Dating Methods Controversy Discussion

I thought this would be a great topic of discussion, as I have seen through my readings on the creation/evolution debate this seems to be a point of weakness to the old earthers in many cases.
Give examples of an accurate Dating method that points to an old earth or a younge earth including radiometric dating techniques, or point out flaws in the known Dating methods.The Debate Rages on------------------

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[This message has been edited by TrueCreation, 12-31-2001]

Are we not here to discuss this 'overwhelming evidence of an old earth'? So lets discuss this overwhelming evidence. I know your most likely that kind of person, but in my attempts to discuss this overwhelming evidence of an old earth, all they ever say is that 'the evidence is overwhelming' and often don't give a reference to what the evidence is.

Considering Radio metric dating, I am sure many of you have heard of the assumptions falling in with it, I have never recieved a comment on them accept well thats irrelivant and they never tell you why. I have yet to see someone give an explination on why these assumptions are not assumptions at all.This is some information on Carbon14 Dating Techniques:'The rocks do date the fossils, but the fossils date the rocks more accurately', 'To conclude Carbon14 dating, when something is dated of known age, it doesn't work. When something is dated of unknown age, it is assumed to work.'Carbon 14 does not measure millions of years, at best 50 thousand years, here are the major problems with radioisotope dating for various radioactive elements.1. You have to assume that the influx of cosmic rays from the sun have been constant, can science do that? No it cant, this is an assumption that falls outside the realm of science.2. You have to assume that the earths magnetosphere has always been constant, science cannot say that the magnetosphere has always been constant.-Since we have measured it we have seen that it has been decreasing very rapidly.3. You have to assume the ratio of Carbon14 to Carbon12 today has always been constant. What we know from geology is that one point in earths history there was up to 16 times more carbondioxide in the atmosphere, today, plants are starving from a lack of carbon dioxide they don't have enough carbon dioxide, many scientists say. And so we find that one point in earths history there was much much more carbon dioxide than there is currently in the earth today.4. You have to assume that the earth has not been flooded with a global flood. A global flood would very rapidly burry vast amounts of carbon very very quickly making things look much older than they actually are.5. You have to assume we haven't been burning fossilized fuels, since we have been burning fossilized fuel, its thrown the ratio's off tremendously, they have to do calibrations for that.6. Another problem is the number of nuclei in your sample, when you have a given sample, you can't have once you go over one half life, a large number in your sample, to get an accurate date. If you'll read in your quantum physics books, on the laws built for the natural decay life, its built on large numbers in the sample, that's the only way it works.7. You have to assume the decay rate has been constant, this is very verifiable today, we do basically assume that.8. You have to assume that this rock/fossil or whatever your specimen has been in an isolated system for about 4 billion years, for K, Ar, and other various long range dating methods. You have to assume that none of that rock has been broken off or has been split or cracked in any way. You have to assume that you've had no daughter product in the rock to begin with. You have to assume that things have not been leached out by ground water.When you want a rock dated you have to 'Fill out a paper that says what strata you found it in, what fossils you found near it, and what age it should be. You send it into them and they date it, they get ranges all over the place.' Not consistent at all 'And then they go look it up in the little book about the information that you've given them and then they say, ok this information says that these dates in the book are the right ones and those are the dates they give you.'If you stretched space out, you will have a very fast rapid decay of nuclear isotopesHere are some quotes from John Woodmorappe’s paper, Radiometric Geochronology Reappraised, Creation Research Society Quarterly 16(2)102-29, p. 147, September 1979, that indicate that radiometric dates are scattered, and that anomalies are often not reported: Improved laboratory techniques and improved constants have not reduced the scatter in recent years. Instead, the uncertainty grows as more and more data is accumulated ... (Waterhouse).In general, dates in the `correct ball park’ are assumed to be correct and are published, but those in disagreement with other data are seldom published nor are discrepancies fully explained. (Mauger)... the thing to do is get a sequence of dates and throw out those that are vastly anomalous. (Curtis et al)... it is usual to obtain a spectrum of discordant dates and to select the concentration of highest values as the correct age. (Armstrong and Besancon).In general, strong discordances can be expected among ages deduced by different methods. (Brown and Miller)A survey of the 15,000 radiocarbon dates published through the year 1969 in the publication, Radiocarbon, revealed the following significant facts:27 a. Of the dates of 9671 specimens of trees, animals, and man, only 1146 or about 12 percent have radiocarbon ages greater than 12,530 years.b. Only three of the 15,000 reported ages are listed as infinite.c. Some samples of coal, oil, and natural gas, all supposedly many millions of years old, have radiocarbon ages of less than 50,000 years.d. Deep ocean deposits supposed to contain remains of the most primitive life forms are dated within 40,000 years.Coal from Russia from the Pennsylvanian, supposedly 300 million years old, was dated at 1,680 years.

My Dendrochronology Paper:Don Batten, Ph.D. :'Tree ring dating (dendrochronology) has been used in an attempt to extend the calibration of carbon-14 dating earlier than historical records allow, but this depends on temporal placement of fragments d (from long-dead trees) using carbon-14 dating.'Dendrochronology has been used in an attempts to extend the calibration of carbon-14 dating earlier than historical records allow. The oldest living trees, such as the Bristlecone Pines (Pinus longaeva) of the White Mountains of Eastern California, have been dated by counting tree rings at 4,900 years old. This would mean they pre-dated the Flood which occurred around 4,350 years ago, taking a straight-forward approach to Biblical chronology.However, when the interpretation of scientific data contradicts the true history of the world as revealed in the Bible, then it’s the interpretation of the data that is at fault. It’s important to remember that we have limited data, and new discoveries have often overturned previous ‘hard facts’.Recent research on seasonal effects on tree rings in other trees in the same genus, the plantation pine Pinus radiata, has shown that variation of up to five rings per year can be produced and extra rings are often indistinguishable, even under the microscope, from annual rings.Don Batten :'...evidence of false rings in any woody tree species would cast doubt on claims that any particular species has never in the past produced false rings. Evidence from within the same genus surely counts much more strongly against such a notion.'Creationists have shown that the Biblical kind is usually larger than the ‘species’ and in many cases even larger than the 'genus'.If you considering that the immediate post-Flood world, it would have been much wetter with less contrasting seasons until the Ice Age retreated, large quantities of extra growth rings would have been produced in the Bristlecone pines. Though extra rings are not produced today because of the seasonal extremes. Taking this into account it is no wonder this would bring the age of the oldest living Bristlecone Pine into the post-Flood era.Claimed older tree ring chronologies are dependent on the cross-matching of tree ring patterns of pieces of dead wood found near living trees. This procedure depends on temporal placement of fragments of wood using carbon14 dating, assuming straight-line extrapolation backwards of the carbon dating. Having placed the fragment of wood approximately using the 14C data, a matching tree-ring pattern is sought with wood that has a part with overlapping 14C age and that also extends to a younger age. A tree ring pattern that matches is found close to where the carbon ‘dates’ are the same. And so the tree-ring sequence is extended from the living trees backwards.Though this may sound fairly reasonable, it is a circular reasoning process. It assumes that the approximately correct to linearly extimate the carbon ‘clock’ backwards. There are very good reasons to doubt this. The closer one gets back to the Flood the more inaccurate the linear estimation of te carbon clock will become, perhapsradically so. Conventional carbon-14 dating assumes that the system has been in equilibrium for tens or hundreds of thousands of years, and that 14C is thoroughly mixed in the atmosphere.Now superficially this sounds fairly reasonable. However, it is a circular process. It assumes that it is approximately correct to linearly extrapolate the carbon ‘clock’ backwards. There are good reasons for doubting this. The closer one gets back to the Flood the more inaccurate the linear extrapolation of the carbon clock would become, perhaps radically so. Conventional carbon-14 dating assumes that the system has been in equilibrium for tens or hundreds of thousands of years, and that 14C is thoroughly mixed in the atmosphere. However, the Flood buried large quantities of organic matter containing the common carbon isotope, 12C, so the 14C/12C ratio would rise after the Flood, because 14C is produced from nitrogen, not carbon. These factors mean that early post-Flood wood would look older than it really is and the ‘carbon clock’ is not linear in this period (see The Answers Book, chapter 4).More information - http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/faq/docs/tree_ring.asp

I've listened to and read debates with evolutionists and creationists on the subject of Carbon Dating and other Dating methods and it seems as if the evolutionists don't like to get into that sort of converstion.

Varves are very debunkable, because it has one huge massive problem with it. And that is that it even has fossils in its layers. These layers are supposedly annual rings. But a problem with that is that we find beautifuly preserved fossils in its layers which simply should not be there at all. The animal would have rotted long before a single year could take place, or eaten by a predator.'During the early to mid-1970s enormous concentrations of Presbyornis [an extinct shorebird] have been discovered in the Green River Formation.' A. Feduccia, 'Presbyornis and the evolution of ducks and flamingos', American Scientist 66:299, 1978.Experiments by scientists from the Chicago Natural History Museum have shown that fish carcasses lowered on to the muddy bottom of a marsh decay quite rapidly, even in oxygen-poor conditions. In these experiments, fish were placed in wire cages to protect them from scavengers, yet after only six-and-a-half days all the flesh had decayed and even the bones had become disconnected.The Presbyornis fossils are even more problematic. Birds have hollow bones that tend not to preserve well in the fossil record. How were these bird bones protected from scavenging and decay for thousands of years until a sufficient number of the fine annual layers had built up to bury them? 'Enormous concentrations' of bird bones are a clear indication that something is seriously wrong with the idea of slow accumulation. Instead, such fossils support the notion of rapid burial.Creationist suspicions about the validity of the varve interpretation were confirmed in a study by two geologists published in 1988. Near Kemmerer in Wyoming the Green River Formation contains two volcanic ash (tuff) layers, each about two to three centimetres thick.A volcanic ash layer is an example of what geologists call an 'event horizon', because it is laid down essentially instantaneously by a single event, in this case a volcanic eruption. The two ash layers are separated by between 8.3 and 22.6 centimetres of shale layers.If the standard interpretation is correct, then the number of shale layers between the ash layers should be the same throughout the Green River basin, since the number of years between the two eruptions would be the same.However, the geologists found that the number of shale layers between the ash beds varied from 1160 to 1568, with the number of layers increasing by up to 35% from the basin centre to the basin margin! The investigators concluded that this was inconsistent with the idea of seasonal 'varve' deposition in a stagnant lake.So how were the great thicknesses of finely laminated shale in the Green River Formation laid down? Creationist geologists need to investigate the issue more closely, but there seems to be great potential for developing a catastrophic model for the origin of these sediments. There is a large body of experimental and observational data that shows that varve-like sediments can build up very rapidly under catastrophic conditions. For instance, in 1960 Hurricane Donna struck the coast of southern Florida and deposited a blanket of thinly-laminated lime-mud six inches thick. Another example comes from a Swiss lake, in which up to five pairs of layers were found to build up in a single year, deposited by rapid underflows of turbid water.Given the right conditions, thinly-laminated muddy sediments can and do form by rapid sedimentation. Contrary to claims by old-earth proponents, long periods of time are not demanded.

'cation leeching' I have never heard of this form of dating method, is there a spelling error? I did a search on some search engines for something on 'cation leeching' but didn't get any results. Fill me in on this dating method, I would like to discuss it.

The strength of the earth's magnetic field affects the amount of cosmic rays entering the atmosphere. A stronger magnetic field deflects more cosmic rays away from the earth. Overall, the energy of the earth's magnetic field has been decreasing, so more 14C is being produced now than in the past. This will make old things look older than they really are.
[K.L. McDonald and R.H. Gunst, "An Analysis of the Earth's Magnetic Field from 1835 to 1965," ESSA Technical Report IER 46-IES, 1965, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington D.C., p. 14.]The Genesis flood would have greatly upset the carbon balance. The flood buried a huge amount of carbon, which became coal, oil, etc., lowering the total 12C in the biosphere (including the atmosphere -- plants regrowing after the flood absorb CO2, which is not replaced by the decay of the buried vegetation). Total 14C is also proportionately lowered at this time, but whereas no terrestrial process generates any more 12C, 14C is continually being produced, and at a rate which does not depend on carbon levels (it comes from nitrogen). Therefore, the 14C/12C ratio in plants/animals/the atmosphere before the flood had to be lower than what it is now.Second, the ratio of 14C/12C in the atmosphere has not been constant -- for example, it was higher before the industrial era when the massive burning of fossil fuels released a lot of carbon dioxide that was depleted in 14C. This would make things which died at that time appear older in terms of carbon dating. Then there was a rise in 14CO2 with the advent of atmospheric testing of atomic bombs in the 1950s.[3] This would make things carbon-dated from that time appear younger than their true age.

Would you be willing to present anything that would disprove its feasibility or its in-fact happening? That is why Im doing this forum, not to show everyone I believe this but because It is a good discussion to discuss the evidence, not to say well I believe something.
If you haven't already guessed it, lots of things have changed since before and during Darwins time. And I agree that even today there are Biblical creationists that believe in a 'gap theory' a Blacksea local flood, and an old earth and all. But that is not biblically sound, they just believe that and promote it so that it is easier, and I admit if i had the same ideas It would be 100 times easier for me, but I believe what I believe because that is what I see the evidence points to.

ok let us start with the foundation of relative dating and absolute dating techniques, I will agree with you that dates always match very well, but only the published dates, There have been numerous occasions of dates way out of the ballpark for evolutionists. So what dating method would you like to start with? Patassium Argon, Carbon14, Varves, dendrochronology, etc. Lets start lower and work our way up instead of rushing into saying that they all corroborate each other. Lets discuss the evidence, and exchange ideas.

One thing we know is that the water had to have sufficient oxygen when the Fish were burried, otherwize they wouldn't of been there in the first place. So it had to atleast have oxygen, we know that. Now the expermiment of lowering a fish to the bottom of sea floor is important, that signifies that you had to have rapid burrial of hundreds or thousands of these layers to burry the organism before it would decay. A football being snowed on for 14 days isn't a very good analogy. The football isn't going to decay like a living animal. The experiment was used in a cage so that they would measure how long it takes for the fish to decay without being attacked or eaten by predators. This ofcourse would not be controlable in a natural environment. So we know there were fish, we know there was bacteria anaerobic or not. This presents a problem for slow steady burrial.
If you file off a good amount of the varves and put it in a test tube with water and shake it up you automatically get it sorted into thousands of tiny layers. such a curent as he proposes is not needed in the Flood.

I find it odd how some people attack people for using information from sources other than their own witts. But what I also find odd is that the people who attack them attack them in attempts to make them seem as if what they are saying is irrelivant for various reasons. In this case it is because 'it wasn't published' technically it was published. In 'Creation ex nihilo' though I can tell you won't accept anything unless it is published in a secular source.
I don't copy and paste everything on the pages, I copy information that is needed and I feel is better explained than I can or if I tried to it would sound exactly the same. Also I try not to use information that is of someones personal opinion rather than the scientific aspects of the article. I find it interesting how you chose that specific quote though you missed much more here is the rest of what I 'missed'.============================================THE Green River Formation of Wyoming, USA, is familiar to geologists not only for its well-preserved fossils but also because it has come to the forefront of debate on the age of the earth. Critics of creationism have frequently appealed to the Green River Formation as irrefutable evidence for a multi-million-year-old earth.1, 2, 3The reason is that the deposit is said to consist of several million thin layers of shale, each of which is said to represent a single season's deposition in an ancient lake (the coarser layers in the summer, and the finer layers in the winter). Each summer/winter pair of layers called varves would thus represent a single year. Most geologists claim that this formation alone must have taken several million years to be laid down. Old-earth geologist (and professing evangelical) Dr Davis Young put it like this:'There are more than a million vertically superimposed varve pairs in some parts of the Green River Formation. These varve deposits are almost certainly fossil lake-bottom sediments. If so, each pair of sediment layers represents an annual deposit . . . . The total number of varve pairs indicates that the lakes existed for a few million years.'4
Obviously, this is a serious challenge to those who believe in a young age for the earth as indicated by Scripture (less than 10,000 years).However, the critics (who in any case err by relying on the incomplete data of fallible scientists, rather than the infallible God who knows all data) leave out some vital information that sheds light on the origin of 'varves'. As long ago as 1961, creationists were pointing out features of the Green River Formation that were difficult to reconcile with the conventional varve interpretation.5 For instance, well-preserved fossils are abundant and widespread throughout the sediments. According to two conventional geologists:'. . . fossil catfish are distributed in the Green River basin over an area of 16,000 km2 . . . The catfish range in length from 11 to 24 cm, with a mean of 18 cm. Preservation is excellent. In some specimens, even the skin and other soft parts, including the adipose fin, are well preserved.'6
Another evolutionist stated:
============================================Does this make me a liar? Or any less intelligent? If someone has anything to say to this information I would accept it and respond. This is a Discussion on reality, logicality, feasibility, explination, and ideas on why we think this is this way because of this, not a battle of witts.
If I had to answer your question on 'Why did you specifically exlcude this reference to the infallibility of God mixed with supposed scientific research?' Then I would have to say it would be because of such people that automatically refute the scientific information because an aspect of supernatural opinion is included.
Who ever said that 'Creation ex nihilo' or Their Technical Journal is not peer-reviewed scientific work. Many of the researchers at AiG present their work to secular scientists, young or old earthers. And I would say it is very good information, scientifically sound.
You can have another chance on refuting anything that is in this topic of discussion. After all were here to discuss, not to attack anyone's belief.
If you think it is so weak then why not respond without just saying it's 'weak'. Without you propose a very 'weak' argument if one at all.

Reality: Fossils are rare.
-----Depends on where your digging. But overall I agree Fossils are rare, whether your uniformitarian, or creationary perspectiveReality: Fossilization occurs under unusual circumstances, which is why they are rare.
-----Fossilization requires non-contamination thus requiring rapid burrial, also depending on how 'beautifuly' preserved your fossil is. Such fossils like that are reperesented in varves are beautifully preserved and I would give no more than a couple hours for complete burrial in this area unless someone would be willing to give me reasons why it can take 'years' or be willing to duscuss longer times.Reality: The most common fossils found are of those animals which live in places subject to sudden burial, such as tidal areas. (Think Trilobite)
-----That depends on how high on the 'geologic column' your looking at. And also insects such as a trilobite would reproduce much faster than say a human or a bird, thus there would be many more anyway.Proposition: Worldwide flood caused all fossilization and the geologic layers as we see them today.
-----Sure was (technically not 'All' but 99.9% of them sure)Problem: Why don't we find billions and billions of fossils, especially land animals?
IOW, why are fossils rare?
Who said we don't find billions and billions of fossils? We've found billions of fossils already and we've only looked at about 0.01% of the worlds Geologic layers. We defanantly find millions of land animals, though nothing compaired to fish because fish would have been burried easier because their allready in the water and they travel with 'schools' in the hundreds of thousands. Fossils are rare because it requires rapid burrial. Go to the plains in the middle of the united states, hundreds of thousands of buffalo were killed there but you'll never find any of their bones fossilized, unless someone burried it.Problem: Why are the fossils we have found overwhelmigly weighted towards those that were bottom-dwelling sea creatures?
Because there were countless billions of fish in the sea compaired to land dwelling animals. Fish can produce hundreds more offspring than land dwelling animals. Land dwelling animals don't live in the water so they would avoid being in the water till the last minute (obviously).Problem: Why do we find fossil footprints in so many of the layers? Wouldn't the layers had to have been dried and compactd first?
How would you find footprints in dried and compacted dirt unless it was done by some sort of massive dinosaur or animal, though we find human (sometimes thought to be not so human but whatever it was it was of similar weight) footprints in some layers, these layers had to be somewhat muddy or very moist, these layers weren't rock yet.Problem: In the Grand Canyon, one can see *sucessive* upright forests preserved in the layers.
After the explosion of Mt. Saint Hellens, millions of trees were swept right off the hillsides and were deposited in a lake (forgot the lakes name). What happend to these trees is they stayed afloat ontop of the water, their bark all fell off and fell to the bottom of the lake, then after a while they turned so they faced vertically. After more weeks passed the tree became saturated and sank to the bottom of the lake and stood on end in the sediment. Today you can go there and see that they are in many feet of sediment, standing upright. Now if this senario were to take place in a worldwide flood you would get the same effect, but they would be burried by hundreds of feet of sediment. This is exactly what we see.Conclusion: As creationist Geologists view the evidence, they come to an obvious conslusion.....By faith we trust God and say 'he just made it that way'....wait no that isn't it? Mabye its...according to the evidence we find that it is more than entirely possible that the evidence points to a Global Flood. Yeah that sounds right. And I should thank schrafinator for helping me show it as so.

I agree, but you are missing something, If there were fish in this water, then there had to be sufficient oxygen for this fish to even exist in the water, fish 'breath' persay threw their gills and they 'breath' oxygen, so we have to start out with 'sufficient' oxygen, so now we do have decay.
Would you be able to give an example of anything that could be in the water that would make there be no decay but have fish able to live in the water?

Would you be able to give any reference to this claim, I will take a little bit to look threw some search engines to find something to validate this. You should probley do the same, I am not saying there wouldn't be anything of difference that would effect decay rates but would like to validate it.