandstone - identified by Dr. W. Langston of Un. of TX at Austin.

Allosaurus is a carnivorous dinosaur excavated in 1989 by the J. Hall, A. Murray team.It was found under an Apatosaurus skeleton in the Wildwood section of a ranch west of Grand Junction CO in 150 Ma (late Jurassic) sandstone of the Morrison formation.

Hadrosaur #1, a duck billed dinosaur. Bone fragments were excavated in 1994 along Colville River by G. Detwiler, J. Whitmore team in the famous Liscomb bone bed of the Alaskan North Slope - validated by Dr. J. Whitmore.

Hadrosaur #2, a duck billed dinosaur. A lone femur bone was excavated in 2004 in clay in the NW 1/4, NE 1/4 of Sec. 32, T16N, R56 E, Dawson County, Montana by the O. Kline team of the Glendive Dinosaur and Fossil Museum.It was sawed open by the O. Kline, H. Miller team in 2005 to retrieve samples for C-14 testing.

Triceratops #1, a ceratopsid dinosaur. A lone femur bone was excavated in 2004 in Cretaceous clay at 47 6 18N by 104 39 22W in Montana by the O. Kline team of the Glendive Dinosaur and Fossil Museum. It was sawed open by the O. Kline, H. Miller team in 2005 to retrieve samples for C-14 testing.

Triceratops #2, a very large ceratopsid-type dinosaur excavated in 2007 in Cretaceous clay at 47 02 44N and 104 32 49W in Montana by the O. Kline team of Glendive Dinosaur and Fossil Museum. Outer bone fragments of a femur were tested for C-14.

Hadrosaur #3, a duck billed dinosaur. Scrapings were taken from a large bone excavated by Joe Taylor of Mt. Blanco Fossil Museum, Crosbyton TX in Colorado in Cretaceous strata.

Apatosaur, a sauropod. Scrapings were taken from a rib still imbedded in the clay soil of a ranch in CO, partially excavated in 2007 and 2009, in 150 Ma (late Jurassic) strata by C. Baugh and B. Dunkel.

(b) GX is Geochron Labs, Cambridge MA, USA; AA is University of Arizona, Tuscon AZ, USA; UG is University of Georgia, Athens GA, USA; KIA is Christian Albrechts Universitat, Kiel Germany.

(c) AMS is Accelerated Mass Spectrometry; Beta is the conventional method of counting Beta decay particles.

(d) Bio is the carbonate fraction of bioapatite. Bow is the bulk organic fraction of whole bone; Col is collagen fraction; w or ext is charred, exterior or whole bone fragments; Hum is humic acids.

Bioapatite is a major component of the mineralised part of bones. It incorporates a small amount of carbonate as a substitute for phosphate in the crystal lattice.

Charred bone is the description given by lab personnel for blackened bone surfaces.

Collagen: Proteins that are the main component of connective tissue. It can be as high as 20% in normal bone but decomposes over time so that there should be none after ~100,000 years. Yet it is found in four-foot long, nine-inch diameter dinosaur femur bones claimed to be greater than 65 million years old. The "Modified Longin Method" is the normal purification method for bone collagen. Dr. Libby, the discoverer of Radiocarbon dating and Nobel Prize winner, showed that purified collagen could not give erroneous ages.

Click to see a YouTube video of the conference presentation

Click to see the conference schedule for presentation of abstract BG02-A012 at 17:00

 

[The Cadet]

Carbon-14 is considered to be a highly reliable dating technique. It's accuracy has been verified by using C-14 to date artifacts whose age is known historically. The fluctuation of the amount of C-14 in the atmosphere over time adds a small uncertainty, but contamination by "modern carbon" such as decayed organic matter from soils poses a greater possibility for error.

And there's the problem. I'm sorry, but C-14 is reliable within a certain date range. The fact that you were able to date something far outside that date range and still come up with some result doesn't mean that it's suddenly millions of years younger than previously thought, it means you misapplied the method! Isn't it kind of a red flag that everywhere these guys went, they were told by the rest of the scientific community, "This is a load of BS"? The reason for that is that we have numerous independent lines of evidence that tell us that the bones are much, much older than could be accurately dated by carbon dating, and that any date you do get from carbon dating will be due to contamination of the specimen.

When an idea constantly and consistently fails to gain any purchase within the scientific community, the reason for that is almost always that the idea is simply bunk. And in this case, it's trivial to point out where these studies go wrong.

 

[DogmaHunter]

Even though I suspect we are each convincing ourselves how right our own position is, I am really enjoying these conversations, and hope they continue. I really hope you respond to the question I ask in 1. above.

Try to use the quote fuction correctly in the future. It's hard to respond this way.

1. You need to understand how C14 dating works. I'm not an expert on thos things, so I will let others explain that. However, it cannot give valid results for things millions of years old. This is where the analogy with a kg scale breaks down. That analogy is only meant to show that you need a valid way of measuring that which you are measuring. Whatever number comes out of invalid dating methods is irrelevant. Because they are invalid to start with. Other methods are valid. And they all converge on the same answer.

2. it did not "accuratly" predict the movements of celestial bodies. Which is why the models were updated through the ages. Every new model did a better job then the previous one. That's what science does: it zero's-in on truth.
Newton's model did a fine job. Einstein's model does an even better job.

 

[DogmaHunter]

My answers:
1. It is true that I think that large half-life radiometric dating results are wrong, and it is true I don't like the answers I get from then. Isn't it also true you think and feel the same about the c14 dating results produced by dinosaur soft tissue? How we think and feel should be ok if it is based on evidence. I think I have good evidence for disbelieving the large-half radiometric dating results, and for continuing the trend already started by secular chronologists to modify the results of c14 dating.

What evidence would that be?

2. It is true I have found people whose results I like, and some of them are probably "with" me, though there is a great deal more disagreement among creationists than you may be aware of. Isn't it also true though that you have found people whose results you like, and you and they have a definite preference for the answers you and they want to see?

I can't speak for other people, but as for me: NO.
I don't have any "prefered" outcome. My preferences and emotions have no bearing on what is actually true. They day that I chose my beliefs based on what I would "like" to be true, is the day I will make irrational decisions.

What I "like" is irrelevant when it comes what is true.

3. I don't quite understand your third point. At this point, we have some evidence which undermines conventional thinking on dating dinosaurs and some have proposed an hypothesis for how to further modify c14 dating. I would think such modification should be done similarly to way that has already been done to synch it up with tree ring dating. Once this is done, I would hope that the results will line up with what Biblical chronology.

There's your problem. You have an a priori conclusion. You want to give the answer before asking the question. And if the data doesn't agree with your a priori beliefs, instead of actually questioning your beliefs - you question the data instead.

In science, when confirmed data doesn't agree with the proposed model... the model is what gets questioned - not the data.

With rocks, some creationist scientists

There's no such thing.

have recently developed a dating method using helium release from zircon crystals which does apparently agree with Biblical chronology. As for the existing long age radiometric dating methods, if things continue as they are going, they will probably need to be modified or scrapped as to me they are looking more and more out of tune with reality.

And by "reality" you really mean: what I believe to be true a priori. ie, your religion.
This goes back to what I stated above: you start with your conclusion before you ask the questions. This is exactly what is wrong with your reasoning. You start from the premise that the bible MUST be true. And whenever evidence comes up that does not agree, because of your premise, you are left with the only option of assuming that the evidence must be wrong.

So you'll go out of your way to invent problems with the evidence.
This is not how we rationally differentiate truth from fiction.

4. I think what you mean to say is that you tell us what you think is the truth, and we continue to do the same things in spite of it. Don't you think we think the same thing about you?

No.

We tell you what the evidence supports.
You tell us that the evidence must be wrong because you have a priori beliefs that don't match the evidence.

BIG difference.

 

[Paul of Eugene OR]

My answers:
1. It is true that I think that large half-life radiometric dating results are wrong, and it is true I don't like the answers I get from then. Isn't it also true you think and feel the same about the c14 dating results produced by dinosaur soft tissue? How we think and feel should be ok if it is based on evidence. I think I have good evidence for disbelieving the large-half radiometric dating results, and for continuing the trend already started by secular chronologists to modify the results of c14 dating.

"secular" scientists have, indeed, modified C14 determined dates based on evidence from tree rings and annual lake bottom layers and annual ice layers in glacial ice sheets. But the modifications were not very much - 1 or 2 percent.

2. It is true I have found people whose results I like, and some of them are probably "with" me, though there is a great deal more disagreement among creationists than you may be aware of. Isn't it also true though that you have found people whose results you like, and you and they have a definite preference for the answers you and they want to see?

No, I have been really interested in science all my life and I have checked out what they said in order to find out what was going on. I was never interested in overturning religious ideas; I'm quite a religious fellow myself, you know.

3. I don't quite understand your third point. At this point, we have some evidence which undermines conventional thinking on dating dinosaurs and some have proposed an hypothesis for how to further modify c14 dating. I would think such modification should be done similarly to way that has already been done to synch it up with tree ring dating.

Creationists in challenging radiometric dates always depend on finding a sample with just a bare minimum of the relevant isotope and using that, come up with a date at variance with the normal findings of science. Always. Then they always get upset when the possibility of having a spurious date due to contamination is raised. How about finding a spurious date involving comfortable, non-minimum amounts of the relevant isotopes? Oh . . there aren't any.

Once this is done, I would hope that the results will line up with what Biblical chronology. With rocks, some creationist scientists have recently developed a dating method using helium release from zircon crystals which does apparently agree with Biblical chronology.

Helium that goes out . . . can go in. There's a reason real scientists ignore such results.

As for the existing long age radiometric dating methods, if things continue as they are going, they will probably need to be modified or scrapped as to me they are looking more and more out of tune with reality.

Constant challenges from creationists does NOT MEAN they are looking more and more out of tune with reality.

I think what you mean to say is that you tell us what you think is the truth, and we continue to do the same things in spite of it. Don't you think we think the same thing about you?

Exactly. Oh where can we find a way to decide between competing views? Here's an idea . . . lets go with the evidence instead of telling the evidence where to go.

 

[ddubois]

"secular" scientists have, indeed, modified C14 determined dates based on evidence from tree rings and annual lake bottom layers and annual ice layers in glacial ice sheets. But the modifications were not very much - 1 or 2 percent.

Thank you. It is good to hear an acknowledgment of contrary facts from one who disagrees with me.

No, I have been really interested in science all my life and I have checked out what they said in order to find out what was going on. I was never interested in overturning religious ideas; I'm quite a religious fellow myself, you know.

My statement was addressed to Dogmahunter, not you, and I thought he, as an atheist, was interested in overturning religious ideas. I think you and I have more things in common. I was raised believing in evolution, I have a high respect for scientists, particularly Maxwell and Faraday, and I have read quite a bit in many fields looking for truth. Like Newton, I believe there is the book of God's word and the book of God's nature, and both should be studied and respected.

Creationists in challenging radiometric dates always depend on finding a sample with just a bare minimum of the relevant isotope and using that, come up with a date at variance with the normal findings of science. Always. Then they always get upset when the possibility of having a spurious date due to contamination is raised. How about finding a spurious date involving comfortable, non-minimum amounts of the relevant isotopes? Oh . . there aren't any.

Be careful about using the word "always". Creationists include Newton and many others who are true scientists looking for truth. Both sides of the debate can be overeager and make unsubstantiated claims. For example, Huxley, the purported bulldog for Darwin's evolution declared that in 1868 abiogenesis (life from non-life) had been discovered when some stuff from the bottom of the sea appeared to show life after being preserved in alcohol. It turned out to just be just be a reaction between the alcohol and the sea water.

As to your claim that creationist challenging radiometric dates always depend on a sample with just the bare minimum of the relevant isotope. C14 has a half-life of about 5700 years. Wikipedia indicates that around 50,000 years is usually the maximum limit for carbon dating. The sample I quoted contains samples averaging 30,000 years old. So, rounding 5700 up to 6,000, if you could detect 1 atom at 50,000 years, you could detect 2 at 44,000, 4 at 38,000, and 8 at 32,000. So how is 30,000 a bare minimum?

Then you say creationists always get upset when they are accused of having a spurious date due to contamination. If you had valid scientific findings which seemed to be generally dismissed without examination (as it seems to me that you have just done here), wouldn't you get upset?

Helium that goes out . . . can go in. There's a reason real scientists ignore such results.

I have been accused of not understanding radiometric dating, and I have read quite a lot about it. But tell me honestly, have you read anything about helium release from zircon crystals? There are legitimate PhD scientists (conveniently dismissed as pseudoscientists by many in the scientific establishment) who have developed a dating theory based on helium release. If I were in the shoes of an establishment scientist, knowing I would likely lose credibility, funding, and maybe even my job for entertertaining an idea so completely out of phase with what is currently accepted, I might dismiss my beliefs as pseudoscience also.

Constant challenges from creationists does NOT MEAN they are looking more and more out of tune with reality.

Yes. However, refusal to take seriously the challenges based on new evidence might mean that.

Exactly. Oh where can we find a way to decide between competing views? Here's an idea . . . lets go with the evidence instead of telling the evidence where to go.

We agree. If you would like to consider some of mine, let me know. Following is a taste:
Helium evidence for a young world continues to confound critics
Published: 29 November 2008 (GMT+10)
This week we feature a response by CMI scientist-speaker Russ Humphreys to six years of criticism of one part of the Radioisotopes and the Age of the Earth (RATE) creationist research initiative (1997–2005):

Photo: Los Alamos National Laboratory.


Figure 1. Drilling rig at Fenton Hill, New Mexico, USA.

My part of the RATE initiative, in collaboration with fellow RATE researchers Steve Austin, John Baumgardner, and Andrew Snelling, was to explain the remarkable retention of helium observed in radioactive crystals in granitic rocks. I showed that the retention is evidence that the usual radioactivity-based billion-year ages for such rocks are grossly wrong, and that the rocks are only 6000 (± 2000) years old. Even before I finished the project, critics began sniping at it. The critics are usually atheists or professing Christians with various old-earth views. They are very disturbed about the project’s strong support of the young biblical age of the earth. Table 1 lists their criticisms and my responses. In September, 2008, another such criticism appeared on a ‘progressive creation’ website, and I’ll discuss it below.

The criticisms show the attackers think the research is good enough to be a threat to them. But it has been only recently that I’ve seen God’s purpose in the attacks. He apparently uses the criticisms (and creationist answers) to help believers evaluate our research, just as an assayer uses acid (and a bright light) to show there is gold in a sample.

None of the critics listed below have published their denunciations in peer-reviewed scientific publications. Instead they are ‘lone-ranger’ opinions in un-reviewed venues such as Internet sites and seminars. This contrasts starkly with the RATE helium project. It was a multi-author effort, and it had more than seventeen reviewers and editors as it appeared in five technical publications, one of which is non-creationist.1–5


The evidence the critics want to hide
Photo by R. V. Gentry.


Figure 2. Microscopic zircons used in this research.

Here’s what the nay-sayers are trying to obscure. (For details, see the technical resources referenced above, or several non-technical resources.6,7) Decades ago, Robert Gentry analyzed tiny zircon (zirconium silicate) crystals recovered by drilling in hot Precambrian (over 545 million years old according to the geologic timescale) ‘basement’ rock in New Mexico.8 Figure 1 shows the drilling rig and site. Figure 2 shows some of the zircons Gentry analyzed, between 50 and 75 microns (millionths of a meter) long.

Enough of the uranium in the zircons had decayed to lead to give them a radioisotope (radioactive element) age of ‘1.5 billion’ years. But Gentry found that up to 58% of the helium that the nuclear decay would produce was still in the zircons. This was surprising because helium diffuses (leaks) rapidly out of most minerals.

Not knowing how fast helium leaks from zircon, I estimated what the leak rates would be when we measured them. In essence (of course the mathematics is more complicated), all I did to get the estimates was to divide the amount of helium lost from the crystal by the time (assumed by each of two models) during which it had been lost. That gives us the leak rates for each model. The ‘1.5 billion year’ model has rates over 100,000 times slower than the ‘6,000 year’ model, because the former has to retain the helium for a much longer time. Then in the year 2000, the RATE group published the estimates as numerical predictions for those two models.9




Figure 3. Model-predicted (red and magenta diamonds) and measured (blue dots) helium leak rates (‘Diffusivity’) of zircons. The data fit the 6,000-year prediction very well.

Figure 3 shows the predictions as red and magenta diamond symbols. The bottom axis shows the temperature (in °C) of each sample in situ, that is, while it was in the granitic rock in the earth. The vertical axis shows ‘diffusivity’, which is a measure of how fast helium leaks from a material. The vertical axis is tremendously compressed, representing a factor of one trillion increase in leakage rates from bottom to top. The black numbers under the diamonds are the percentages of helium retained in each sample.

The red and magenta vertical lines through the diamonds are the ‘two-sigma error bars’. They show the 95% confidence limits I estimated for the accuracy of the predictions.10

In 2001 we commissioned one of the world’s most respected experimenters in this field to measure the diffusivity of helium in the same-size zircons from the same borehole in the same rock formation. We used an existing mining company as an intermediary, and we asked the company to not tell the experimenter about us or our goals. The experimenter, being a uniformitarian (believer in long ages) and not having read our prediction, had no idea what results we were hoping for. It was a truly ‘blind’ experiment, and we were eagerly awaiting the data, which we received in 2003.

Figure 3 shows the experimental results as blue dots with blue ‘2-sigma error bars’ going vertically through them. If we repeated the experiments hundreds of times, we estimate the data points would remain within the caps on the error bars over 95% of the time.

To our great delight, the data fell right on the ‘6,000 year’ prediction! This alignment validates the young-age model even for readers who are not experts in this field, because the probability of such a lineup by accident is small. The data resoundingly reject the ‘1.5 billion year’ model. The experimenter, whose name is in one of our articles, stands by his data, even though as a uniformitarian he does not like our interpretation of them. (Even after five years, he has not offered an alternative interpretation.)

This sequence of events places the burden of disproof on the critics, because they must explain how, if there is no truth to our model, the data happened to fall right on our prediction, despite a low probability of doing so by accident. All the critics have avoided dealing with that issue.

 

[ddubois]

What evidence would that be?



I can't speak for other people, but as for me: NO.
I don't have any "prefered" outcome. My preferences and emotions have no bearing on what is actually true. They day that I chose my beliefs based on what I would "like" to be true, is the day I will make irrational decisions.

What I "like" is irrelevant when it comes what is true.



There's your problem. You have an a priori conclusion. You want to give the answer before asking the question. And if the data doesn't agree with your a priori beliefs, instead of actually questioning your beliefs - you question the data instead.

In science, when confirmed data doesn't agree with the proposed model... the model is what gets questioned - not the data.




There's no such thing.



And by "reality" you really mean: what I believe to be true a priori. ie, your religion.
This goes back to what I stated above: you start with your conclusion before you ask the questions. This is exactly what is wrong with your reasoning. You start from the premise that the bible MUST be true. And whenever evidence comes up that does not agree, because of your premise, you are left with the only option of assuming that the evidence must be wrong.

So you'll go out of your way to invent problems with the evidence.
This is not how we rationally differentiate truth from fiction.




No.

We tell you what the evidence supports.
You tell us that the evidence must be wrong because you have a priori beliefs that don't match the evidence.

BIG difference.

 

[ddubois]

You asked what evidence I had for disbelieving the high age radiometric results. There are perhaps 20 dating methodologies producing young ages, one of the most promising being helium release from zircon crystals. I copied an extract from a recent article on it above in a response to Paul of Eugene. The article also contains responses to skeptics, which I did not copy.

It sounds like you are of the Enlightenment persuasion, not wanting to be swayed by emotions. I think you may be unusual in that, as most people I have met believe what they want to believe.

The motto of the professional organization I belonged to, the Society of Actuaries, was, "The work of science is to substitute facts for appearances and demonstrations for impressions." (John Ruskin). While I am also a Christian, I haven't ceased to be a scientist, any more than Newton, Faraday, and Maxwell (a devout Christian, and one of Einstein's heroes). I have read their biographies and am moderately familiar with their works. When my beliefs appeared to contradict what is taught in science, I tried to discover why. I have seen that in the last 150 - 200 years, many Christians have been willing to modify or abandon their beliefs after investigating science's claims. I have come up with many theories myself on how to reconcile the apparent conflicts. But now it seems to me that some new discoveries may be beginning to bridge the apparent gap between science and a literal reading of the Bible. As a mathematician, I am aware how much conclusions depend on the assumptions underlying them. And the assumptions underlying radiometric dating are basically uniformitarian, and uniformitarianism has been scientifically and successfully challenged.

You claim "You start from the premise that the bible MUST be true. And whenever evidence comes up that does not agree, because of your premise, you are left with the only option of assuming that the evidence must be wrong." This is evidently a common belief among critics of creationists. Let me tell you what my position really is:
1. The Bible appears to me to be the most credible bit on ancient historical literature that we have. Recent discoveries that I won't go into have refuted many who have challenged its historical authenticity from the time of Abraham on.
2. That being said, I tend to give even the Bible's brief antediluvian chronology the benefit of the doubt.
3. However, I am not absolutely committed to a single set of beliefs. The Orthodox and western churches use different Bibles. I lean towards the Orthodox, with an origin date about 5500BC, rather than the western about 4000BC. Also I have considered the implications of relativity and quantum mechanics, even parallel worlds, and am open to the possibility that more than one dating, including a very ancient dating might be correct.

In response to my statement, "I think what you mean to say is that you tell us what you think is the truth, and we continue to do the same things in spite of it. Don't you think we think the same thing about you?", you said,
No.

We tell you what the evidence supports.
You tell us that the evidence must be wrong because you have a priori beliefs that don't match the evidence.

BIG difference.

Let me restate:

You think you are showing us compelling scientific evidence (which generally agrees with your concept that the physical processes we see now can accurately be projected back billions of years, with only minor modification), but we are not persuaded.

We think we are showing you compelling scientific evidence (which generally matches with our concept that the unprecedented flood reported in the Bible occurred about 5000 years ago), but you are not persuaded.

If there is a BIG difference, I would think it is that we consider your evidence, but you don't consider ours.

Does the fact that we believe in a supreme being invalidate our evidence? Isaac Newton believed in a supreme being, and in fact spent quite a lot of time developing a chronology agreeing with the Bible.

P.S. I am really quite new at this forum, and I tried but couldn't find out how to use quotes. Can you help me?

 

[Paul of Eugene OR]

We agree. If you would like to consider some of mine, let me know. Following is a taste . . . . .

Helium is produced by uranium decay throughout the body of our planet. Helium slips through tiniest of cracks . . . you postulate it should have slipped out of the zircon crystals, that's an example.

If a zircon crystal is buried in the earth, it is not necessarily in a helium free environment. The particular place it is buried may have helium filtering up from below on its way to our atmosphere and ultimatly off to outer space.

So your scenario could be like wondering why a sponge, in a stream, doesn't dry out.

You should pay attention rather to materials like lead in zircon crystals. Lead in zircon crystals is stuck there and cannot leave. How much lead accumulates in a crystal compared to how much uranium was there to decay into the zircon is a very good indicator of how long ago the crystal was formed.

 

[ddubois]

Helium is produced by uranium decay throughout the body of our planet. Helium slips through tiniest of cracks . . . you postulate it should have slipped out of the zircon crystals, that's an example.

If a zircon crystal is buried in the earth, it is not necessarily in a helium free environment. The particular place it is buried may have helium filtering up from below on its way to our atmosphere and ultimatly off to outer space.

So your scenario could be like wondering why a sponge, in a stream, doesn't dry out.

You should pay attention rather to materials like lead in zircon crystals. Lead in zircon crystals is stuck there and cannot leave. How much lead accumulates in a crystal compared to how much uranium was there to decay into the zircon is a very good indicator of how long ago the crystal was formed.

I think your simile of helium leakage being like water going through a sponge is interesting. I looked back at my article to see if this objection was one of the 12 criticisms they had received and responded to but if so, I couldn't tell. I am certainly not an expert in this area. I think I will try to contact ICR and see if they would be willing to address your objection. If they do respond, it will probably take a while, because they are busy and they don't know me. I will let you know what they say if they give what I think is a meaningful reply.

 

[Paul of Eugene OR]

I think your simile of helium leakage being like water going through a sponge is interesting. I looked back at my article to see if this objection was one of the 12 criticisms they had received and responded to but if so, I couldn't tell. I am certainly not an expert in this area. I think I will try to contact ICR and see if they would be willing to address your objection. If they do respond, it will probably take a while, because they are busy and they don't know me. I will let you know what they say if they give what I think is a meaningful reply.

I would be interested in their reply!

 

[Loudmouth]

That is true. I was replying from an evangelical Christian point of view, which I think would be inadmissible to atheists.

I would think that it would be inadmissible for you as well.

If you were on a jury, would you find the defendant "not guilty" if the defense attorney argued that supernatural Leprechauns planted all of the evidence at the crime scene? If not, then you are the same atheists. You don't accept supernatural magic as an answer, either.

During certain points of time in the past, we know that natural forces can be very much accelerated by unusual circumstances. Why couldn't the same be true of living forces?

What evidence suggests that the "living forces" were different in the past?

 

[Loudmouth]

You should consider ALL the evidence.

So says the person ignoring radiometric dating.

 

[Loudmouth]

The statement that putting a 20-ton truck on a 100kg scale doesn't mean the truck weighs 100kg is certainly true, but doesn't seem to me to be describe well the soft tissue dinosaur age measurement I cited.

You have carbon isotope ratios from a fossil which you can't show to be organic. Applying carbon dating to inorganic carbonates is entirely a misuse of carbon dating.

First of all, unlike regular scales which don't require a lot of assumptions, radiometric dating uses uniformitarian assumptions which can be questioned. Even mainstream chronologists have conceded that carbon dating has had to be modified slightly to synch up with tree ring dating in just the last 10,000 years. Wouldn't longer term dating, like Ur/Pb or K/Ar, likely require much greater modification, due to meteoric impacts and other events not appearing in recorded history?

No. Meteors aren't going to change the basic laws of chemistry that cause zircons to exclude Pb when they form. In order to make zircons include Pb when they form you would have to change the fundamental laws of nature in such a way that life as we know it would not be possible. The same goes for the decay rate of U.

Also, we can directly observe that the laws that govern chemistry and nuclear physics was the same in the past. All we need to do is look up in the night sky and see how distant stars and galaxies behave.

But to continue with your scale analogy, if carbon 14 dating (5700 yr half-life) is the 100kg scale, then K/Ar dating (1.2b yr half life) would be a 20 million kg scale. The dinosaur bones would measure 50kg on the 100kg scale (22k to 39kg measured ages vs 50k to 75k accelerator mass spectrometry limit per Wikipedia article), and they would measure 150,000 kg on the 20 million kg scale. With the scales so out of synch, and the bigger scale so much more subject to modification, why wouldn't I trust the 100 kg scale?

They can't even show that they are measuring organic carbon. That's the problem.

 

[Loudmouth]

Like Loudmouths absolutely brilliant example (which I may borrow in the future if you don't mind LM - absolutely loved it )....

You have my permission.