Dating Methodology and its Associated Assumptions

Someone else already noted this, but geological periods have no single thickness in the geological column. Rates of deposition vary widely all around the globe, and they can be positive (actual deposition) or negative (erosion). Milton is wrong to say this.He's also wrong to say the Cretaceous lasted 65 million years. It ended about 65 million years ago. It lasted roughly 80 million years.There may be places on earth where Cretaceous layers are 15,000 meters thick, I don't really know, but there are certainly many places where no Cretaceous layers exist anymore. Once again, rates of deposition vary widely all across the globe. Calculating an average deposition rate for a geologial period has no meaning. Milton doesn't have a finding. As already stated, it isn't possible to calculate average deposition rates for geological eras. You can only calculate average deposition rates for specific examples of geological layers. For example, if there is a region where the Cretaceous layers are 15,000 meters thick, then we can divide 15,000 by 80 million (not 65 million as Milton erroneously did) to get about .2 mm/year. (Hmmm. Milton got the same answer using the wrong figures. He must have been provided the numbers by someone else, then garbled them in the paragraph you quoted.) Milton is claiming that geologists believe that the rate of sedimentation has remained constant throughout geological time, but geologists definitely do not believe this. As has been said several times now, deposition rates vary widely around the globe. And they of course vary over time, also. Calculating an average deposition rate for a geological era doesn't have any meaning, and probably isn't possible to determine anyway since it frequently isn't possible to measure how much was eroded, since in most circumstances there's nothing left to measure. The thickness of human hair averages around .05 mm, not .2 mm.Fossilization generally requires quick burial. This doesn't happen that often, which is why fossils are relatively rare compared to the number of creatures that have ever existed. This story seems just transparently silly. Joan Ahrens painted on rocks in art class? She took the rocks and put them in her garden? The rocks were stolen and carted all the way out to the South African bush? Archaeologists discovered them and couldn't tell the rocks were anomalous to the area, couldn't tell they had only relatively recently been placed there, couldn't tell the art was not aboriginal in origin, and couldn't tell the paint was modern? And then at least two labs carbon dated the art to 1200 years? Is there anything you won't believe?The story about Joan Ahrens appears at two websites. This one is from AskMoses.com - Torah, Judaism and Jewish Info - Ask the Rabbi: Hmmm. In one story she's an art student, in the other an art teacher. In one story she produced the art in art classes, in the other her students produced the art, in her garden I guess.The real problem is that your annecdotal stories do not represent legitimate rebuttal to scientifically developed dating methods. If dating methods were truly unreliable or invalid then it would be easy to demonstrate this scientifically.--Percy

When I think the term "lie" is called for, then I will use the term myself. Please do not put words in my mouth. If you ascribe the term to me again then I will have my first occasion to use it at this board.About the "any evidence" part, that's the problem with your story: it offers no evidence. A good deal of our discussions with you seems to revolve around your inability to understand what constitutes evidence. It wasn't just whether she's a teacher or not. It's whether she actually painted them or not. It's that there's no mention of any actual scientists who did this work. It's that there's no reference to where the work was published. There's no way to check out this story. Basically it comes down to a story where some scientists dated aboriginal paintings to 1200 years old that were actually contempary from someone's garden. The stories are inconsistent and unsupported, not to mention difficult to believe. You believe them because you want to believe them, not because they offer any evidence.On our side of the discussion, we can cite actual scientific literature supporting the validity of radiometric dating. If you recall, a couple weeks ago I posted a few pages from Dalrymple's book about the age of the earth that contained a large number of citations, probably at least 30. And that's just a tiny percentage of all the work that's been done on radiometric dating.A convincing case supporting unreliabilty in radiometric dating would have to include citations to the original sources that contain the errors, and citations to how they were shown wrong, including explanations or speculations about the causes of the errors.--Percy

Your charge of fraud is kind of difficult to substantiate in the face of the openness with which it was conceded from the outset that the tuff would be difficult to date. Some dating is as easy as a photograph. Other dating is more like a jigsaw puzzle, and the tuff was like that. The consistency of the dating and the wide agreement about how old things are comes from the reliability of radiometric dating. If it weren't for the consistent benchmark it provides, scientists would long ago have fractured into divergent groups, each with their own set of favorite dates.The only way that agreement could be reached without reliable dating techniques is if there were secret scientific meetings where it was decided how old everything was going to be, and where groups of scientists were assigned to conduct literally hundreds and hundreds of fake field studies so they could write fake papers announcing the predecided dates, and where after decades and decades no one has broken the code of silence. That must seem ridiculous even to you.Radiometric decay is a very reliable clock, and other dating techniques like ice varves, tree rings and ice cores are also very helpful. The real world is a dynamic environment that stirs up all the data, oftentimes making it a real challenge to tease out the correct dates. But scientists and laboratories have all the necessary training and equipment, and this is why there are so many, many scientific papers providing reliable and consistent radiometric dates across all of earth's eras.--Percy

The way to address bias is to present objective evidence. Why don't you begin by replying to MarkAustin's points about Milton's volcano arguments, which is what you said you would do, and to mark24's recent post about dating correlations.--Percy

I already rebutted this in Message 73. You chose not to address the rebuttal in your reply in Message 78, so you shouldn't repeat your claim until you've done so.You're also interpreting the term uniformitarian incorrectly. It refers to the array of forces acting on the earth as being uniform, not the rates of change resulting from those forces. In other words, it doesn't say that the rate of change is constant, but that throughout time it has always been the same forces effecting change. If rain erodes mountains today, then rain eroded mountains billions of years ago. If volcanos are possible today, then volcanos were possible billions of years ago. If comet strikes are possible today, then comet strikes were possible billions of years ago (actually, they were more likely billions of years ago, because the supply of comets isn't infinite and there's fewer of them now then there were then).Depending upon which forces are active at any given time, the rate of change may be fast or slow. A volcano can cause rapid and deep deposition. Annual rainfall causes slow erosion on mountains and slow deposition in valleys, lakes and oceans. And as explained in Message 73, some parts of the world experience erosion, some deposition, and which parts of the world experiences which changes with time. As already explained, Milton's claim that geologists assign average thicknesses to geological eras is wrong. They don't do that.Please address the points in this post and the relevant ones from Message 73 that you ignored earlier before repeating your above quoted claim again.--Percy

Milton is wrong. There is no such uniformity. I suspect that Milton's error derives from what you say next: The Van Eysinga diagram of the geologic column is a composite. That means it was drawn using information of geologic layers from many different regions of the globe. Generalized geologic column diagrams like this are created for purposes of illustration. They shouldn't be interpreted as if this is the way the layers appear everywhere throughout the world.As has already been explained, regions of the world experience varying amounts of deposition and erosion. Mountains will always erode, and so any mountain in the Cretaceous would have negative deposition (i.e., erosion), and could leave no trace whatsoever in the geologic record. A mountain range in the Cretaceous that took 20 million years to erode away would leave no direct record at all. It's existence could only be implied from the type of layers deposited in adjacent regions.So when you look at the Van Eysinga diagram, understand that you're looking at a composite. In some regions of the globe, the Cretaceous is represented in the geologic column by miles-thick layers. In other regions of the globe which were mountainous for long periods in the Cretaceous, it would be represented by much thinner layers. And in some regions of the globe the Cretaceous layers have already been eroded away (New Jersey and Manhattan, for example), and so we can't know how thick the Cretaceous layers might have been.Because of the widely varying thickness of Cretaceous layers in various parts of the world, and because there's no Cretaceous layers to measure in the remaining parts of the world, it wouldn't really by possible for anyone, including Van Eysinga, to assign thicknesses, even average thicknesses, to any geological era, including the Cretaceous.I've endured about as many "Milton says..." answers as I'm going to. If you disagree with the above you must address the points directly and explain where and why you disagree. I think you've misinterpreted things. When someone says that the Cretaceous lasted 80 million years, they mean that the time between its beginning and its end was 80 million years. When they say it was 65 million years ago, they mean that the time between its end and today was 65 million years.The fact of the matter is that the Cretaceous period lasted from roughly 144 million years ago until about 65 million years ago, a period of about 80 million years.Charles Lyell's rough estimate of 80 million years ago for the end of the Cretaceous was a pretty good estimate, being off by only 25% from the 65 million years ago that was established through radiometric dating. The column is not in error. From what you're saying, it sounds like Milton is misinterpreting Van Eysinga's diagram of a composite geologic column. Why don't you scan in the diagram and post it so we can figure out why Milton is getting this wrong. I never said anything about fraud. I warned you before about putting words in my mouth, and there have been other recent cautions, such as about calling people liars. You had better step back inside the Forum Guidelines quick. You are making as big a fog in this thread with Milton as you did in the pyramid thread with Rutherford, and I'm very unhappy about it.This is the last time I'm going to endure a non-answer on the Joan Ahrens story. As I already explained, you have no evidence. What you have is a story for which there are conflicting versions. You have no scientists names, you have no citation of a published paper that has been shown in error. The term usually applied to what you have is "anecdotal". Anecdotal evidence has no standing in court, and it has no standing here. In the future, please confine your arguments to those that are based upon evidence.--Percy

Hi WillowTree,Please respond to Message 178. It explains why Milton is wrong about his uniformity claim. Once you've introduced your key point, namely that radiometric dating is unreliable and that the dates are invented, you must respond to rebuttals. What you're instead doing is repeating your initial points.So far you've offered the tuff and volcanos as evidence. Your interpretation of the evidence has been rebutted, not once but several times. That means you have to address the rebuttals. Repeating your initial point in no way addresses the rebuttals. I don't have the message numbers of the rebuttals, but perhaps the authors will provide them foryou.My Message 178 touches on a the uniformity claim. Please address the points in this post, and please address the specifics of the other rebuttals that other people have provided you.--Percy

Hi WillowTree,Thanks for the effort, but you have responded to a request to address the rebuttals by instead once again restating your initial position.I have only a short amount of time now, so let me just use the KBS tuff as an example. Here's what you say about it in your first two points: People have copiously refuted both these points. It is these refutations you have to rebut. Stating and restating your initial points is not rebuttal.I'd like to request that you go back and find the rebuttals to your points about the KBS tuff and address them. Quote the text that your rebutting, including the message numbers just as you have been, then follow them with the rebuttals explaining why they are wrong.--Percy