Summations Only

Why do you think it absurd? The depth of the sand in the Sahara isn't all that different than the thickness of the Coconino. If the northern half of Africa were to gradually subside beneath the waves then the former Sahara desert would become seafloor and gradually accumulate marine sediments.--Percy

Yet you can't show any scientific deception, self-induced or otherwise, since science has evidence and a broad consensus of interpretation that produces practical results and makes successful predictions.Aren't you ignoring that only the religious have a motivation for self-deception because reality contradicts tightly-held religious beliefs? Then there's the lack of consensus across religious groups, not to mention disagreements about which religious groups are even legitimate. And there's also the strikingly apparent incongruity of claiming legitimacy for scientific opinions that have never made any actual contributions to science, not to mention contradicting reality.--Percy

Can religious people disagree with science? Most certainly.Can religious people misrepresent religious views as science? Most certainly. Should they? It seems that many don't have a problem with it.--Percy

PaulK already replied to this in his Message 1457, but it's a point worth emphasizing. Radiocarbon dating has a limit of about 50,000 years, sometimes a little more up to maybe 60,000 years depending upon the sample and the analysis equipment, but to keep it simple we'll just assume the limit of radiocarbon dating is 50,000 years.This means that anything older than 50,000 years will date to about 50,000 years. That means a skull that is a hundred thousand years old will date to 50,000 years. A skull that is a million years old will date to 50,000 years. A skull that is a hundred million years old will date to 50,000 years.So a very important point is that anyone radiocarbon dating dinosaur fossils (minimum age: 65 million years old) is engaged in purposeful misrepresentation.This has probably been explained to you at least a dozen times over the years, so a key question is what is the sticking point for you that you keep failing to get this?If after all this explanation you still think there's something wrong with radiocarbon dating, then another question for you is why ¹⁴C is almost completely absent in all fossils in layers dated older than 50,000 years. For you no fossil can be older than about 6000 years, so there should be plenty of ¹⁴C. Where did it go?--Percy

Uncontaminated fossils that are older than the limit of 14C dating do not produce a date.All of the several fossils creationists have "dated" were either known to be contaminated or extremely likely to be contaminated. In most cases the creationists knew they were contaminated. E.g. Radiocarbon Dates for Dinosaur Bones?

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CRSEF obtained several fragments of fossilized dinosaur bone from the paleontological collections of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History "by disguising the nature of the creationist science group" (Lafferty 1991:2B) and by misrepresenting the nature of their proposed research. James King, Director of the Carnegie Museum, says Hugh Miller and his party identified themselves as chemists who wanted to do some analysis of the chemical composition of the fossils. King says that small "bits and pieces" which had spalled off the surfaces of various specimens were offered to Miller with the explicit warning that the fossil bones had been "covered heavily in shellac" and other "unknown preservatives." Miller accepted the fragments and indicated that the coatings posed no problems for the analyses they were considering. Subsequently, several of the bone fragments were submitted to the University of Arizona's Laboratory of Isotope Geochemistry for radiocarbon dating. CRSEF "also arranged the Arizona testing by not revealing its origins" (Lafferty 1991:2B). Austin Long, professor of geochemistry at the University of Arizona, informed Miller that there was no collagen (a protein which is the source of most of the carbon in bones) in the samples and that large amounts of shellac and other contaminants were present. Miller indicated that he wanted the samples dated regardless.

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I failed to grasp that it was sent for carbon dating, so maybe I'm missing the point. I thought what was being said was that a dinosaur skull was sent to a dating lab unidentified and the lab dated it to 50,000 years, and that's the whole story I got.But if something dates at the extreme of the method wouldn't it make sense for the lab to move to a different method?Normally I don't pay any attention to dating issues at all because I don't expect to be able to grasp them well enough to accept or refute them. But this one sounded straightforward. Guess it wasn't.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

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But if something dates at the extreme of the method wouldn't it make sense for the lab to move to a different method?

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It doesn’t make sense for the lab to do tests they haven’t been paid for, and I can’t think of any tests that would reasonably apply to fossil bone anyway.

Agreed. The date of igneous rock is the last time it solidified from having been completely melted -- if you melt it completely and then let it solidify, then you have just "reset its clock." It is that solidifying from a complete melt which traps the isotopes in its crystals which we can then examine in a dating test.The talk.origins article, Isochron Dating, does a good job of explaining the method, what it's based on, and what problems could arise and how to detect those problems (eg, a partial melt, the xenoliths, chunks of older rock in a molten mix but which did not melt, mentioned by JonF in Message 1442). For one thing, it dispels the old creationist canard that we use nothing more than the simple decay formula, in which case not knowing the pre-existing amount of daughter element would be a problem; the isochron method eliminates that problem. The isochron method also has its own built-in test for detecting invalid results. A reply on this forum had stated that the isochron method is an old method which has been replaced by something better, but I don't remember what that new method is supposed to be.Since sedimentary rock is mostly just the physical recycling and relocation of older rock, radiometric methods cannot be used on it. Instead, we look for igneous intrusions into those layers and igneous layers bracketing the sedimentary layers with which we can establish a range of ages for the sedimentary layers. We discussed that extensively on this forum with a creationist a few years ago.Fossil bone is typically mineralized. That means that the organic material in the bone was replaced with minerals. There was no complete melt to "reset the fossil's clock", besides which such a melt would have destroyed the fossil anyway. The age of the minerals themselves would be problematic as well and undoubtedly indeterminate. Radiometric dating methods that depend on a complete melt to "reset the clock" clearly cannot be used. For fossil bone, the best dating method is to note which layer it was found in in situ, so that the age of that layer would be the age of the fossil -- the same applies to archaeological artifacts, which is why paleontologists and archaeologists tend to become angry when you bring them a fossil or an artifact that you had removed from its in situ location.There may be other dating methods that don't require a complete melt, but as I understand they would use lighter isotopes, such as C-14 or berylium, whose half-lives are far too short to date anything older than thousands of years (eg, 50,000 years for C-14). It should be noted that those lighter isotopes are present in the ground, but they disappear as you go to deeper rock.Besides not being able to date something as old as a fossil, C-14 would be unsuitable since all of the fossil's organic material would have been replaced by minerals, hence no C-14 left to measure.Therefore, most if not all radiometric dating methods could not be applied directly to a fossil. Instead, the location where it was found would need to be dated, something that radiometric dating methods can do.Of course you know that already, but others may not have understood why tests would not reasonably apply to fossil bone.

Moving to a different method wouldn't be possible for fossils. Only fossils less than 50,000 years old can be directly dated, and only by radiocarbon dating. If the fossil is older than 50,000 years then it cannot be directly dated by any method (though as mentioned earlier, when the sample permits then there are techniques for extending the range of radiocarbon dating to as much as 60,000 years and sometimes even 75,000 years according to Wikipedia).Fossils older than 50,000 years are indirectly dated by dating the layer in which they were found. As DWise1 mentioned, sedimentary layers cannot be directly dated either because they're the eroded products of older rock of likely varied origin, so dating must rely upon volcanic deposits within the layer of basalt or ash, and magmatic intrusions can be helpful, too.It's worth mentioning luminescence dating, which can go back about 350,000 years. If an appropriate sample is available (e.g., quartz or feldspar) it can tell how long ago it was last exposed to sunlight. If you don't understand something then you don't know how reliable it is or how important it is, so ignoring it would call your conclusions into question.--Percy

I'm not interested in spending time on radiometric dating because I have sufficient evidence from other sources to make my case. Others can deal with the sources I ignore.

Basically, every geological method takes advantage of some information other than the decay formula.The methods du jour are U-Pb and Ar-Ar.U-Pb dates a sample by two decay chains (235U and 238U). If the dates are the same ("concordant") that's strong evidence that the date is correct. Here the extra information is that the final element in the chain, lead, doesn't fit in the lattice physically or elictrically so the initial daughter product is zero.Ar-Ar is an extension of the simple K-Ar method. First the sample is irradiated to convert 40K to 39Ar. That allows convenient and precise measurements of the ratio of 40Ar/39Ar, involving only one element. Then the sample is heated in a series of temperature steps and a date is calculated for each step. If they are all the same that's a good date.Both methods can often produce a valid date even if the multiple measurements don't agree, but that's more complex.

You mean like where I had said in the part of Message 1454 that you were replying to (bold added for your benefit): I posted that again for your edification and to provide context for readers in my Message 1465 reply to your Message 1456. The fact that Hovind had that fossil radio-carbon dated was clearly presented from the start.I would hope that at least now you have learned something about radio-carbon dating, though I doubt that you even bothered to read any of it thus preserving your precious ignorance, the refuge of all creationists. You mean you still don't understand radio-carbon dating? Typical! Yes, it would, but as PaulK pointed out, who's going to pay for those further tests? It ain't cheap, you know.These labs normally work for scientists and other skilled professionals who know what they are doing. They depend on their customers having already done their own due diligence in obtaining a proper uncontaminated sample and determining which test or tests would be the appropriate one(s). The labs are not prepared for any ignorant yahoo walking in off the street ordering a specific test with no clue whether it's the appropriate one or not. And the labs are definitely not prepared for a creationist huckster bent on rigging the test by ordering an inappropriate test on samples that are probably contaminated or otherwise unsuitable for testing, just so he can get a lab result of a "bad date" with which to spin yet another lie that he can use to further deceive his audience. Read JonF's Message 1475 immediately above your message that I'm replying to right now for yet another example of creationists practicing deception at every step of obtaining contaminate sample and ordering an inappropriate test, just so they could spin yet another creationist lie. Well, that should be a wake-up call for you that you do need to learn about dating issues. The reason why Mr. Kent Hovind's malfeasance sound straightforward to you is precisely because you are ignorant of dating methods. Furthermore, your ignorance of dating methods leaves you open and vulnerable to countless other creationist lies about radiometric dating.You need to learn enough about radiometric dating to have a basic understanding of it so that you can be equipped to evaluate the claims that you hear. You have already tried ignorance and found that it doesn't work. It's time you try something far better than ignorance, like learning something.It's really not that hard to understand and the math is pretty basic, assuming you understand exponents and logarithms.Here is a short list of recommended books, sites, etc:

1. Critique of Radiometric Dating, Harold S. Slusher, MS, ICR Technical Monograph No. 2, June 1973. In a collection of reviews of creationist literature, this one got surprisingly high marks for having the best description of half-lives and decay rates that the reviewer had seen, though he does go off the rails and into the ravine with what he does with that information. Another benefit of this book would be learning what the bases for creationist arguments against radiometric dating are -- even though it's nearly half a century old, creationist claims don't change much (a lot of current young-earth claims date back to that same time, even though they have been repeatedly refuted soundly long ago). Most such arguments falsely claim that scientists only use the simplest formula which is invalidated by their not knowing how much daughter element was already present. Of course, that is not true and is a misrepresentation -- see #4 below.
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   If you cannot find this one, then Wikipedia articles on the subject should suffice. Basically he covered the concept of half-lives and how that can be used to determine how much of the parent isotope you should expect to find after a given amount of time. He also examined the decay chains of three isotopes: Uranium-Thorium-Lead, Potassium-Argon, and Rubidium-Strontium. It should be noted that the parent isotope does not decay directly to the final daughter, but rather through a series of daughter isotopes, each of which has its own half-life.
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   So whatever alternative resource you end up using, at the least it should explain half-lives and how to work with them and decay chains.
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2. The Age of the Earth, G. Brent Dalrymple, Stanford University Press, 1991. A definitive treatment of the methods for determining the age of the earth. Comprehensive, yet still very accessible.
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   An added bonus is the preface in which he describes when in 1975 Duane Gish and Henry Morris visited the US Geological Survey in Menlo Park to give their seminar on "creation science". Most of the discussion with them for the rest of the weekend was the scientists trying to correct Gish and Morris' gross misunderstanding of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. I believe it was at that time that Gish and Morris decided to avoid ever talking with scientists.
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   If nothing else, this book should inform you of how scientists actually determine the age of the earth, so that when you reject that you will at least have something more than abject ignorance to go by.
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3. Radiometric Dating: A Christian Perspective by Dr. Roger C. Wiens, PhD Physics, 1994 (revised 2002). He is a Christian and his article has been widely recommended ever since it was first published. Here is the abstract:

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   Radiometric dating--the process of determining the age of rocks from the decay of their radioactive elements--has been in widespread use for over half a century. There are over forty such techniques, each using a different radioactive element or a different way of measuring them. It has become increasingly clear that these radiometric dating techniques agree with each other and as a whole, present a coherent picture in which the Earth was created a very long time ago. Further evidence comes from the complete agreement between radiometric dates and other dating methods such as counting tree rings or glacier ice core layers. Many Christians have been led to distrust radiometric dating and are completely unaware of the great number of laboratory measurements that have shown these methods to be consistent. Many are also unaware that Bible-believing Christians are among those actively involved in radiometric dating.

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   This paper describes in relatively simple terms how a number of the dating techniques work, how accurately the half-lives of the radioactive elements and the rock dates themselves are known, and how dates are checked with one another. In the process the paper refutes a number of misconceptions prevalent among Christians today. This paper is available on the web via the American Scientific Affiliation and related sites to promote greater understanding and wisdom on this issue, particularly within the Christian community.

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   Half-lives are known with a margin of error of about 3 to 5 percent. The half-lives of heavier isotopes have proven quite immune to outside influences, though some of the lighter isotopes (eg, beryllium) can be affect, however the lighter isotopes are far too short-lived to be used in dating ancient rock. In all the wild creationist speculation that something could have affected the rate of radioactive decay, the greatest theoretical effect that any of them could have would be less than one percent. Given that the margin or error is already at 3 to 5 percent, that less than one percent figure is insignificant.
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4. Isochron Dating by Chris Stassen, 1994 - 1998, Talk.Origins Archive. This is a fairly complete web article. First it covers generic dating (what creationists typically try to saddle geologists with) so you get some treatment of the simple formula for deriving an age from a half-life, plus it examines problems that can arise in generic dating. Then he presents what geologists actually use, the isochron method, and describes how it works, what conditions it depends on, and how it solves the problems of generic dating. Later he also describes what happens when those conditions are not met and other problems that can arise and how the method detects them.

Those are my recommendations, though there are many other sources. I would generally advise you to steer clear of creationist treatments, because their main purpose is to deceive you. Learn what scientists actually have to say on this subject first before you go anywhere near a creationist source.

Yes I missed it. Sorry.

You should be interested in the dating issue because dating alone completely destroys the YEC belief and claims.But then creationists have been picking at dating methods for a long time, with absolutely no success, so you're in good company.

There is no way to confirm the dating methods because there is no way to see into the past. As long as the evidence I've collected points consistently to the Biblical framework of time I have no interest in radiometric dating.