I would have complimented you for the relative clarity of this post, Calypsis, except you didn't actually write the parts that are relatively clear. (The pictures are, as usual, inadequately documented, grossly misinterpreted, and basically irrelevant -- you would have done better to use that space in trying to paraphrase your own understanding of Baumgardner's text.)
Of course, clarity and correctness are two completely different things. Certainly there is an essential relation between these things: lack of clarity really gets in the way of judging correctness, but presence of clarity is no guarantee of correctness.
Anyway, in order to get a valid sense of Baumgardner's expertise on radiocarbon dating, you do need to consult sources other than Baumgardner, RATE, and creationist web sites and literature.
Substantive information on RATE and Baumgardner can be found in previous posts on this thread:
Message 151,
Message 158 and
Message 15. (I got that easily by searching for the name on each of the 11 previous pages in this thread.) A little more time with Google would lead you to more detailed discussions elsewhere. Of the ones I browsed in the last hour or so, the one I found most informative is here:
RATE’s Radiocarbon: Intrinsic or Contamination? -- you can also find EvC threads and other sources that go on at length about other stuff mentioned in your lengthy quote: helium in zircon, polonium halos, etc.
But apart from trying to do a better job of understanding the scientific method and the available evidence, you could also try just a little more in the area of thinking things through. For example, given this assertion in your lengthy quote:
quote:
Although the number of samples is small, we observe little difference in 14C level as a function of position in the geological record. This is consistent with the young-earth view that the entire macrofossil record up to the upper Cenozoic is the product of the Genesis Flood and therefore such fossils should share a common 14C age.
... Even though these estimates are rough, they illustrate the crucial importance of accounting for effects of the Flood cataclysm when translating a 14C/12C ratio into an actual age.
Apart from the "few samples" and "rough estimates" (in contrast to the large quantities of samples, and the much more careful estimates with measurable and much smaller margins of error, all of which contradict RATE's conclusions), the problem here is with the inescapable notion of "geological layers" being acknowledged in the same argument that appeals to a "cataclysm", which throughout YEC literature is defined very poorly or not at all with regard to the actual processes involved.
How is it that cataclysm results in an arrangement of materials into well-ordered layers? Why do we not find a general, world-wide geological "hash"? How can it be that fossils managed to sort themselves out so distinctly among these layers, within the span of a one-year cataclysm? Why are some life forms, such as dinosaurs, found only as fossils, and never as actual bones? We do have bones (not fossils) from creatures (including humans) that lived 5 or 6 thousand years ago ("antediluvian"), but no dinosaur bones -- only fossils.
I could go on... There are just so many simple, plain, obvious, "no-brainer" observations about the world that just cannot be reconciled with the YEC world view. It's a sadly endless source of astonishment that YEC's are so adamant about rejecting reality for the sake of asserting "historical truth" for this one written record of some stories that really amount to nothing more than "tales told around the campfire" a few thousand years ago.
If you personally want to believe in magical explanations for everything around you, based on a serious misinterpretation of ancient scripture, that's your choice. If you insist on asserting such beliefs as facts to the public at large, it won't work. The errors and untruths in such assertions are just too blatant.
autotelic adj. (of an entity or event) having within itself the purpose of its existence or happening.
™ Version 4.2
