Buz's refutation of all radiometric dating methods

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Consistent with the other methods? I suppose that depends on whether its a hit n miss problem and it made a hit here. I don't know.

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EXACTLY!You don't know.If you click on the link I provided along with the specific dates for the French metorite, you will get a whole bunch of different examples.

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To me, this problem is indicative of my statement to Rocky, that there's just too much time involved in these dating games for unknowns to exist, such as this problem until it was discovered.

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What? Do you think you could provide something more than your vague Argument from Incredulity?I mean, you made a solid claim; "The dating methods are bogus."Explain how they are bogus. Please be very specific. Alternatively, retract the claim.

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The same problem with carbon dating can be true with these other methods. How much carbon and nitrogen, etc was in the atmosphere in previous ages? Who knows about the other elements used in dating also. How much or how little of these elements existed and how did they relate to factors involved in the dating processes?

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Since you seem to want to present yourself as the expert on dating methods, Buz, why don't you explain how each of your questions relates to the dating methods. IOW, please explain the problems.

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No body was around millions or billions of years back to sample and test the data. What other factors contaminated what elements at which age period? How can they assume factors present today to be close enough to being consistent at any given age of the past to know for sure.

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Hey, you are finally becoming a question-asker instead of pretending that you have all the answers.'Bout frigging time. A good place to start finding the answers are these two websites:Radiometric dating from a Christian perspective:Radiometric DatingThis is just good information:The Age of the Earth

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Concordance with itself, I would say quite possible if the contamination is consistent for three attempts. Consistent with the other methods? I suppose that depends on whether its a hit n miss problem and it made a hit here. I don't know.

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So, is it true that you live in a world of simple coincidences? Do cause and effect have any meaning to you? Are all phenomena in the universe hit-or-miss? Are you saying that everything is subject to the whim of an omnipotent being who plays tricks?

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To me, this problem is indicative of my statement to Rocky, that there's just too much time involved in these dating games for unknowns to exist, such as this problem until it was discovered.

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Personal incredulity is not evidence, Buz.

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The same problem with carbon dating can be true with these other methods. How much carbon and nitrogen, etc was in the atmosphere in previous ages? Who knows about the other elements used in dating also. How much or how little of these elements existed and how did they relate to factors involved in the dating processes? No body was around millions or billions of years back to sample and test the data. What other factors contaminated what elements at which age period? How can they assume factors present today to be close enough to being consistent at any given age of the past to know for sure.

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So, you are saying that scientists using radiometric dating over the last century didn't think of these problems until YECs came along to enlighten them?

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Ar-ar dating is contaminsted from the earth's mantle so as to render it unreliable.

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Your reference is wrong. Snelling is ... er, how shall I put this ...not reliable.He starts with "According to the assumptions foundational to potassium-argon (K-Ar) and argon-argon (Ar-Ar) dating of rocks, there should not be any daughter radiogenic argon (40Ar*) in rocks when they form. When measured, all 40Ar* in a rock is assumed to have been produced by in situ radioactive decay of 40K within the rock since it formed."That's flat-out wrong.K-Ar dating can be in error due the the effects he discusses, but Ar-Ar dating cannot. Ar-Ar absolutely does not assume that there is no 40Ar present when the rock solidifies; it's an isochron method that compensates for initial daughter. Indeed, the rocks from the historic eruption of Vesuvius that were accurately dated using Ar-Ar contained initial daughter. From Just a moment...:"Laser incremental heating of sanidine from the pumice deposited by the Plinian eruption of Vesuvius in 79A.D. yielded a 40Ar/39Ar isochron age of 192594years ago. Close agreement with the Gregorian calendar-based age of 1918years ago demonstrates that the 40Ar/39Ar method can be reliably extended into the temporal range of recorded history. Excess 40Ar is present in the sanidine in concentrations that would cause significant errors if ignored in dating Holocene samples."It is also possible to estimate the amount of initial daughter argon in the K-Ar method, and this is regularly done, in the few K-Ar analyses that are done today. Those who wish to criticise dating methods should criticise concordia-discordia and argon-argon methods, since those are by far the most widely used mthods today.Of course, the fact that so many K-Ar dates agree with other dates indicates that the problem of initial daughter argon is rare.There's some more discussion of Snelling's terrible article near the end of http://members.cox.net/ardipithecus/evol/lies/lie024.html.

Thanks, JohF. I do believe the Bible is reliable, but I am not a YEC. As I understand Genesis one, I believe it teaches an earth void of life before day one but does not give a time when it was created. There is no measurement given in the Bible for anything before day five, as the sun and moon were created in day four according to the Bible, and I have so stated on other occasions. I do believe that animals an mankind are not over 6000 years old though and that's where my problem arises with the dating methods. Either the Bible is wrong or there's some problems with dating methods of the fossils and petrified bones, etc. So as far as dating the rocks themselves I don't necessarily have a problem. The problem comes with the dates of the fossils found in those sedimentary rocks. I do recognize that YEC believers have a problem making the case for that.I am not an authority on dating methods and must rely on what I can assimilate from others. I still don't understand how fossils can be dated by dating sediments around them as the materials in the sediments that eventually became sedimentary rocks were so much older than the living organisms fossilized in them.

From Buzsaw

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The problem comes with the dates of the fossils found in those sedimentary rocks.

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Message #25 provides a specific example which you need to address. The K/T boundary is a feature in the geological column, it has been identified in many locations. Below this layer are many layers of dinosaur fossils (among others) which accumulated for millions of years before. At or just above the K/T boundary in at least some locations are volcanic ash beds, shocked quartz and tektites. These have been dated radiometrically at about 65 million years old.Are you now going to explain how 6,000 year old dinosaur fossils could be found beneath 65 million year old volcanic rock? No dating of sedimentary rock is involved. Time to put up or shut up.BTW, what evidence would believe you to believe that life has existed on earth for only 6.000 years other than a literal belief in the bible?

Time once again to trot out my favorite introduction to geologic methodology page (covers more than just radionetric dating).The outline of the page "Radiometric Dating and the Geological Time Scale":

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* Introduction
* Background
--- Stratigraphic principles & relative time
--- Biostratigraphy
--- Radiometric dating: Calibrating the time scale
* A theoretical example
* Circularity?
* Specific examples: When radiometric dating "just works" (or not)
* Conclusions
* References
* Other sources
* Acknowledgements

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Also, I rediscovered something I couldn't find a while back - a fairly good coverage of the KBS tuff dating problems (I don't recall if it was in this topic, that this was being discussed):
Specific Examples: When Radiometric Dating "Just Works" (or not)Cheers,
Moose

Buz, Sedimentary rocks are rocks made of particles that become lithified. That is that they become connected in a solid matrix, calcium carbonate for example. It therefore stands to reason that fossil organisms are of the same age as the sedimentary rock that they are preserved in. Can you think of a way to fossilise yourself within solid rock. The emphasis is *within*. These fossils do not lay atop or between strata, but are fully part of the lithified rock itself. How can a fossil possibly be 6,000 yo if you accept that the rock is 251 million years old? How could a lystrosaurus fossil be fully part of a 251 million year old rock when it itself is only 6,000 years old? Think about it. How would you go about embedding yourself in a rocks matrix in order to be fossilised, before lithification, or after?Just so as I know. Are you prepared to accept that the bible is wrong on this?Mark------------------
Occam's razor is not for shaving with.

I think I'll be bowing out of this topic. I can't maintain an objective view any more while debating with Buzsaw, and you guys obviously don't need my help.I might join back in later on. Until then, happy posting...The Rock Hound------------------
"Science constantly poses questions, where religion can only shout about answers."

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I am not an authority on dating methods and must rely on what I can assimilate from others.

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Unfortunately, you've been assimilating from unreliable sources. Woodmorappe, Snelling, Austin, the ICR, AIG, Plaisted ... they've all been caught telling half-truths and outright lies, attempting to spin-doctor reality.However, reality as mainstream science understands it contradicts your beliefs. I don't know what you want to do about that. Yes, science is tentative and changes ... but we know a lot about the age of the Earth and the life on it, and the evidence is clear; the Earth is old, and life on Earth is almost as old. Honest creationist scientists reached this conclusion long before Darwin and long before radioactivity was discovered.

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I still don't understand how fossils can be dated by dating sediments around them as the materials in the sediments that eventually became sedimentary rocks were so much older than the living organisms fossilized in them.

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Mostly, fossils aren't dated by dating the sediments around them, although that's not universal, and progress is being made on dating sedimentary rock.Yup, if you date the grains of a sedimentary rock, you get a date older than the sedimentary rock (usually the date of solidification of the igneous rock from which the sediment eroded). However, the material that cements the grains together solidifed when the sedimentary rock formed, and there are chemical changes and processes going on during lithification ... and that presents opportunities. And, with ion microprobes and suchlike, we can date incredibly small samples.However, most "radiometric dating of fossils" to date has been performed by dating igneous formations above and below the fossil-bearing sedimentary rock. If you find a 62 million year old lava flow above a fossil and a 64 million year old lava flow below that fossil and no evidence of disturbance of the order of the layers, then the most likely explanation is that the sedimentary rock and the fossil are between 62 and 64 million years old. Do this thousands of times, across the world, cross-correlate the results, and you have a pretty solid and unambiguous body of evidence.

Hi Buzz!This is a reply to your Message 25 in the too fast closure of threads thread. Discussion of the issues you raised weren't appropriate for that thread, so I answer here. The Noachic flood and lifespans of hundreds of years certainly qualify as supernatural, but the context is Creation Science, and science requires evidence. Your flood related scenarios have two problems:

• There's no evidence. They're based solely upon your interpretation of Genesis.
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• As far as including the positions of Creation Science in secular venues, while the supernatural could not be part of science class, the evidence that supernatural events had taken place could be presented as scientific mysteries.

The bottom line is that accepting the supernatural is no excuse for not having evidence.--Percy

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Yup, if you date the grains of a sedimentary rock, you get a date older than the sedimentary rock (usually the date of solidification of the igneous rock from which the sediment eroded). However, the material that cements the grains together solidifed when the sedimentary rock formed, and there are chemical changes and processes going on during lithification ... and that presents opportunities. And, with ion microprobes and suchlike, we can date incredibly small samples.

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But if the organic material is young and the inorganic material it is fossilized in is old, wouldn't the organic young permeate the old grains making up some of the "cement" which solidifies the inorganic. And by the same token, wouldn't the old inorganic permeate the fossil, leaving a false appearance of age on the test for the fossil? I don't see how the test can separate the old from the new when they are more or less fused together. For example, it seems that the fat, blood, water, etc from a young dead dinosaur would permeate into the old sediment particles around it tending to make the whole area, including the bones homogenous in the dating process. And if the dino was only five to six thousand years old, it seems that the sediment dating method wouldn't even factor in such a young thing. Where am I going wrong here?

Buz, there are a number of ways things are dated.I think you've been given very clear and simple examples but if not you can easily find them on the web.Basically scenario that occurs often is when some specific datable event occurs, time passes and another one occurs.A dateable event is often a blanketing volcanic eruption that produces a specific layer of ash that can be accurately dated.When one of these dates to say 70 Myr BP and then another is dated to say 60 Myr BP then the fossils between are somewhere between 60 and 70 Myr old.To convince anyone of this dating the researchers must be careful that the dated layers are undisturbed around the fossils and all sort of other care taken. It is when this isn't clear that there are arguments over the dates. Any arguments you can come up with are brought up by researchers in the area before a date is taken as being likely to be correct.It isn't a matter of the sediments that are all mixed up being dated. It is clear pronounced layers that are clearly individual events and dated to be at clearly separate dates (e.g., millions of years apart with dating errors of less than a million years).The problem you are having is that you're going on your own ideas of what is being done and they are not right. Read some of the material that has been referenced to you alreayd.

JonF was talking about some technology under development, not about current dating methods.------------------
No webpage found at provided URL: www.hells-handmaiden.com

Mark No, it's s-o-l-i-d.Mark------------------
Occam's razor is not for shaving with.

First, note that the vast majority of fossils which have been absolutely dated by radiometric methods have not been dated by dating sedimentary rocks; they've been dated by examining solid, unweathered igneous rocks that happen to lie above and below the fossil. If you wish to argue that our determinations of fossil ages are in error by millions to billions of years, this is the kind of dating you should be examining. As someone else pointed out already, most methods of dating of sedimentary rock is new and experimental, and the few currently solidly useful methods aren't widely applicable.

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But if the organic material is young and the inorganic material it is fossilized in is old, wouldn't the organic young permeate the old grains making up some of the "cement" which solidifies the inorganic. And by the same token, wouldn't the old inorganic permeate the fossil, leaving a false appearance of age on the test for the fossil? I don't see how the test can separate the old from the new when they are more or less fused together. For example, it seems that the fat, blood, water, etc from a young dead dinosaur would permeate into the old sediment particles around it tending to make the whole area, including the bones homogenous in the dating process. And if the dino was only five to six thousand years old, it seems that the sediment dating method wouldn't even factor in such a young thing. Where am I going wrong here?

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It appears that you are going wrong in not having the slightest conception of how the methods might work. No offense meant, the vast majority of people in this world don't have the slightest conception of how the methods might work, and they can be good people and lead happy lives in spite of that.I don't intend to write the book that would be required to get you a real understanding. And the book doesn't exist because the information is so new it's only in the technical literature. And I don't understand it well enough to teach it.But, metaphorically looking at it from 50,000 feet, radiometric dating methods work by measuring amounts and ratios of various elements. The methods work because the amounts and ratios change in certain ways over time before the rock solidifies (or the "cement" lithifies sedimentary rock) and change in other ways over time after the rock solidifies (or the "cement" lithifies sedimentary rock). One major source of the differences is the fact that atoms are more mobile in liquids than they are in solids. The source of the atoms just doesn't matter. It doesn't matter whether the atoms came from dinosaur blood or came in dissolved in the interstitial water or were leached out of the grains that were being lithified; what does matter is that there's different characteristics of the pre-lithification and the post-lithification state.There's a brief Web description of one technique under development: dating grains of xenotime that grow on zircons that are just about to be incorporated into a sedimentary rock. See R&D Development of a Breakthrough Method for Dating Sedimentary Sequences: U-Pb SHRIMP Dating of Diagenetic Xenotime