Geologic Column

I hate giving examples without telling were i got them.On the show"The mysterious origins of man"They interviewed an woman who was working on a site,I beleive it was in mexico,Where they found native american artifacts.They used the uranium method and i think potassium argon dating.Both methods gave a date of 200,000 years ago.She gave the honest test results and they fired her and closed the site to anyone forever.Just goes to show you,if she lied and said 11,000 years she would still have her job.If that isnt proof their dating methods dont work and they make them up then what is.

I am quite stunned. We are to take a video you 'kind of' remember as empirical evidence? You are not sure the country or researcher. But it fits right? How us scientists operate. All willing to hide facts to preserve the status quo. Your viewpoint is so small that I pity you. You are missing out out on the grandeur of the Universe we are privileged to be a part of. YOUR view disgusts me.Edited by Lithodid-Man, : Deleted repeat of quoted post

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"I have seen so far because I have stood on the bloated corpses of my competitors" - Dr Burgess Bowder

Gross misunderstanding and misapplication of techniques lead to bad results.
-Potassium-argon dating is good for materials over 100,000 years old. For native American artifacts, C14 would probably be a more appropriate technique to use.
- Potassium-argon dating is used for igneous material, and in an archaeological context is generally used to date volcanic ash deposits in/near which artifacts lie. If you use them to date the artifacts themselves, you're probably an idiot.At several hundred dollars per test, I'd have fired her too!

Then DON'T. Do some research and see if you can validate what you remember. Google "The mysterious origins of man" find results:http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/mom.html

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On Sunday February 25th 1996, NBC broadcast "The Mysterious Origins of Man" (hereafter MOM), narrated by Charlton Heston, purporting to be a documentary about scientific evidence that would overturn currently accepted views of human history and evolution.

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Although MOM was anti-evolutionary, it was not advocating scientific creationism, even though some of the "experts" and arguments are familiar to readers of scientific creationist literature. Instead, just as scientific creationism is an attempt to use science to support fundamentalist Christianity, MOM is apparently an attempt to use science to support Hinduism. Much of the material in the program is based on the contents of two books, Forbidden Archeology [offsite] and The Hidden History of the Human Race [offsite] by Michael Cremo and Richard Thompson, both of whom appeared on the show and are members of the Bhaktivedanta Institute, a branch of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness. Both books are published by Govardhan Hill Publishing [offsite].

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Being the star of "Planet of the Apes" gives one some kind of scientific credentials eh?Hindu creationism instead of christian creationism is still not science, although one of the basic complaints is that the earth is dated too young for them. This kind of contradicts the standard YEC view, but YEC types will ignore that in the common fight against reason.The difference between hindu creationists and YEC types is that the hindu types will intentionally misrepresent what the evidence shows as being much older than it really is. Seeing as these methods can (properly) only be used on rocks, one can easily understand that what they dated were possibly stone arrowheads or stone knives or stone axes, and the result dated the rocks these implements were made from. The lie (for creationists of all types mix lies with facts) is the claim that these dates represent when the artifacts were made, rather than the age of the rock they were made from. Gosh I can make a stone axe today and then date the rock to 200,000 years ago (or however old it is) and only a gullible fool would believe that I dated when the axe was made.There is also the issue of the mortar and pestle
The Mortar and Pestle

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The findings of Dr. Whitney and Dr. Becker, including the artifacts found in the Montezuma Tunnels, were studied by Sinclair (1908) and found to lack any convincing evidence for being of Tertiary age. He found serious problems of provenance and other incongruities that argue against a Tertiary age for them as have other investigators, i.e. Holmes (1899). These finds were also widely discussed in other papers and in the popular press as indicated by the references at the end of this article.

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Sounds like Carl Baugh material.

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One of the "experts" on the show was "Dr." Carl Baugh, a young-earth creationist whose claims are so bizarre that even other creationists find him an embarrassment.

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Another good source of scientific evidence .... Given the source of this material I will take this as common creationist hyperbole based on more misrepresentation of the facts. There is no name, there is no reference to where she was fired from nor any statement from that source for the cause. Classic urban myth stuff. And if she said she dated when the artifacts were made, then she did lie. Not necessarily, the reason for firing her could have been for misrepresenting what she was doing and for whom she was doing it. She could have been fired for lying about the results. But this -- like all creationist nonsense involving misrepresentations -- does not prove anything other than a TV show can show anything they want and some gullible fools will believe them.Dating the rock that stone implements are made from has no bearing on the date the artifacts were made other than setting a rather irrelevant maximum age (after all you don't make stone tools out of sand and wait for it to turn to sandstone and you can't make stone tools out of lava before it cools).Enjoy.Edited by RAZD, : mortar and pestle

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Hi, Jason.I think you may be off-topic here. AF's topic seems to be the origination and meaning of the geologic column -- from the OP: So we have explained the origination and meaning of the geologic column. Do you have anything to say on this topic? It would be nice if you were to respond to the actual posts that we have written in answer to AF.

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Computers have cut-and-paste functions. So does right-wing historical memory. -- Rick Perlstein

how would you date the zone fossils then?

Sik, you need to take your comments to the appropriate thread: fossils and carbon datingfossils

Well, just to get back on track here, you have to understand a couple of things. It's not nearly as simple as the YEC literature would have you think. First, there are two types of dating: relative and absolute. Until radiometric dating, we could only say that one fossil is older or younger than another based on its stratigraphic position. Based on this system there was a pretty complete known procession of lifeforms through time. Exact ages were not known but there were plenty of hints that it was quite a long time. This is/was relative dating.Then in 1906, Rutherford discovered that he could use radioactive decay as a clock to estimate the absolute ages, in other words, how many years ago did a geological event occur. Lo and behold, the relative dating of fossils held true and he was surprised to find ages on the order of 0.5ga for some samples. Since then, we have used both relative and absolute dating to come up with an increasingly clear picture of evolving life communities through time, always reflecting one method back upon the other and checking with different methods. Now we use index fossils to give us dates becuase they are correlated back to certain layers in the rock and, in some places, absolutely dated by radiometric methods.Professional YECs have capitalized on this complex reasoning and verification; and taken advantage of laypersons (such as yourself), to label this "circular reasoning".Now, by way of explanation, a few more items. First, circular reasoning is not always wrong. Second, circularity is not always circular reasoning. In other words if I correlate a stratum back to another with the same fossil assemblage, I might be using a logical loop, but it is not necessarily a fallacy. Professional YECS will rely upon you not understanding this. What I'm saying is that, in using this argument, you are being deceived by a simplistic and clever argument.

Since when did radiometric dating become absolute.

Since the discovery. The difference here is between "absolute" and "relative". The term "absolute" does not mean "certain", it means that a date has a actual value. Sort of like saying 'I am 50 years old', as opposed to 'I am older than dirt'.

If radiometric dating was that accurate it would be more like, I am around 50 years old, take or give a few years. It is not that accurate. So it cannot be absolute.

Did you read my post? "Absolute" in this usage does not connote certainty, or accuracy, or even precision. It connotes a value.

When the word 'absolute' is used, it connotes absolution. It is not absolute, so why use the word? Radiometric dating is a circular reasoning method to determine the unknown age of something. It doesn't actually give you the age, the age is inferred.

However you wish to define or redefine the word is fine with me. All I can tell you is how the rest of the world sees it. If you wish to use your own definitions, you will find it hard to function in the real world. Please explain your definition of circular reasoning and then explain how radiometric dating is circular. When I look at my watch, I am inferring a time of day, also. You have a problem with this?You remain confused. Many YECs have problems with words having multiple meanings. Try this definition from Merriam Webster Online:

6 a: independent of arbitrary standards of measurement b: relating to or derived in the simplest manner from the fundamental units of length, mass, and time

Well, it is what it is, and the connotation is clear. a use of reason in which the premises depends on or is equivalent to the conclusion, a method of false logic by which "this is used to prove that, and that is used to prove thisCarbon 14 dating is used to calibrate tree ring dating and vice versa. When a rock is found in a certain geologic column layer, it is assumed to be a certain age. If radiometric dating is used on the rock to confirm it, if it agrees with the assumption, then it is used. If it doesn't, it is thrown out, something went wrong with the procedure is assumed. Clear examples of circular reasoning. No. Thank you for the lessons.