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Ryan Merkle | |
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Author | Topic: Reliable Radiometric Dates as an Artifact of Assumptions | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Itinerant Lurker Member (Idle past 1410 days) Posts: 67 Joined: |
I've been discussing, among other things, radiometric dating with another poster on another forum for quite some time now and have come to the point where I no longer am able to answer some of the questions put to me about the specifics of the process and equipment involved. I've always enjoyed lurking around and learning from the expertise of the EvC forums and was hoping some of you guys could take this and run with it. I don't know if cross-forum discussions are appropriate but I thought I'd give it a shot.
From here: quote:
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Thanks. Lurker Edited by Itinerant Lurker, : No reason given.
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Admin Director Posts: 12709 From: EvC Forum Joined: |
I'll promote this so people can either make suggestions here or participate over there.
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Admin Director Posts: 12709 From: EvC Forum Joined: |
Thread copied here from the Reliable Radiometric Dates as an Artifact of Assumptions thread in the Proposed New Topics forum.
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Coyote Member (Idle past 860 days) Posts: 6117 Joined:
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I do a lot of radiocarbon dating and could answer any specific questions you have on that method.
In the mean time, here are some good links that might help you out: ReligiousTolerance.org Carbon-14 Dating (C-14): Beliefs of New-Earth Creationists Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.
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NoNukes Inactive Member |
The short answer is that Ryan is wrong about the point of disagreement.
I don't see any way you'll ever make any progress arguing with Ryan R. RR believes that scientists are perpetrating a fraud in order to discredit the Bible. Since he believes in a scientific conspiracy to throw out Bible supporting data, he'll never believe he's being shown all of the data, and he'll never accept that any data he collects as a layperson that appears to support a 6000 year old earth is wrong. My suggestion: Don't buy Ryan any lab equipment. Instead ask him why the RATE group's study for ICR shows that billions of years worth of radioactive decay have occurred. ICR simply insists that the decay must have happened in a couple of days. http://www.icr.org/article/rate-group-release-book/ The truth is that no scientist is doing work aimed at verifying or rejecting literal Bible dates using carbon or any other radiometric dating. Thus they wouldn't conspire to hide the data. Even ICR does not seem to attack the data, but instead attempts to attack scientific interpretation. There is no scientific conspiracy and very few if any seem to believe in a conspiracy that works the way Ryan R suggests. There is plenty of irrefutable evidence that the earth and the universe are billions of years old, that the human race is many tens of thousands of years old, and that dinosaur fossils are on the order of hundreds of millions of years old. The evidence for the age of the universe in particular has absolutely nothing to do with radiometric dating. Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.
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Percy Member Posts: 19906 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 8.1 |
You might have meant to express this a bit differently? Radiocarbon dating does play a non-trivial role in dating Biblical sites and some types of artifacts, and these results are often used to argue the accuracy of Biblical accounts and chronologies. --Percy
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NoNukes Inactive Member |
You mean in some way that isn't competely wrong? I should have said that secular scientists are not doing work for the purpose of discrediting the Bible's creation account. Data that are Genesis friendly would not be rejected just because they support YEC chronology. Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.
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Itinerant Lurker Member (Idle past 1410 days) Posts: 67 Joined: |
I had previously pointed out that it seemed pretty ridiculous to say that scientists the world over were dishonestly conducting radiometric dating, to which I received the reply that essentially they weren't doing it intentionally. . .but were simply somehow unaware of their own bias that was skewing their results. . .somehow. . .or something.
The claims being made essentially are that: -Scientists aren't calculating the margin of error for radiometric dating acurately -Scientists are ignoring anomalous dates that don't agree and thus misrepresent the data -Scientists aren't calibrating their testing equipment correctly The most frustrating part of this is that no evidence supporting any of these suspicions is ever given, but because I'm unable to talk about how margins of error are calculated or how this or that piece of equipment is calibrated from my own personal storehouse of knowledge it is assumed that thus the answer is unknown and all radiometric dating techniques are unreliable. While I realize that this is a completely ridiculous way to argue something, I would still like to know if there is someplace I could go to find some of this technical information. One of the things that obliterated my own past YEC views was in seeing how scientists weren't trying to hide their work but where, in contrast, actively publishing not only their conclusions but also their methods and results specifically so that any other scientists could repeat their work and reach the same conclusion. Error is best remedied with knowledge, and hey I might even learn something new. I know this isn't exactly how threads typically go down here but I appreciate the help nonetheless. Lurker Edited by Itinerant Lurker, : No reason given. Edited by Itinerant Lurker, : No reason given.
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Coyote Member (Idle past 860 days) Posts: 6117 Joined: |
Here's what you might try.
The largest commercial firm doing radiocarbon dates in the US is Beta Analytic. They have processed several hundred samples for me, and I have found the staff there very knowledgeable and very willing to help. They have a website: There is a "Contact us" button on that site, giving an email address and a phone number. I would be willing to bet that they would answer your questions if you kept them concise and somewhat limited. It might help if you read all of the links I posted upthread and became very familiar with their website, which has a lot of good technical information. This way you have a fighting chance at understanding their answers. This is only one form of radiometric dating, but it is the one I am familiar with. The information you get from these links and from Beta Analytic won't convince your creationist debating partner though. He is most likely not relying on evidence for his doubts, so all the evidence you could ever provide won't answer his questions. In other words, it's a fool's errand, but at least you'll know that you tried. Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.
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Percy Member Posts: 19906 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 8.1 |
This is cliché, of course, but still worth asking: how do you expect to reason someone out of a position they never reasoned themselves into. The person you're discussing with isn't seeking knowledge, but protection from it.
--Percy
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olivortex Member (Idle past 3532 days) Posts: 70 From: versailles, france Joined: |
Yes, the same dialogue of the deaf.
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NoNukes Inactive Member |
Doesn't this suspicion require that there be essentially no scientifically trained folks that are Christians? Surely not every scientist could have this bias.
With respect to calibration and margins of error, the claim is pretty silly for dates assigned to the age of the earth and the age of dinosaurs. No error bars are going to bring those dates inside of 10,000 years. My understanding is that valid U238 dates, for example, are always going to be greater than about 1 million years.
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Itinerant Lurker Member (Idle past 1410 days) Posts: 67 Joined: |
Sweet. I think I've gotten the issues down concisely as they're going to get over there:
I'm going to try and turn this into a sensible question to email off to Beta Analytic, are there any other suggestions anyone has on where to look for the above information? Thanks. Lurker
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Coyote Member (Idle past 860 days) Posts: 6117 Joined: |
Here is a link to a page at Beta Analytic that should be of help:
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Itinerant Lurker Member (Idle past 1410 days) Posts: 67 Joined: |
I've used this graphic in the original thread, as well as elsewhere, as an example of age-dating correlations:
Am I missing something or does the source for this chart pretty much contain everything being asked for in regards to data (after several disappointments I'm giving up on the whole "equipment calibration" thing, it doesn't seem very realistic for any organization to give out that kind of technical information for an internet discussion)? I'm not going to pretend that some of that doesn't go over my head, but it seems pretty explicit in how each process was done as well as providing the data at the end. Am I missing something? Lurker Edited by Itinerant Lurker, : No reason given. Edited by Itinerant Lurker, : No reason given.
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