[_ Old Earth _] "Scientific Dating Techniques are WRONG!"

[Evointrinsic]

With all the hype about evolution getting thrown around the place, i'm here to discuss something a bit different. That being Scientific Dating techniques.

Most of you know the ones that seem to be brought up continuously by (what seems to be) many creationists or anyone who is skeptical about this topic. Dating techniques such as Carbon dating which "is accurate only to 80,000 yrs and radiometric dating isn't accurate either, it randomly ages up to 500 mil yrs." (quote from a commenter on one of my series on youtube trying to falsify a fossils dating)

I suggest you take this much more seriously then Evolution, because using these methods of dating can prove quite a lot wrong in biblical terms (much much more than Evolution can). Just to make clear, i am not using this information to attack anyone or there beliefs, i am just trying to understand how all these techniques can be classified as "just plain wrong" as many of you probably believe they are.

Let's start off with one very interesting problem. Some of these techniques can be used to date archeological findings that could benefit your position and potentially prove an area in your beliefs to be correct and factual. There for stating that all of these techniques to be incorrect is a very poor choice to make because it could very possibly aid your belief system. The other side to this problem is that many of these techniques use the exact same principals but with different elements. There for meaning that if there is a technique that parallels the one that could aid your cause, it - theoretically - should work just as well. Meaning that these techniques can both dramatically increase your chances of being correct in your ways of thinking and also completely prove other points of yours entirely wrong. So it's both beneficial and problematic.

You must also know what a half-life is:

radioactive nuclide decays exponentially at a rate described by a parameter known as the half-life, usually given in units of years when discussing dating techniques. After one half-life has elapsed, one half of the atoms of the nuclide in question will have decayed into a "daughter" nuclide or decay product. In many cases, the daughter nuclide itself is radioactive, resulting in a decay chain, eventually ending with the formation of a stable (nonradioactive) daughter nuclide; each step in such a chain is characterized by a distinct half-life. In these cases, usually the half-life of interest in radiometric dating is the longest one in the chain, which is the rate-limiting factor in the ultimate transformation of the radioactive nuclide into its stable daughter. Isotopic systems that have been exploited for radiometric dating have half-lives ranging from only about 10 years (e.g., tritium) to over 100 billion years (e.g., Samarium-147).


Since I've already brought in carbon dating, let's take a look at that first!

Carbon dating, or radiocarbon dating, is a radiometric dating method that uses the naturally occurring radioisotope carbon-14 (14C) to determine the age of carbonaceous materials up to about 60,000 years.

One of the most frequent uses of radiocarbon dating is to estimate the age of organic remains from archaeological sites. When plants fix atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) into organic material during photosynthesis they incorporate a quantity of 14C that approximately matches the level of this isotope in the atmosphere (a small difference occurs because of isotope fractionation, but this is corrected after laboratory analysis). After plants die or they are consumed by other organisms (for example, by humans or other animals) the 14C fraction of this organic material declines at a fixed exponential rate due to the radioactive decay of 14C. Comparing the remaining 14C fraction of a sample to that expected from atmospheric 14C allows the age of the sample to be estimated.



The biggest thing any skeptic about this dating method will see in those two paragraphs is the final word "Estimated". Which usually will make them instantly say "that is why we dont trust it!" However, by "estimation" they just mean within this time period of so many years. By "estimated" they DO NOT mean they completely guessed. They are simply stating that the number(s) of which they discovered are not approximate, that's it.

To further understand Carbon dating you have to look at Radiometric Dating (in which carbon dating is a method of Radiometric Dating)

Radiometric dating (often called radioactive dating) is a technique used to date materials, usually based on a comparison between the observed abundance of a naturally occurring radioactive isotope and its decay products, using known decay rates.[1] It is the principal source of information about the absolute age of rocks and other geological features, including the age of the Earth itself, and can be used to date a wide range of natural and man-made materials. Together with stratigraphic principles, radiometric dating methods are used in geochronology to establish the geological time scale.[2] Among the best-known techniques are radiocarbon dating, potassium-argon dating and uranium-lead dating. By allowing the establishment of geological timescales, it provides a significant source of information about the ages of fossils and the deduced rates of evolutionary change. Radiometric dating is also used to date archaeological materials, including ancient artifacts. Different methods of radiometric dating vary in the timescale over which they are accurate and the materials to which they can be applied.

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dating)

there is a large list of methods within radiometric dating, this methods include:

~Uranium-lead dating method
~Samarium-neodymium dating method
~Potassium-argon dating method
~Rubidium-strontium dating method
~Uranium-thorium dating method
~Radiocarbon dating method
~Fission track dating method
~Chlorine-36 dating method
~Optically stimulated luminescence dating method
~argon-argon (Ar-Ar)
~iodine-xenon (I-Xe)
~lead-lead (Pb-Pb)
~rhenium-osmium (Re-Os)
~uranium-lead-helium (U-Pb-He)
~uranium-uranium (U-U)

Uranium-lead dating:

Uranium-lead is one of the oldest and most refined radiometric dating schemes,[citation needed] with a routine age range of about 1 million years to over 4.5 billion years, and with routine precisions in the 0.1-1 percent range. The method relies on two separate decay routes, from 238U to 206Pb, with a half-life of 4.47 billion years and 235U to 207Pb, with a half-life of 704 million years. These decay routes occur via a series of alpha (and beta) decays, in which 238 U undergoes seven total alpha decays whereas 235U only experiences six alpha decays.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium-lead_dating)



Samarium-neodymium dating method

This involves the alpha-decay of 147Sm to 143Nd with a half life of 1.06 x 1011 years. Accuracy levels of less than twenty million years in two-and-a-half billion years are achievable.



Potassium-argon dating method

This involves electron capture or positron decay of potassium-40 to argon-40. Potassium-40 has a half-life of 1.3 billion years, and so this method is applicable to the oldest rocks.




Rubidium-strontium dating method

This is based on the beta decay of rubidium-87 to strontium-87, with a half-life of 50 billion years. This scheme is used to date old igneous and metamorphic rocks, and has also been used to date lunar samples. Closure temperatures are so high that they are not a concern. Rubidium-strontium dating is not as precise as the uranium-lead method, with errors of 30 to 50 million years for a 3-billion-year-old sample.




Uranium-thorium dating method

A relatively short-range dating technique is based on the decay of uranium-234 into thorium-230, a substance with a half-life of about 80,000 years. It is accompanied by a sister process, in which uranium-235 decays into protactinium-231, which has a half-life of 34,300 years.
While uranium is water-soluble, thorium and protactinium are not, and so they are selectively precipitated into ocean-floor sediments, from which their ratios are measured. The scheme has a range of several hundred thousand years.




Fission track dating method

For dates up to a few million years micas, tektites (glass fragments from volcanic eruptions), and meteorites are best used. Older materials can be dated using zircon, apatite, titanite, epidote and garnet which have a variable amount of uranium content.[25] Because the fission tracks are healed by temperatures over about 200°C the technique has limitations as well as benefits. The technique has potential applications for detailing the thermal history of a deposit.




Chlorine-36 dating method

Large amounts of otherwise rare 36Cl were produced by irradiation of seawater during atmospheric detonations of nuclear weapons between 1952 and 1958. The residence time of 36Cl in the atmosphere is about 1 week. Thus, as an event marker of 1950s water in soil and ground water, 36Cl is also useful for dating waters less than 50 years before the present. 36Cl has seen use in other areas of the geological sciences, including dating ice and sediments.




Optically stimulated luminescence dating method

Natural sources of radiation in the environment knock loose electrons in, say, a piece of pottery, and these electrons accumulate in defects in the material's crystal lattice structure. Heating the object will release the captured electrons, producing a luminescence. When the sample is heated, at a certain temperature it will glow from the emission of electrons released from the defects, and this glow can be used to estimate the age of the sample to a threshold of approximately 15 percent of its true age. The date of a rock is reset when volcanic activity remelts it. The date of a piece of pottery is reset by the heat of the kiln. Typically temperatures greater than 400 degrees Celsius will reset the "clock". This is termed thermoluminescence.

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiometri ... er_methods)


Argon-Argon Dating

Argon-argon (or 40Ar/39Ar) dating is a radiometric dating method invented to supersede potassium-argon (K-Ar) dating in accuracy. In this technique, the decay of 40K to 40Ar* (* indicates radiogenic) is used to date geological events, particularly the eruption and cooling of igneous rocks and minerals.

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argon-argon_dating)


Iodine-Xenon Dating

Iodine-xenon dating is a dating method in which the ratio of (129I), with a half-life of 15.7 million years, to (129Xe), which is stable, is measured. This method is applied to meteorites and old waters.

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iodine-xenon_dating)


Lead-Lead Dating

Lead-lead dating is a method for dating geological samples, normally based on 'whole-rock' samples of material such as granite. For most dating requirements it has been superseded by uranium-lead dating (U-Pb dating), but in certain specialized situations (such as dating meteorites and the age of the earth) it is more important than U-Pb dating.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead-lead_dating)


Rhenium-Osmium Dating

Rhenium-Osmium dating is a form of radiometric dating based on the beta decay of the isotope 187Re which usually has a half life of 4.16×1010 y [1][2] to 187Os. These two elements are strongly siderophilic (iron loving) and chalcophilic (sulfur loving) making them useful in dating sulfide ores such as gold and Cu-Ni deposits

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhenium-osmium_dating)


Uranium-Uranium Dating

Uranium-uranium dating is a radiometric dating technique which compares two isotopes of uranium (U) in a sample: 234U and 238U. 234U/238U dating is one of several radiometric dating techniques exploiting the uranium radioactive decay series, in which 238U undergoes 14 alpha and beta decay events while decaying to the stable isotope 206Pb. Other dating techniques using this decay series include uranium-thorium (using 230Th/238U) and uranium-lead dating.
238U, with a half-life of about 4.5 billion years, decays to 234U through emission of an alpha particle to an isotope of thorium (234Th), which is comparatively unstable with a half-life of just 24 days. 234Th then decays through beta particle emission to an isotope of protactinium, 234Pa. 234Pa decays with a half-life of 6.7 hours, again through emission of a beta particle, to 234U. This isotope has a half-life of about 245,000 years. The next decay product, 230Th, has a half-life of about 75,000 years and is used for the related 230Th/238U technique. Although analytically simpler than 230Th/238U dating, in practice 234U/238U dating is almost never used as unlike 230Th/238U dating it requires prior knowledge of the 234U/238U ratio at the time the material under study was formed. For those materials (principally marine carbonates) for which the initial ratio is known, 230Th/238U remains a superior technique. This restricts the application of 234U/238U to extremely rare cases where the initial 234U/238U is well-constrained and the sample is also beyond the ca. 450,000 year upper limit of the 230Th/238U technique.
Unlike other radiometric dating techniques, those using the uranium decay series (except for those using the stable final isotopes 206Pb and 207Pb) compare the ratios of two radioactive unstable isotopes. This complicates calculations as both the parent and daughter isotopes decay over time into other isotopes.
In theory, the 234U/238U technique can be useful in dating samples between about 10,000 and 2 million years Before Present (BP), or up to about eight times the half-life of 234U. As such, it provides a useful bridge in radiometric dating techniques between the ranges of 230Th/238U (accurate up to ca. 450,000 years) and U-Pb dating (accurate up to the age of the solar system, but problematic on samples younger than about 2 million years).

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium-uranium_dating)



My question once again is...


Why, with all these techniques and available information is it still possible to believe that the earth is merely 6000 years old?

 

[John]

Why, with all these techniques and available information is it still possible to believe that the earth is merely 6000 years old?

Many can't be trusted. Before the dating methods came about evolutionists already believed the fossils and such were millions of years old. The "geologic column" (which does not even exist mind you) was laid out before conventional dating methods and then the dating methods were made to fit.

Here is just 2 dating fails off the top of my head

radiocarbon fail: http://www.answersingenesis.org/creatio ... eology.asp
U-Th-Pb fail http://www.answersingenesis.org/tj/v9/i1/dating.asp

Don't even get me started on the fraud of ice ring dating

Many methods do not take into account the contamination the flood would have created.

The isotope concentrations can be measured very accurately, but isotope concentrations are not dates. To derive ages from such measurements, unprovable assumptions have to be made such as:

1.The starting conditions are known (for example, that there was no daughter isotope present at the start, or that we know how much was there).

2. Decay rates have always been constant.

3. Systems were closed or isolated so that no parent or daughter isotopes were lost or added.

I have no reason to uphold any dating method at this time other then the Bible.

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.

 

[Evointrinsic]

This is a nice little summary of a great article on the Geologic Column which focus' specifically on the creationist claim that it does not exist. (link to the entire article is under the quote)

First, as I have noted before, the concept quite prevalent among some Christians that the geologic column does not exist is quite wrong. Morris and Parker (1987, p. 163) write:
Now, the geologic column is an idea, not an actual series of rock layers. Nowhere do we find the complete sequence.
They are wrong. You just saw the whole column piled up in one place where one oil well can drill through it. Not only that, the entire geologic column is found in 25 other basins around the world, piled up in proper order. These basins are:

The Ghadames Basin in Libya
The Beni Mellal Basin in Morrocco
The Tunisian Basin in Tunisia
The Oman Interior Basin in Oman
The Western Desert Basin in Egypt
The Adana Basin in Turkey
The Iskenderun Basin in Turkey
The Moesian Platform in Bulgaria
The Carpathian Basin in Poland
The Baltic Basin in the USSR
The Yeniseiy-Khatanga Basin in the USSR
The Farah Basin in Afghanistan
The Helmand Basin in Afghanistan
The Yazd-Kerman-Tabas Basin in Iran
The Manhai-Subei Basin in China
The Jiuxi Basin China
The Tung t'in - Yuan Shui Basin China
The Tarim Basin China
The Szechwan Basin China
The Yukon-Porcupine Province Alaska
The Williston Basin in North Dakota
The Tampico Embayment Mexico
The Bogata Basin Colombia
The Bonaparte Basin, Australia
The Beaufort Sea Basin/McKenzie River Delta
(Sources:
Robertson Group, 1989;
A.F. Trendall et al , editors, Geol. Surv. West. Australia Memoir 3, 1990, pp 382, 396;
N.E. Haimla et al, The Geology of North America, Vol. L, DNAG volumes, 1990, p. 517)


(Figure courtesy of Thomas Moore)

Second, the existence of desert deposits is quite hard to place in the context of a global flood. Morris and Morris (1989, p. 37) write:
If real desert-formed features do exist in the deeper geologic deposits, this could indeed be a problem for the Biblical model since the antediluvian environment was said by God to be all 'very good' and the future promised restoration of these to good conditions to the earth includes desert reclamation (e.g. Isaiah 35).
The early oceanic sediments are covered by desert deposits of the Prairie Evaporite, Interlake, and Minnelusa formations. Oncolites found in the Interlake prove that these deposits took some time to be deposited. There are 11 separate salt beds scattered through four ages: 2 Jurassic Salt beds, 1 Permian salt bed, 7 Mississippian salt beds, and one thick devonian salt. Half of these salt beds are up to 200 feet thick. The top Mississippian salt is 96% pure sodium chloride! Since they are sandwiched between other sediments, to explain them on the basis of a global, one-year flood, requires a mechanism by which undersaturated sea water can dump its salt. If the sea were super-saturated during the flood, the no fish would have survived.


Third, the geologic column is not divided by hydrodynamic sorting. Whitcomb and Morris (1961, p. 276) write:
In general, though, as a statistical average, beds would tend to be deposited in just the order that has been ascribed to them in terms of the standard geologic column. That is on top of the beds of marine vertebrates would be found amphibians, then reptiles and finally birds and mammals. This is in the order: (1) of increasing mobility and therefore increasing ability to postpone inundation; (2) of decreasing density and other hydrodynamic factors tending to promote earlier and deeper sedimentation, and (3) of increasing elevation of habitat and therefore time required for the Flood to attain stages sufficient to overtake them.
The biggest single factor for how fast an object settles in a fluid is the size. The relevant physical law is Stoke's Law. The larger an object, the faster it falls. A cat can survive a fall from a 20 story building because it falls at a speed of only 60 mph. A human dies because he reaches a terminal velocity of 120 mph if laid out like a skydiver, 180 if He falls feet first. Thus for any given habitat, the largest animals should be on the bottom. There are a lot of very small dinosaurs found in the Morrison formation, with the giants, both of which are below the Niobrara which contains the 20 foot long fish and micrometer sized chalk particles. Large, teleost fish are found well above the layers in which fish are first found.


Fourth, the geologic column is not sorted be ecological zones. The Silurian Interlake, Devonian Prairie, Pennsylvanian Minnelusa and Jurassic Morisson formations are continental deposits. Oceanic deposits sandwich these beds. The ocean came and went many times.

Fifth, the persistent burrowing which is found throughout the geologic column, the erosional layers and the evaporative salt requires much more time than a single year to account for the whole column. Here is how I know the Williston Basin sediments couldn't be deposited in a single year. 15,000 feet divided by 365 days equals 41 feet per day. Assuming that a burrow is only 1 foot long and that the creature could not survive the burial by an additional foot of sediment, the creature doing the burrowing must accomplish his work in less than 40 minutes. That doesn't sound all that bad, until it is realized that if the poor critter ever stops to rest, even for a half an hour, he will be buried too deeply to escape.
The pure coccolith chalks of the Niobrara and the bentonite deposits also require a lot of time. A chalk particle, 2 microns in radius, takes about 80 days to fall through only 300 feet of very still water. The 200 feet of the Niobrara Chalk would have to be deposited in 4 days if the column was the result of a 1- year flood. The detection of long-period cyclicities in the Niobrara which match those of the earth's long-term orbital periodicities must cause one to pause and think about the concept that the geologic column is due to a single cataclyms. Some of the smaller volcanic ash particles in the bentonites could take even longer to fall through 100 m in water than the coccoliths.


Sixth, the fact that the fossils mammals are not found with the earliest dinosaurs, or that no primates are found until the Ft. Union formation or that no full dinosaur skeletons are found in the Tertiary section, implies strongly that the column was not the result of a single cataclysm. Worldwide, no whales are found with the large Devonian fish. If the column was an ecological burial pattern, then whales and porpoises should be buried with the fish. They aren't. The order of the fossils must be explained either by progressive creation or evolution.

Seventh, until Christian catastrophists can explain the facts of the geologic column, they need to tone down their rhetoric against the geologist and other scientists. Paul Steidl (1979, p. 94) wrote:
The entire scientific community has accepted the great age of the universe; indeed, it has built all its science upon that supposition. They will not give it up without a fight. In fact, they will never give it up, even if it means compromising their reason or even their professional integrity, for to admit creation is to admit the existence of the God of the Bible.
Geology, like any science, is not immune from criticism. but Christians who criticize geology should do so only after a thorough understanding of the data, not as is usually the case before such an understanding is gained. They should also be willing to advance explanations for explaining the details observed.


Eighth, those who would decry the use of uniformitarianism in the interpretation of the fossil record need to show how uniformitarian methodology is inappropriate when one looks at the persistent burrowing, the orbital cyclicities, the abundant erosional surfaces and footprints. They also need to show why the laws of physics (Stokes law) does not apply to the deposition of 2 micron chalk particles, and demonstrate what laws do apply in order to explain the supposed rapid sedimentation of these beds.

Ninth and finally, the data shows that there is no strata which can be identified as the flood strata and there is no way to have the whole column be deposited in a single year. Thus, if we are to believe in a Flood, it must have been local in extent.

(http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/geocolumn/#conclusion)

As for the claim that Dating methods were made to fit the geologic column, would you be kind enough to provide extensive information about that?

I can reply to the rest of your comment later on, thanks for the reply

 

[Crying Rock]

What we all have to realize is time is relative. There is no such thing as "absolute dating".

For example, when archeologists cite dates via 14C they cite it: 25,000 RCYBP.

When the earliest evidence of humans in the Americas is cited, it's cited in terms of: U-Th; fission track; Ar/Ar; (U-Th)-He; AMS, etc...

Now, just because there is no such thing as absolute dating doesn't render these methods useless. They still give us a chronology: what happened first, second, etc...

And that is what we’re really after.

 

[Barbarian]

What we all have to realize is time is relative.

Odd then, that clocks work.

Absolute dating is quite reliable, and rather accurate. The error bars are generally a few percent.

 

[Crying Rock]

So your O.K. with a 1.1mya (Ar/Ar- Berkeley Geochronology Center) presense of humans in the Americas?

Personally I'm O.K. with the relative dating. Humans have been around since very early times.

 

[Barbarian]

(Barbarian points out that radiometric dating can be very accurate indeed)

So your O.K. with a 1.1mya (Ar/Ar- Berkeley Geochronology Center) presense of humans in the Americas?

Your argument then, is that if a medical lab gets an anomalous result, we should no longer trust type and crossmatch procedures? Really?

I thought you were a scientist.

 

[Crying Rock]

(Barbarian points out that radiometric dating can be very accurate indeed)

So your O.K. with a 1.1mya (Ar/Ar- Berkeley Geochronology Center) presense of humans in the Americas?

Your argument then, is that if a medical lab gets an anomalous result, we should no longer trust type and crossmatch procedures? Really?

I thought you were a scientist.

Who said concordant results haven't been obtained from multiple dating methods: U-Th; Ar/ Ar; (U-Th)-He; fission track; biostratigraphy, 14C, etc...

Would you like to learn more?

 

[Barbarian]

Who said concordant results haven't been obtained from multiple dating methods: U-Th; Ar/ Ar; (U-Th)-He; fission track; biostratigraphy, 14C, etc...

Of course they have. And since each one works by a different rate, the fact that they are concordant is apparently impossible for YE creationists to explain.

Would you like to learn more?

I'd prefer someone who actually has a doctorate in the field, thank you. Here's a good one:

Dr. Joe Meert on the ages from the Fen complex in Norway.
http://www.clas.ufl.edu/users/jmeert/fen2.jpg
Details here:
http://gondwanaresearch.com/radiomet.htm

Note that these very different analyses differ by less than 3.5%.

 

[Crying Rock]

You're preaching to the choir, B.

I'm an Old Earther.

 

[Barbarian]

So why are you recycling YE creationist stuff?