Carbon Dating DOESN'T work beyond 4500 years

I agree that Milton's statement is silly. I was giving reasons WHY it is silly and why the fact that C14 is "not in equilibrium" is irrelevant. We know why, and it isn't for the silly reasons suggested in the post I replied to.

Sorry, I didn't read carefully enough.

Far enough. Try not to let it happen again :-)

If I could just find my darn glasses!

(replies to some of my ?friends?)
Coragypus:Yes I have been reading a little Walt Brown--I understand he does not believe in the canopy theory, but most creationists do--the canopy theory would explain WHY the Bible mentions the expanse and the water ABOVE the expanse. That would also give a rational explanation to where the water came from during the flood (the forty days of rain).John:
Sorry to bust your bubble, but there IS evidence for the flood?tons. Have you ever been to Oregon? Yes, the John Day Fossil Bed is about 140 miles east of Salem (over 210 miles from the nearest coastline) and displays overwhelming evidence of a deluge that once covered almost all of Oregon. Here is the evidence from the fossil bed in Oregon:
1) the ?mountains? or large hills at John Day are EXTREMELY smooth, displaying OBVIOUS evidence of quite a bit of erosion.
2) The fossil bed contains quite a large abundance of animal fossils (the plain area around John Day is very desolate and the animal fossils do not seem to fit with the evolution theory as well as with the flood story).
3) Cutting into the rock in the hills are large, smooth, grooves?indicating water run-off.
Grand Canyon is an obvious spillway. The river running through Grand Canyon runs downhill, while the canyon banks continue to rise. The uplift argument is inconsistent because, if the height of the canyon sides were because of uplift, then the river would have dammed up and created a late behind the river. So the uplift argument is not consistent because the river continues to run downhill while the surrounding land rises. Also, canyons with steep sides indicate very rapid erosion, while canyons with twisting and winding indicate very slow-moving water (the Grand Canyon has both?so the uplift ?millions of years? argument is not very conclusive).Also, Pangea is just a proposition that has no evidence. Look at a map of pangea:http://svc403.bne025u.server-web.com/...ustralia_permian.htmand tell me: Where is Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Costa Rica, Panama, Belize? They?re not there!!!
Also, if pangea is true, then perhaps you could explain WHY they would have had to shrink Africa 30-40 percent to make them fit together in the picture?
Also, the fossilized CLAMS found atop the Himalayas are evidence of a flood. And uplift COULD NOT have caused the clams to be there, because the clams are closed. You see, when a clam dies the muscle relaxes and the shell opens. I guarantee you?ll never find an un-fossilized clam that is still closed and dead. But the ones on Himalayan mountains are?that is evidence that they were buried quickly, and preserved by a water-catastrophe.
Also, perhaps, since there is ?no evidence? for the flood, you might be able to explain the polystrate fossils all over Nova Scotia and in parts of Yellowstone and Oregon (I have quite a bit of family in Oregon, and I?ve visited plenty of areas where they have polystrate objects that stick through many layers that are supposed to be different ages).
There IS evidence of the flood (the evolutionist doesn?t find the evidence for the same reason why the criminal doesn?t find a police officer?They?re not looking for IT!!)In Christ
Booboo

BBC, your message was supposed to be in reply to my comments about the calibration of C14 dating. That is the topic of this thread and you started it.Why don't you finish that one off before charging off on a bunch of other things which belong, and are, in other threads. Then you can start a clam thread, join the grand canyon thread etc.edited to add:
Also you can start -- I haven't seen one, a Pangea thread. But don't until you've finished all the ones you've already started.[This message has been edited by NosyNed, 05-01-2003]

By the same token, the spillway argument is not very conclusive. Clearly, since it contains feature of both spillways and long, meandering river carving, it can't be used to confirm either theory. It's just not a very clear-cut case, by your argument. Thus it's a little disingenuous of you to use it as evidence for your position, since you said it couldn't really be used as evidence for any position. You remember that plate tectonics we keep talking about, where the Earth's plates keep running into each other and lifitng land masses above the oceans? So, why would you assume that all present land masses would have to have always been there? Some of the land masses have arisen since Pangea's breakup.You may be interested to know that Africa is growing. There's a rift in the middle of it (the Great Rift Valley) where the plates are slowly drawing away from each other. It's an area of intense vulcanism. Thus, if we extrapolate backwards, we find that Africa would be smaller at the time it was a part of Pangea.So far you've yet to present any kind of geological evidence that hasn't been the result of your failure to consider plate tectonics. Is there something about tectonics you reject? Your argument here doesn't make any sense. Death is death. If what you say is true than they couldn't have died from a flood, either. No matter how catastrophic the flood was, it couldn't have resulted in instant fossilization - if every clam dies with an open shell, then even clams killed by your flood should have open shells. Clearly, then, it's possible for clams to die with closed shells.We know that the Himalayas are uplift mountains. We've observed them growing, ever so slowly. There's nothing in your evidence to suggest that the clams didn't die and get fossilized on an ocean floor that much, much later became a mountain due to uplift. Your argument is simply fallacious.

First of all, the Himalaya area around Mt. Everest was NEVER an ocean floor (even if your uplift argument be true, Everest was still miles from where India and Asia would have met Millions of years ago.) Also, you see, when a flood washes across a land, mud slides and avalanches are formed and cover many miles of unprotected areas. I DID NOT SAY that they instantly petrified. I said they were INSTANTLY BURRIED, and petrified as the muscle inside decayed--it IS possible for objects to petrify in as little as one or two years when placed under moving water.

quote:

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First of all, the Himalaya area around Mt. Everest was NEVER an ocean floor

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And your source for this is?Since you dropped it are we allowed to presume the open clamshell argument is now null and void?

Topic ready for closing?Adminnemooseus

Where would you believe that Mt. Everest was ever underwater before the uplift (not even uplift would have done that much). You see, the coast would have been to the first to uplift, and if Mt. Everest used to be underwater, it would not have become the highest point it is today--that is simple high-school earth science.Anyway, back to the topic, perhaps there is a reasonable explanation to the tree-ring errancy. You see, there are plenty of times when a tree's rings are greater in number than the tree's actual age. That conclusion requires ONLY the ability to count and the observed age of the tree. I used to live in New York, and the campground there was only 30-40 years old (some of the land was bought at different times) anyway, the trees of Daggat Lake were planted only a few decades ago, yet the tree that was cut down along the nature trail had over 50 rings. Just curious as to how exactly does C-14 match up 'inerrantly' with tree-ring dating.

Funny that you seem to remember your earth science only when it appears to serve your purposes.The coast is not always the first to uplift. That depends on the characteristics of the faultline between the two plates. Anyway it's a lot like pushing the end of a carpet. The carpet will wrinkle, but not always at the place where you're pushing. Sure, and times when the tree has less rings. You seem to gloss over those situations. Because, taken on average, for the time periods that dendrochronology and radiocarbon dating overlap, they tend to converge on the same dates. Your excuses for how these methods could be individually inaccurate doesn't explain how they could be inaccurate in the same way, to the same degree, for the vast majority of cases.

Yes, I see your point.However, the oldest living tree and the oldest living coral reef are 4300 and 4200 y.o. respectively. That added to my conclusion to why carbon dating might only work up to around 4000 years (maybe as much as 4500).
Also, Dr. Libby (the founder of radiocarbon dating) admitted that carbon dating would not work with any degree of scientific accuracy beyond about 4000 years.
Also, like I said, the magnetic field (although fluctuating some, generally is weakening) is fluctuating slightly, which might explain why certain carbon dates have been known to be inconsistent with one another.

When carbon dating was pioneered, I imagine 4000 years might have been reasonable. But the technique has been refined and moved on since then. When exactly did Dr Libby say 4000 years was the limit, I wonder?The magnetic field is not "weakening generally" over a large timescale. Any current weakening trend is part of an overall tendancy towards fluctuation and even reversal.And I don't see why that would have any significant effect on carbon 14 decay rate.

Hi BBC, could you please give me your references for living trees and coral reefs 4000 years old? I have just researched the subject, and the references I found said that living coral reefs started about 5000 to 10000 years ago, ie after the last ice age. But old, dead coral reefs show millions of years growth layers, and cannot possibly be squeezed into a YEC scenario. The only way out is to shut youir ears and eyes, and ignore the evidence.As far as I know, from extensive reading, the oldest Sequoia pines are about 1200 years old, but tree ring dating goes back about 12000 years. Varve dating goes back about 18000 years. Tree ring and varve dating have been used to check out radiocarbon dating, and as a result scientists know exactly how to correct the error in radiocarbon dating for specimens older than 3000 years.Radiocarbon dating cannot be used on samples less than 200 years old, because of all the old C12 that has been released into the atmosphere by industry. There are some periods in the past where it is inconsistent, because the correction curve has wiggles in it, but the scientists know all this, and can give confidence intervals accordingly.Libby meassured the radioactivity of C14 in his dating methods. These days a mass spectrometer is used, with far greater accuracy, and so radiocarbon dating can be used on much smaller samples, and much further back than Libby anticipated.YECs love to point out the possible errors in counting varves, tree rings, etc, but ignore the fact that the research has been repeated by different scientists all over the earth, with the same result.The same results have been found counting snow layers in Antarctica and sedimentation layers at the bottom of the ocean, and, what's more, these different fields all come up with evidence for Milankovich cycles! These climatic cycles were first discovered in research on the movement of glaciers during the ice ages, and are caused by variations in the sun's radiation falling on earth due to the pecularities of the earth's orbit and inclination. Some of these cycles are many thousands of years long, and could not exist in a 10000 year old earth history.So all the evidence is stacked up against a young earth, mountains of it, from every area of research. And the evidence from all these different areas is consistent.Mike