Potassium Argon Dating doesnt work at all

Dogmatic speculations in the form of radiometric dating I've always been able to handwave as untenable.Sampling error, epoch isotopic concentrations, and blatent guessing are just a few tarnishing factors that make such time-pieces untrustworthy.Moreover, they presuppose constancy in the speed of light over eons of time, and, not to mention, that higher elements on earth were somehow formed after the initial creation (AKA Big-Bang).Anyone out there want to dogmatically speculate that higher elements and their isotopes were really somehow captured by our solar system, e.g., after a miraculously nearby super-nova produced them?Or did our sun itself somehow produce the higher elements us radiometric daters confide in.I for one find it very much easier to believe earth's higher inorganic elements and their radiometric isotopes (if you will) were formed at or very nearly at the beginning of the creation.Now if all were formed in the beginning and stretched accross the universe at nearly the speed of c, then a whole bag of boggling relativistic scenarios could constrict atomically calibrated time within orbital clocks.In other words, the number of earth's evenings and mornings would be far fewer compared to radiometric derivations of the same.Albeit, the YEC's presupposition that God created mature chemistries would seem valid only assumming the Creator wished to make them appear cursed like us (e.g., to decay and die).Then other metaphysics, like redemptive phenomena, restorative events, and God-of-the-gaps realities, must be entertained, not just due to our perverse lack of a scientific grasp of light and time, but due to our gross need to better qualify time as a metaphysical entity.Just because we materialists accurately apply time in math and science doesn't make it a mere scientific phenomenon. Time is an elusive entity, like light, and demands an awesome appreciation beyond the material laws it associates with.Conceptual time, for example, defies scientific constraints. Our scientific use of time is dwarfed by our racing with time in life's real painful events.Thus, radiometric dating doesn't work for me either; other clocks, like geological and orbital clocks, must take precedence.

Admittedly, I'm guilty of dogmatic speculation as a YEC/OEC. I'm willing to concede the speed of light may have its factual boundaries given the present laws of the space-time continuum as we know it.That the constancy of c has been, essentially, its present speed, I won't quival with. Most creationists don't rely on Barry Setterfield's hypotheses because matter and/or life-forms seem not even to be able to exist when c varies past a certain limit.Nevertheless, experimental data is lacking thus I don't rule out Setterfield's hypothesis that c may have approached a more infinite speed at the beginning.Your dogma and my dogma (e.g., biased dogmatic speculations) concerning this (c) discussion is so far from proveable via experimental science ... that we are both forced to call our speculations mere hypotheses, wouldn't you agree?You state the space-time continuum was the same 10,000 orbital years ago vs. present? Perhaps. But to say this excellent universe (is it not excellent?) could not have once been in a less excellent formlessness and void in the beginning, wherein light and time as we measure it may have been different?What if the creation/big bang was galactocentric vs. wildly explosive or else some other unexpected phenomena? These and other real phenomena may or may not have implications of changes in c, no?

"But it's immaterial to dating when the elements were formed - only when they first froze out in rocks is of any consequence in dating."The higher elements and/or their isotopes seem (to me) to have to be there first, Coragyps. For IF they were produced nearly instantaneously in the beginning ... and THEN strown out across the universe at (a gamma factor?) of nearly c (e.g., by ID), their clocks would indeed be ahead of orbital clocks. (S. relativity)Of course, I speculate, only.

"Alpha-like and beta-like decays happen by very different mechanisms, and their rates depend on several fundamental constants, so it would take a rather big miracle for all of them to vary in exact proportion."...Or many (fallacious) god-of-the-gaps miracles as you might seem to be getting at.Ipetrich, your last sentence alone seems worth responding to. Your first 2 sentences seem easily refuted elsewhere, primarily by relativistic arguments, gamma effects, etc. on time"Exact proportion" as you call it I've heard more accuratedly termed "highly correlative", which I accept based on the data.Still the fact that there are highly correlative timing methods in your atomic arena does not make them mechanistically correlate enough with orbital time or Newtonian time perceptions.Of course, I may be wrong.The ID (and my dogmatic acceptance of it) may have been concerned with most men perceiving time in more Newtonian vs. Einsteinian science.The 2 sciences are difficult to reconcile for simpleton-physicians like myself. Both are real for many geologists, sometimes one at the expense of the other (methinks). Both sciences must be accounted for.Now, theistic vs atheistic dogmaticism colors up and butters up many scientific hypotheses with metaphysical and/or materialistic bias. I am theistically dogmatic and will undoubtedly color up my hypotheses as well, with faith-biases of metaphysical sorts.So, I am undoubtely wrong in many of my scientific speculations.[This message has been edited by Philip, 04-30-2003]