[QUOTE]Originally posted by EvO-DuDe:
[b]that different dating techniques give totally random dates when dating the same rock[/QUOTE]
[/b]
Not correct, unless the sample is contaminated. Different techniques will NOT give identical dates however. Each method has it margins of error and I have seen this useds to create the illusion that the methods don't line up. For example, I've seen it claimed that two dates are millions of years off and so the radiometric dating methods are unreliable. What isn't explained is that material being dated is 300 million years old, so a few million years is only a percent or two of the date-- well within the method's margin of error.
Also remember that if possible many different methods are used so that some of these errors can be averaged out.
[QUOTE][/b]that radioisotope dating is based on several assumptions[/b][/QUOTE]
It is. It is based on the assumption that things work in the past like they work now. Most of science depends on this assumption as well. In the case of radiometric dating, the rates of radioactive decay are assumed to remain constant.
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and that geologists have a fixed idea in their minds about how old a rock is from the strata it's found in
I'm sure this is true, but it doesn't effect the outcome of the lab tests.
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and if they date it radiometrically and the date is different from what they thought it would be, they just throw the rock away saying the date is meaningless.
Creationists would like you to think that geologists are selecting dates from a wide range of possibilities-- selecting the five dates they want from the hundred they don't want. It doesn't work that way. There will always be anomalous results, those are discarded. Think about it. Twenty results come back within 2% of each other. Two results come back wildly different. Which date makes sense?
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