Age Correlations and an Old Earth

You might have misinterpreted something in Message 1, because this wouldn't be a valid conclusion from the information provided. Determining a minimum age does not bound the maximum age. I hope no one here ever asked you to just "believe" there are no problems with dating methods. If memory serves me correctly, you've already participated in threads where the very real difficulties of radiometric dating were discussed, along with detailed explanations of isochron methods and the high degree of agreement among the different methods.The strength of your position is measured not by how persistently you hold your point of view, but by how persuasive it is to others. Even if Humphreys' and Snellings criticisms were 100% dead-on accurate, they amount to only two tiny datapoints against a mountain of evidence for an ancient earth. So at best they qualify as scientific mysteries, and at worst they're just wrong, which they are.The challenge for evolutionists isn't to persuade Creationists they're wrong - that isn't a reasonable expectation. Evolutionists can do no more than clearly describe and explain the evidence, and whether Creationists accept it or not is up to them. Evolution could only be threatened if Creationists were able to present valid scientific evidence for their position. If Humphreys and Snelling had legitimate scientific issues they would bring them to scientific venues instead of Creationist ones, and their "science" would be able to get a hearing anywhere in the world regardless of religion instead of just in conservative Christian venues.--Percy

Back in Message 23 I suggested that you might be misinterpreting something, because your conclusions didn't follow from the provided information. You didn't reply to that message, so since you're repeating the same mistake I'd like to make the point a little more forcefully this time: Your conclusions not only don't follow from the evidence, they are contradicted by it. You'll have to explain how you conclude fossils are not millions of years old from the lake varve evidence, which by simple logic cannot place an upper bound on fossil ages in general.Are you perhaps thinking of fossils found in the lake varves? Most certainly that would date those fossils to the same age as the varve, which would be only thousands of years, but would say nothing about the age of fossils found elsewhere. Just as fossils found in a lake varve can be assumed to be as old as the varve, fossils found in other types of geological layers can be assumed to be as old as the layer. In the case of many fossils, that would be millions of years old.If you prefer to believe that dating methods are unreliable and not to be trusted on the basis of unscientific claims by Humphreys and Snelling then I don't think we'll be able to change your mind. But because there is no supporting scientific evidence, Creationists like Snelling and Humphreys are not able to have any influence on science. That is why you have been reduced to speculating about possible correlations with other factors, such as ¹⁴C absorption by fossils and ground water movements. If you were right then it wouldn't be Abby providing a varve correlation graph, but instead you providing a ground water or ¹⁴C correlation graph. But you have no graphs, because Snelling and Humphreys and others like them have no evidence, because the correlations you wish for do not exist.Since you say it one more time, I thought I'd hit this point one more time: Abby was not saying that the fossil record is not millions of years old. You won't find fossils millions of years old in lakes only thousands of years old.--Percy

Hi, Whatever!One point that keeps getting repeated is the correlations of ¹⁴C dating. Your possibility of storms causing multiple varve layers has at least a couple of problems. One is that we already know that storms in modern times do not cause additional layers, so you must figure out why that might have been different in the past. Another is that the layers have been correlated (there's that word again) with climate patterns and seasons, things that storms cannot imitate. But your biggest problem is explaining how a storm on a lake in Japan causes additional tree rings in trees halfway around the world, because that's part of the correlating data, too.--Percy

Dude, you're just adding details to a speculation already shown to have serious problems. The process you describe is not observed happening today, and the annual layers being laid down today one per year are pretty much the same as those laid down thousands of years ago. You need to explain why it doesn't happen this way today but is still the same as long ago when this did happen. Pollen is of all different sizes and densities, but the pollen in the varve layers is not stratified according to either one, but according to whether it is spring or not. It's very rare to have more than one tree ring per year. And many per year simply never happens, but that's what you require. But most importantly, you're still failing to address the correlation. Even if you're suppositions were correct (despite all the opposing evidence and complete lack of supporting evidence) and it were possible for many varve levels and many tree rings to happen every year, you still have no way of explaining the correlations. For your scenario to be correct, a storm on a lake in one part of world would have to cause a tree ring to grow in another part of the world.I tried to make sense of the rest of your post, but the lack of sentences and paragraphs made most of it just run together. What you're doing is speculating, not theorizing. And since there is little hard evidence that you're willing to accept, your speculations have little to no correspondence to the real world.--Percy

So all knowledge not yet presented to Whatever is pure speculation? I don't think a productive discussion can emerge while you hold to this position.A healthy skepticism is to be encouraged, but you seem to reject everything, even that varves are laid down one per year. I wonder if consecutive annual cores from the last 20 or 30 years were placed in front of you showing one layer added every year if you'd reject even that.That varve layers are laid down one per year has been well known for far too long to be the topic of any recent research, just like you won't find any recent research on how prisms work or objects fall.Until there is at least some evidence you'll accept there is little point to this discussion. In case you decide to change your approach, here's a little more about varve layers from the article Atmospheric Radiocarbon Calibration to 45,000 yr B.P.: Late Glacial Fluctuations and Cosmogenic Isotope Production originally cited by Abby: Here's some specific information about varve characteristics from another of Abby's cites, Radiometric Dating: The article states that qualifying lakes satisfy some specific requirements, such as that the layers not be disturbed once deposited. Your position requires that scientists ignore a requirement they themselves specified, or that they're purposefully misrepresenting the facts. A productive discussion is unlikely to emerge if you really believe scientists are either boneheaded, dishonest, or both. If this is really the basis for your position then it might make more sense if you went to Is It Science? and opened a thread about scientific dishonesty and stupidity.--Percy

Are you referring to Whatever's skepticism that varves are laid down one per year? If so, you might want to actually provide the links along with short excerpts. Whatever might not be able to find this information on his own.--Percy

Of course not. I didn't say the documentation doesn't exist. It most certainly exists. And more evidence is gathered everytime another core is drawn. But no one examines this evidence trying to establish the periodicity of varves, because this research was done long ago and is no longer readily accessibly. For example, here's a short excerpt from Changes, the first result of a Google on "varve deposition periodicity": Unless you have access to a university library, you're not going to find "Stokes, 1964", just as you're not going to find papers on prisms bending light and falling objects. But if varves are not annual then none of the subsequent varve studies establishing the correlations would have happened, unless scientists are incredibly dunderheaded or are lying. I think that this is what you actually believe, and that you take this approach of not accepting the word of any scientist across a broad range of issues, and that you should be posting to the Is It Science?. Ignorance isn't really a valid debate tactic.--Percy

Everyone is telling you you're not addressing the correlation. Your scenario requires that a storm on a lake in Japan lay down a varve layer at the same time as a tree ring grows halfway around the world. How do you explain this, especially given that the correlation isn't between one varve and one tree ring, but between thousands of varves in the same order with the same ¹⁴C characteristics as thousands of tree rings, all in different parts of the world with different weather?The varve, glacier layers, and tree ring data are studied not because of their relevance to the Creation/evolution debate, but for scientific and historical reasons, such as improving dating accuracy (which helps many fields, including dating Biblical archeological sites where your fellow evangelicals seem to have little problem accepting ¹⁴C dating) and understanding climatic history. Scientists did not go looking for the correlations hoping to prove an ancient earth. On the contrary, simple logic required the correlations be there, it would have been surprising and very puzzling had they not been there, because the experience of everyone everywhere is that the annual climatic cycle leaves behind evidence, tree rings being the one known for long before the modern scientific era. It just so happens that the data from this scientific work is relevant to discussions like this because it contradicts young-earth scenarios.The data we've been describing for you is relevant because it is correlated, something that could not happen by chance. Any valid alternatives must explain the correlations, not ignore them.By the way, I'm having more and more difficulty making sense of your messages because of the run-on sentences.--Percy

But you're unsure because you're not familiar with the data. It isn't that you've looked at the data and found it inconclusive. It's because you don't yet understand it. For example, you say: What we've described for you is not chance similarities. The same pattern of ¹⁴C changes is seen in varves and tree rings, and they correlate with the pattern of climatic changes recorded in glacial layers. This is because each of the thousands of varve layers, tree rings and glacial layers happened at the same time during the same year. Makes perfect, logical sense and is consistent with what is happening today. The tree rings and lake varves formed this year will record the current ¹⁴C level, just as they have done for tens of thousands of years (and, of course, for much longer, but ¹⁴C dating isn't much good past 50,000 years), and they will correlate with the glacial layers laid down this year (if any, since we seem to be in a global warming trend).You, on the other hand, say they correlate by chance, even though they are due to unconnected random events like storms and local climatic conditions, and even though happened at different times and at different rates. That such random unconnected events could produce the observed correlations has a probability very close to zero. I think it's been explained many times now that a varve layer consists of sublayers that differ according to season and so describe a pattern. Sediments layed down suddenly in a storm deposit according to size and density, not according to season, and each varve layer consists of the exact same sublayers repeated year after year that could not have happened in a storm, and that we observe happening today. Here are the types of layers laid down in a varve during the year (this information is from one of the links in an earlier message):

• Mineral-rich deposits in the spring because of inrushing water from the winter melt in streams.
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• As spring moves into summer, different pollen types in an order that corresponds to the order that these pollens emerge during the growing system (yet another correlation).
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• As fall moves into winter more of the material is organic.

I think I agree with RAZD. You don't seem to understand the meaning of the word correlation. If you roll two dice, they're uncorrelated. If you repeatedly roll the dice, the number that comes up on one will have no correspondence to the number that comes up on the other. But if when you roll the dice the same number keeps coming up on both dice, then they are correlated. This doesn't happen by chance. Even if you can't figure how this is happening, you still know it isn't just dumb luck and that the dice are in some way connected, i.e., correlated. Sorry, I couldn't make sense of this, too many commas. Could you try again, perhaps with sentences this time? The actual link to the page containing your Walt Brown quote is In the Beginning: Compelling Evidence for Creation and the Flood - FAQ2.html. Perhaps you could be more specific next time? There is no truth to this. Walt Brown's single citation in this passage is this: Here's a link to the paper: Geoscience Research Institute | I think we need more research on that...This is the first sentence: This isn't a scientific paper, it's a religious apologetic pretending to be science. It wasn't published in a science journal, but at the Geoscience Research Institute's website ("Integrating Science and Faith"). The institute itself is affiliated with Loma Linda University, a 7th Day Adventist institution.Is there any way to persuade you to use sentences and paragraphs? I feel like I'm deciphering code.--Percy

I agree with Nosy, your post reads like gibberish, but I don't think you've been provided very clear information. Maybe I can make a little sense out of this: You must have been absent the day they covered punctuation in school. I think you may be thinking of Walt Brown's claim that ¹⁴C ages increase exponentially with depth. First, Walt Brown's claim is false. ¹⁴C ages do not increase exponentially with depth. Second, I think thorium may have originally been mentioned in this thread as a contributor to trace amounts of ¹⁴C in coal (which are ancient deposits), and in conjunction with higher levels of radioactive materials. Walt Brown was writing not about coal, but about datable organic materials, and there isn't normally enough uranium-thorium in old organic material like dead plants to affect dating.Perhaps you could try again, or maybe follow Nosy's suggestion of asking questions?--Percy

I'm tied up and can't participate right now, but I just wanted to say thanks for the punctuation and grammar improvements.--Percy

There are probably lots of references out there, but here's one that I like: http://www.rlaha.ox.ac.uk/orau/calibration.html#tree_rings--Percy

Here are a bunch of dates billions of years derived through radiometric dating of rocks in Greenland and from the moon. They're JPEGs, so I include them in this message:

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--Percy