Why is radiometric dating the most reliable method

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The overall reliability of radiometric dating was addressed in some detail in a recent book by Brent Dalrymple, a premier expert in the field. Perhaps some would argue that these specimens - huge skeletons of dinosaurs, blocks from ancient shell beds containing hundreds of specimens, delicately preserved fern fronds — have been manufactured by scientists to confuse the public. In addition to the fact that these methods all have problems, there are additional problems with radiometric dating.

All of the half-lives are north to better than about two percent except for rhenium 5%lutetium 3%and beryllium 3%. The plants and animals buried in the recent Flood could account for a large change in the ratios and demonstrate the false assumption of carbon equilibrium. Bound-state beta decay A special prime of beta decay in which an electron is given off by the nucleus, and the electron ends up in an inner orbital, or electron shell. Does that make these studies fatally incomplete. Why is there substantial C-14 in coal beds and diamonds that should be C-14 solo, and how can we know rock samples are not contaminated from excess Ar. What do I mean. Other radiometric dating methods There are various other radiometric dating methods used today to give ages of millions or billions of years for rocks. In some instances there will between be two plateaus, one representing the formation age, and another representing the time at which the heating episode occurred. That allows carbon dating to be used to cross-check, say, tree riings and coral growth rings. The moon is larger than the largest asteroid.

If it has a hole allowing the sand grains to escape out the side instead of going through the neck, it will give the wrong time interval. Radiometric dating has been carried out since 1905 when it was by as a method by which one might determine the.

Choose country - A great number of other Christians are firmly convinced that radiometric dating shows evidence that God created the Earth billions, not thousands, of years ago. And the composition is a characteristic of the molten lava from which the rock solidified.

Pro Radiometric dating is the method for establishing the age of objects by measuring the levels of radioisotopes in the sample. One example is carbon dating. Carbon 14 is created by cosmic rays in the upper atmosphere. It decays to nitrogen 14 with a half life of 5730 years. C14 is continually being created and decaying, leading to an equilibrium state in the atmosphere. When the carbon dioxide, containing C14 as well as stable C12 and C13, is taken in by plants it is no longer exposed to the intense cosmic ray bombardment in the upper atmosphere, so the carbon 14 isotope decays without being replenished. Measuring the ratio of C14 to C12 and C13 therefore dates the organic matter for periods back to about eight half-lives of the isotope, 45,000 years. After a long enough time the minority isotope is in an amount too small to be measured. There are about two dozen decay pairs used for dating. Uranium 235 decay to lead has a half-life of 713 million years, so it is well suited to dating the universe. Some radiometric dating methods depend upon knowing the initial amount of the isotope subject to decay. For example, the C14 concentration in the atmosphere depends upon cosmic ray intensity. To take this into account, a calibration curve is developed using other dating methods to establish the C14 levels over time. Other methods do not require knowing the initial quantities. For example, potassium decays into two different isotopes of argon having different half-lives. It does not use the original amount of potassium. Since carbon dating depends upon variable cosmic ray intensity, a calibration curve is assumed to be applied to account for that. The actual accuracy of radiometric dating is about 2%, but there is no point in splitting hairs for this debate as to whether it is 2% or 3%. An error of 90% would, for example, still disprove Young Earth Creationism. There are three reasons why radiometric data is known to be accurate: 1. It depends upon radioactive decay, which is known to be extremely stable, not influenced my chemical processes, and which can be measured quite accurately. Thus the physical principle of the method is well established. The dates obtained by radiometric dating are verified by independent methods, including dendrochronology tree rings , varve chronology sediment layers , ice cores, coral banding, speleotherms cave formations , fission track dating, and electron spin resonance dating. The multiple checks verify that the rate of isotope decay does not change over time, and it verifies the accuracies of the methods. For dating back to about 35,000 years, sediment layers are precise. Sediments include different types of pollen depending upon the season. Consequently, individual years can be identified by season, so there is no possibility of layers being confused. Sediment columns giving an unbroken history for more than 25,000 years have been identified in about 30 locations around the world. Coral growth patterns are also seasonal and provide a long independent date history. The coral record verifies that radiometric methods are accurate. The dates obtained by different radiometric isotope pairs cross-check each other. For the purposes of assessing accuracy, each of the methods is assumed to be applied in accordance with the established methods and technology. By analogy, a stop watch will not keep accurate time if it is not wound, if it is not in good repair, or if the operator forgets to press the button. Methods are precise insofar as they are properly used. Why would an error in radiometric dating correspond to errors in the other methods so that they all track? In fact, they track because radiometric data is accurate. Since then, geologists have made many tens of thousands of radiometric age determinations, and they have refined the earlier estimates. A key point is that it is no longer necessary simply to accept one chemical determination of a rock's age. Age estimates can be cross-tested by using different isotope pairs. Results from different techniques, often measured in rival labs, continually confirm each other. Every few years, new geologic time scales are published, providing the latest dates for major time lines. Older dates may change by a few million years up and down, but younger dates are stable. For example, it has been known since the 1960s that the famous Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary, the line marking the end of the dinosaurs, was 65 million years old. Repeated recalibrations and retests, using ever more sophisticated techniques and equipment, cannot shift that date. It is accurate to within a few thousand years. With modern, extremely precise, methods, error bars are often only 1% or so. Michael Benton, Chair in Vertebrate Paleontology at the University of Bristol, UK, author of 30 books on dinosaurs and paleobiology. The resolution is affirmed. Con First, I would like to thank Pro for challenging me to this debate. The sand grains fall from the upper chamber at a constant rate, said to be analogous to radioactive decay. If all the sand grains started in the upper chamber and then the number of sand grains were measured in the two chambers after some time elapsed, provided the rate at which the sand grains fall has been measured, simple mathematics can be used to calculate how long the hourglass has been in operation, and thus, the time when the process started. The number of atoms of the daughter isotope originally in the rock or mineral when it crystallized can be known. In other words, it is assumed that we can know the initial conditions when the rock or mineral formed. The number of atoms of the parent and daughter isotopes have not been altered since the rock or mineral crystallized, except for radioactive decay. The rate of decay of the parent isotope is known accurately, and has not changed during the existence of the rock or mineral since it crystallized. Thus, it logically follows that these assumptions are, strictly speaking, not provable. THE PITFALLS IN THE RADIOACTIVE DATING METHOD: 1. Potassium-Argon and Argon-Argon Methods Both these methods suffer from the same problems, because they are both based on the radioactive decay of potassium K to argon Ar , a gas which does not bond with other elements. As my opponent pointed out it is assumed the initial quantity of the daughter isotope Ar is not needed because it does not bond easily with other elements and, therefore, when the rock forms all the initial Ar would have escaped. In other words, it is assumed there was no initial Ar at the time of formation. Helens a new lava dome began forming. Similarly, andesite from the 1954 lava flow from Mt. The diamonds could not be older than the earth itself! The obvious conclusion most investigators have reached is that excess argon had to be present and they did not completely degas when these rocks and diamonds formed. Radiocarbon Dating Method There are two basic assumptions in C-14 dating. First, the cosmic ray influx has to have been essentially constant my opponent already mentioned this and the C-14 concentration in the carbon dioxide cycle must remain constant. To these two assumptions we can add the assumption of the constancy of the rate of decay of C-14, the assumption that dead organic matter is not later altered with respect to its carbon content by any biologic or other activity, the assumption that the carbon dioxide contents of the ocean and atmosphere has been constant with time, the assumption that the huge reservoir of oceanic carbon has not changed in size during the period of applicability of the method, and the assumption that the rate of formation and the rate of decay of radiocarbon atoms have been in equilibrium throughout the period of applicability. Nevertheless, it has been maintained that the method has been verified beyond any question by numerous correlations with known dates. So the major assumptions in the method would, therefore, appear to be valid for only the period after 400 BC. My opponent, therefore, must explain the substantial amount of C-14 found in coalfields that are millions of years old and diamonds that are billions of years old. Three of the coal samples were from Eocene seams, three from Cretaceous seams, and four from Pennsylvania seams Uniformitarian ages ranging from 40 Ma to 350 Ma. Yet they all yielded dates around 50,000 years. The diamonds came from underground mines where contamination would be minimal. However, diamonds are the hardest natural mineral and extremely resistant to contamination. These diamonds are considered to be 1-3 billion years old according to uniformitarian geologists, so they should have been radiocarbon-dead. Nevertheless, they still contained significant levels of C-14. Given the supposed antiquity of these diamonds, and their source deep inside the earth, one possible explanation for these detectable C-14 levels is that the C-14 is primordial. The presence of detectable C-14 in fossils, which according to the uniformitarian timescale should be entirely C-14-dead, has been reported from the earliest days of radiocarbon dating. This data shows that radiometric dating is unreliable and questionable at best. I have many more examples to share, but space does not permit. I will elaborate in further rounds and I hope to address Pros assertion that independent dating methods correlate with the radiometric dates. Although, by showing that radiometric dating is unreliable on its own terms, any perceived correlation with independent dating methods means absolutely nothing. My sources are in the comment section. Pro In the first round I offered substantial evidence that radiometric data has been used many tens of thousands of times, that the method cross-checks reliably with more than a half dozen other methods, and that the errors are well under 10%, traditionally under 3% and now approaching 1%. Con has only provided evidence that argon dating has some undefined error in some cases, and that a few cases of carbon dating are in error. He offers some unrefereed papers by avowed creation scientists that there are broader problems, but even in those claims, there is nothing that questions the overall statistical accuracy. The arguments are akin to claiming that a wristwatch cannot be used to measure time, because sometimes the battery fails or the display is misread. Errors do happen, but they are well within the claimed error bounds and they are limited by cross-checking. With a wristwatch you check with a different clock, with radiometric dating the checks are with different dating methods and different isotope pairs. Con claims that we cannot know with certainty what the composition of an original sample was. Absolute certainty is not required. Assumptions are made based upon observations. The reliability of the assumptions is ultimately tested by crosschecking to independent dating methods. Radiometric dating is known to be accurate not because it is assumed to accurate, but rather by cross-checking and proving it is accurate. Con is correct that rock samples selected for argon dating cannot have been exposed to air. That is true not only for recent volcanic flows, but with old rocks have fissures allowing air intrusions. One technique is to rely on feldspars formed only at very high temperatures. The error due to air exposure always makes the sample appear younger than it really is. Different grains of rock from the same location may have different exposures to the air due to the pattern of fissures, so a cross-check is to test several samples to ensure a reliable result. In the opening round, I made the caveat that the methods are only accurate when properly applied. There are also a dozen isotope pairs that cross-check argon dating. The reliability of the dating is further enhanced by cross-checking in the same sample. Snelling as to the general unreliability of argon dating. The article cited is in a religious journal, not in a peer-reviewed scientific journal. Snelling is a legitimate scientist who also publishes in peer-reviewed journals. However, he writes in the scientific literature he accepts the accuracy of the standard scientific dating methods. When he writes for his religious audience he denies them. If he had data that would withstand scientific scrutiny, he would publish it in scientific journals. Clearly he does not. Con points out the problem with carbon dating of coal and diamonds. The problem is well known. Coal contains radioactive thorium, and the thorium creates C14 in situ. As a known limitation, it is not particularly troublesome. It is comparable to knowing that a wristwatch won't work properly in high magnetic fields; once one is aware of that, it is readily avoided. Con claims that there is some general problem with the accuracy of carbon dating for dates after 400 BC. Con quotes Whitelaw, a creationist published by a religious press, not by a peer-reviewed scientific journal. Whitelaw supposes that there was no C14 in the atmosphere more than 5000 years ago, so when he scales all the dates according to his theory they are all within 50,000 years. Aside from the theory having no scientific foundation, it is contradicted by all the dating methods that cross-reference carbon dating. One must suppose that trees grew exponentially slower in the past, and so forth, to produce exactly the same errors as the error he supposes. Con cites Bowman, a scientist who vigorous supports the accuracy of carbon dating. The British Museum lab doing carbon dating made some errors during the period from 1980-1984. Bowman discovered and corrected the errors. There was no general problem with radiocarbon dating. In the book by Bowman cited by Con, Bowman writes of errors less than 50 years as relatively easy to achieve, and less than 20 years possible with great care. That was written in 1990. Throughout, Con has refused to confront the central proof that radiometric dating is accurate. That proof is that the dates arrived by radiometry are verified by dendrochronology tree rings , varve chronology sediment layers , ice cores, coral banding, speleotherms cave formations , fission track dating, and electron spin resonance dating. The dates are also verified by independent measurements from other isotope pairs. Why would an error in radiometric dating correspond to errors in the other methods so that they all track? In fact, they track because radiometric data is accurate. Suppose we suspect that Cousin Lenny's watch is in error. How do we verify it? We check it against other clocks. If the other clocks say it is 3 o'clock and Lenny says it is 3:15, we suspect Lenny has a problem. It is theoretically possible that all the other clocks are wrong and have exactly the same error, but it would take a whole lot of explaining as to how that could be the case. A proper case against radiometric dating ought to begin with a comparison to something believed to be more accurate, and a showing that radiometric dating is not within 10% of that more accurate clock in 95% of the cases examined. Con's problem is that all the reasonable scientific comparisons verify that radiometric dating has the accuracy claimed. All Con has done is cite a few limitations on some of the specific methods. It's true that argon dating cannot be used on samples exposed to air. It's true that carbon dating doesn't work on coal that is loaded with radioactive thorium. Scientists are trained to discover such problems and to avoid them. There are analogous problems with applying virtually any measurement technique. We can list pitfalls with using clocks or micrometers or scales or anything else that measures. That is not at issue. The question is what accuracy is achieved despite all the potential problems. The data show that the accuracy is typically 3%, and with modern technology is approaching 1%. Con Again, I would like to think Pro for the opportunity to debate this and for his alacritous response. First, I would like to point out some errors my opponent made in his last response. However, the samples still came back with unacceptable ages. Therefore, the excess argon must have come from some other source. The mantle has been suggested. So there is risk of contamination not just from air, but from some other source. A less than 10 year old sample should have no measurable Ar. I can as easily say talkorigins. Pro also questions A. All Snelling is doing is using language in which that particular audience would understand. The conventional geological community has named the different rock units in the rock record. It doesn't mean he accepts the ages that geologists have imposed on it. If I am going to go on a business trip to Japan I might do well to speak Japanese. Furthermore, Pro cites my sources incorrectly. Whitelaw was not the one who said the 15000 samples dated within 50,000 years. There are no reliable sources that back up that claim. However, the answer to the detection of C-14 in diamonds fits a young earth hypothesis just as good, if not better, than Th creating C-14 which is lacking in evidence. Furthermore, U and Th decay does create Helium. He is the second lightest element and diffuses out of minerals and rocks quickly. They have measured He diffusion rates from Zircons that are supposedly 1. It seems not all dating methods cross-check each other as my opponent asserts. So why do some independent dating methods appear to match? The simple answer is they don't. The conventional geological community has the presupposition that the earth is billions of years old. Olsson, 1970, C 14 dating and Egyptian chronology, in Radiocarbon Variations and Absolute Chronology, Proceedings of the Twelfth Nobel Symposium. True, this quote is from 1970, but why should we believe scientists are any different today? The only way scientists know radiometric dating results are incorrect is because they already had preconceived ideas of the what the age of a rock was. It is the relentless application of uniformitarianism that creates these perceived matches with independent dating methods. It is assumed that tree rings form one a year, but it is actually well known that tree rings can form several in one year depending on the climate the tree is growing in. If we eliminate the uniformitarian philosophy we can see that it makes the assumption of tree rings difficult to prove. Furthermore, the oldest tree, appropriately nicknamed Methuselah, is only 4765 years old according to conventional dating. If the earth is billions of years old why are there not any older trees than a few thousand years old? Varves are conventionally believed to be laid down one a year. However, a 1960 Florida Hurricane deposited a six-inch-thick mud layer with numerous thin laminae Journal of Geology, 75:583-597 and a 12hr flood in Colorado deposited more than 100 laminae Journal of Sedimentary Petrology, 37: 829-851. What would a yearlong global flood do? Coral reef growth is claimed to take long ages to have grown. The Enewetok Atoll in the Pacific Ocean is usually pointed to as an example. Based on these measurements the Enewetok Atoll would have only taken 3400 years to grow. Instead, we impose long ages on coral reefs. Most Speleotherms in modern caves are not growing. However, observations of those still growing have reported growth of stalactites at 7. If these measurements are applied to the Great Dome stalagmite in Carlsbad Cavern, it would have grown in less than 4000 years. Furthermore, radiocarbon ages of speleothems are deceptive, because the carbon incorporated in the speleothem minerals is out of equilibrium with the atmospheric carbon. Absolute dating has proved disappointing. Antarctic ice cores are dated by this method, since the accumulation on this ice sheet is so low that annual layer dating cannot be applied, except in shallow coastal cores with higher snowfall. So, the 420,000 years obtained near the bottom of the Vostok ice core is based on preconceived ideas on the ages of ocean sediment, which is based on the astronomical theory of the Ice Age. In other words, the uniformitarian scientists date the ice sheets to hundreds of thousands of years because they believe the ice sheets are old to begin with. Fission tracks and electron spin resonance is dependent on the rate of decay of isotopes. So of course they match the radiometric dating. If decay had been accelerated in the past so would have fission tracks and electron spin resonance. If someone believes it is 3:15, but observation of other watches show varying times, that person will forcefully set the other watches to 3:15 to give the perception they are internally consistent. Pro This is has been a good debate. I've gotten to revisit many aspects of the science. If radiometric dating were inaccurate, it would be easy to show it. Anyone could have samples dated by various different techniques using different laboratories. Labs performing radiometric dating are on the Internet, and they will provide services to anyone. A double-blind technique could be used to prevent any bias in evaluation. If the dates are inconsistent, then the dating is inaccurate. Scientists have done this many times, and the dates are very consistent. Critics claim the scientists are just pretending there is consistency. If so, critics could run the experiments themselves and show the results they obtained. Critics don't do that. Critics do not even try the simple tests. The technique they use exclusively is to search for uncommon cases of problems in the methods of dating, then claim that the methods have no validity whatsoever in spite of the close agreement achieved 99% of the time. The method critics employ is like searching for broken wrist watches, and upon finding a dozen, then claiming that wrist watches are utterly useless for telling time. Con must prove that radiometric dating produces errors of more than 10% in more than 5% of its uses. Con has provided no statistics whatsoever to counter the statistics in the presented scientific literature showing a general accuracy of 3% and an accuracy approaching 1% using the latest technology. If the methods were not accurate, it would be easy for critics to present contradictory statistical data, but there is none. It is impossible for a flood to produce varve sediments with layers having pollen grains sorted by season in the layers. Sediments in floods may appear in layers, but the layers depend upon materials settling out of the water at different rates. Mixing a solution and having it settle in repeating patterns of spring-summer-fall-winter pollen, each in discrete layers, is an impossibility. No physical mechanism for that has been suggested and none demonstrated. Pollen types and fish scale types in varve columns are used to study past climates. The species of plant or fish present indicates the climate at the time the sediment was deposited. Periods of climate warming and cooling are thus tracked. A great flood would produce a sample of only one climate condition, when the flood occurred. Spectral analysis of sediment layers is also used to count solar cycles, lunar cycles, sunspot cycles, and Milankovitch bands, independently confirming the age of the layers. Varve columns produce the same number of layers, corresponding to the years, at dozens of independent sequences around the world. There is no reason to suppose the number of layers would match globally, as in fact observed. Also, if all the water on earth were added to the oceans it would only make them rise by 220 feet. Many sediments columns have been measured in lake areas more than 220 ft above sea level. Con wrongly claims that the individual layers of ice cores are not counted. The layers are in fact individually counted. In that way, they hope to get a record of hundred of thousands of years reduced to just a few thousand, as they require. These didn't melt it get Flood waters? The way that scientists distinguish years is to measure isotopes that vary with the seasons. Water having one isotope of oxygen evaporates faster than water having another isotope, so the ratio is a proxy for seasonal temperature. Also isotopes of beryllium and chlorine vary with sunspot cycle, but that is a secondary confirmation. In counting tree rings, very rarely, two growth rings can occur in one season. When this happens it is obvious, so accurate counting is not a problem. The reason is that trees die, of course, and ultimately the remains decay. However, the pattern of yearly growth can be correlated between trees in overlapping generations, like matching bar codes. Using that method, tree rings can be used for dating back about 7,000 years in North America and more than 10,000 year in Europe. Recent lava flows producing ancient dates is traced to the recent flows having incorporated old olivine. If Snell's critiques were valid general criticisms he would publish them in the peer-reviewed literature rather than unreviewed religious tracts. He could not get away with the generalization in a scientific journal. So of course they match the radiometric dating. If decay had been accelerated in the past so would have fission tracks and electron spin resonance. So if the decay rates changed, they would have to change in exactly the same way in each. But there is no known mechanism by which any of them can be changed, and there is no theory that supports even one changing. There is ample experimental verification that decay rates are not affected by environmental factors. Fission tracks are formed after a mineral crystallizes from the molten state, and it measures times up to about two billion years past. If the time scale were dramatically in error, all the volcanism in two billion years would have to be compressed into a few years. That is not possible under all the rates of heating and cooling have also changed, implying the basic physical laws had changed along with that, but improbably remain consistent with respect to crosschecking. Con ridicules crosschecking, but it is both logical and valid. He offers no scientific alternative. Con quotes one article from 1970 in which a scientist says he throws away data he doesn't like. Con then claims that all scientists always do the same. That claim is unsupported. Scientists are renowned for showing errors in previous results, not by confirming them. Showing a serious error would win a Nobel prize. The geological time scale is confirmed by dozens of independent methods employed by many thousands of scientists from around the world. The resolution is affirmed. Con All thanks goes to Pro for a robust debate! However, he fails to see that the evidence he has presented has been uniformitarian-inspired, which is just a naturalistic philosophical lens through which all his data has been interpreted. Just because ICR gives glory to God does not make their data any less scientific. Just as a uniformitarian philosophy does not make data any less scientific. We need to look at the data and see whose interpretive framework fits the data the best. Conventional geologists look at current varve forming sediment layers on the beds of existing lakes and immediately assume this must have been the same mechanism that formed the varves in the geologic column. Therefore, they interpret the rock column as such. A classical example is the Eocene Green River Formation of Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming. There are more than a million varves in some parts of the formation. The uniformitarian interpretation is there was an ancient lake that existed for a million years. However, this is just an assumption because no one was there to prove it! The problem with this interpretation is that the laminae are entirely too thin and uniform, and extend over too wide an area to have been deposited on the floor of an abnormally calm lake. Furthermore, part of the formation has layers of volcanic ash tuff beds , and there are layers of varves situated between these two tuff beds. If these varves represent annual depositional layers as the conventional geological community interprets it than they should be uniform across the whole formation between the tuff beds. However, there is between 1089 to 1566 laminae across the formation between the two tuff beds Geological Society of American Abstracts with Programs, 30:A317. Furthermore, the organic material pollen is not consistent within the laminae across this same section even though my opponent suggested otherwise. Pro cites talkorigins regarding dating ice cores. They present 4 methods. First one is counting annual layers. However, it has been shown more than one layer can form a year Journal of Geophysical Research 102, C12 1997, pp. The thrid is radiometric dating, but if radiometric dating is inaccurate so will the age of the ice core. Also, Pro cites the GISP2 project, but what he fails to mention is that the Milankovitch Theory didn't match with the ice cores. Even if multiple tree ring growth is rare today how can we know it was the same in the past? Climate conditions could have been extremely different. Especially, let's say, if there was a global flood. Your uniformitarian bias betrays you. Even the source Pro cites admits it is based on a uniformitarian interpretation. Furthermore, Pro claims trees have been dated to 10000 years, but the source I cited , which is a secular science website and was posted only last month, states the oldest tree alive is only 4765 years old. If the earth were young this is exactly what we would expect. If radiometric decay was accelerated in the past so could have nuclear decay which causes fission tracks. In fact, accelerated nuclear decay would have created enough heat to reset the U-Pb system in rock samples, which has been observed. In reality, none of these dating methods are independent, because they are all dependent on uniformitarianism. For example, a suggested combined chronology of certain varves of 28000 years underwent reinterpretation to little more than 10000 years when rechecked with radiocarbon dating R. Flint 1971 Glacial and Quaternary Geology. My opponent is critical of these examples, because he accuses critics of radiometric dating of only using a hand full of examples. However, there are numerous examples, but I only have limited space on this forum. Snelling's book Earth's Catastrophic Past he lays out in a scholarly manner MORE than a hand full of examples. The reason he can't report them in conventional peer-reviewed journals is because they won't let him. It has nothing to do with his data being weak, but has everything to do with the current bias in the scientific community. Pro is correct when he asserts there are different methods of decay. Two of those are a-decaying isoptopes and b-decaying isotopes. In Snelling's book he lays out several examples where the a-decaying isotopes give older ages than the b-decaying isotopes on the same rock sample. A pattern definitely exists. If the decay rate had accelerated in the past the a-decayers would have been accelerated more due to their mode of decay, atomic weights, and half-lives. That is the pattern we see. Furthermore, it is theoretically possible for radioisotope decay rates to have been accelerated as a result of changes to the strong and weak nuclear forces within parent isotopes. However, the mechanism remains unknown, but it doesn't mean we won't know in the future. For more details see Snelling's book. I would like to point out that Pro never refuted my point that Th does not create C-14. He also never refuted my point that there is excess Ar in rock samples in which the source is not the atmosphere. So the question remains. Why is there substantial C-14 in coal beds and diamonds that should be C-14 dead, and how can we know rock samples are not contaminated from excess Ar? The main point Pro asserts is there is a 99% accuracy rating. I question the reliability of that statistic. Has someone really reviewed the thousands upon thousands of tests to derive that statistic? For example, the rate of sodium put into oceans a year is more than is removed. Also, the avg height reduction for all continents due to erosion is 2. How can the earth be 4. In addition, the rate of the earth's magnetic field decay has been measured at 5% per century ESSA Technical Report, IER 46-IES1. Putting the starting strength where it wouldn't melt the earth it could only be decaying for 10000 years. How can the earth be 4. Of course, this is based on uniformitarian assumptions, but scientists can't reject the philosophy now! This list is not exhaustive. If someone believes it is 3:15 and they only look at watches that affirm it, but ignore the pile of watches in the corner that disagree, their accuracy % is skewed. The resolution is negated. Biology excludes the study of accounting. Geology excludes the study of computer engineering Astronomy excludes the study of psychology. Does that make these studies fatally incomplete? Those secondary disciplines I listed are simply not in the purview of what is being studied. Since supernatural events cannot be quantified, we limit our study to what can be accurately discovered. It is not bias. It is common sense. If we required the consideration of the supernatural, we quite simply could not discover ANYTHING. All studies would be incomplete, and come with a great many caveats. Else, you would not be reading this post. What is means is that scientists only look for natural explanations. Explanations using gods, spirits, and demons exist for every unsolved problem, without exception. There is not only one supernatural explanation for every circumstance, there is likely thousands, given that humans worship thousands of gods in total. The reason that scientists focus on natural explanations is that they are consistent and predictable. So if only supernatural explanations exist, scientists will leave the problem unsolved by science. Non-scientists are free to assign any of the thousands of supernatural explanations they wish. Maybe one of the supernatural explanations is true; nonetheless it's not a subject for science. I personally don't understand why someone would think an all powerful deity could not just set the universe in motion with a few natural laws and let the divine plan unwind. It would be a very limited and shortsighted god who has to keep intervening to set things right. Explanations like time speeding up or physical laws varying don't work because time and physical laws would have to be different for each isotope and each physical dating mechanism to get them to all to agree. Carbon dating would need to speed up by about a factor of ten, uranium by a factor of 10 million. Tell me, is it true science if we first exclude a conclusion even before we begin to investigate? If we do, how can we be certain that God is not part of the conclusion? If the authenticated dogma has it incorrect, and the only place we ever look is in that dogma, we will never be able to tell if it is in error. Therefore any evidence found that could possibly suggest the existence of God is in error and will be excluded from any peer review submissions. Furthermore any scientist found studying or even suggesting such, will be ridiculed and humiliated. Such drastic measures will help insure continued disbelieve in Gods existence. Scientists are indeed biased against magical explanations. Believing in magic is contrary to being a scientist. That doesn't mean magic is proved false by it's rejection, it just means it is not part of science. However, scientists love to find things that need explanation, and the best thing in science is to find new evidence that overthrows a well-established theory. Relativity and quantum mechanics are good examples. The theories made predictions confirmed by observation. For example, suppose a creationist ran double blind tests that showed that the results of radiocarbon dating were unreliable. They could do that by taking an objects like a couple pieces of coral and submitting them to various labs at various times. They never do anything like that. Real scientists have done it many times, confirming the methods. I think that independent publication can succeed, but the publication results have to be verifiable independently. Creationists really don't have a theory that can be proved, so they cannot succeed by that approach. I guess the biggest problem I had throughout the whole discussion was the continual dismissal of sources cited because they were creationists. Or because their work was posted on creationist sites. You have to admit most of the scientific community is very biased, in fact it's almost to the point of prejudiced against creationists that they tend to be dismissed out of hand as crackpots. The way a lot of the sources the pipes put forward were dismissed that way just seems wrong. Just because something wasn't published in the accepted elite community doesn't mean it's false. It should be looked into before being dismissed Some gods cannot be disproved. For example, the Deist God of Jefferson created the universe and will return one day in judgment, but does not in any way intervene directly in the course of events. Other gods can be disproved because some property of the god is predictable and observable, so if the predictable occurrence does not happen then a good who invariably causes it cannot exist. A different god not having that property may still exist, but not the one originally claimed. The O3 God is disproved by the Argument from Evil. It is not possible for a scientist to attribute a cause to the supernatural. A scientist is often obliged to leave something unexplained, and it is possible that some things will never be explained. However, a scientist cannot attribute something to supernatural causes, because that is not science. A scientist may leave his role as a scientist and personally accept the supernatural, but he can never do that as a scientist. Surely every believer must grant that God could accomplish His will by working solely through repeatable laws of nature. Only a limited God would be required to use magic. Questions of cosmological origins are being approached with concepts that defy our ordinary experience: two-dimensional time, time that is finite but boundless, multi-dimensional space, and so forth. We'll never relate to these concepts in the way we relate to everyday existence. But we already have proven examples of things that are true which defy common experience: special relativity, general relativity, and quantum physics. Answers will be mathematically and physically correct, but we won't relate to them. I admit up front I'm not a scientist. I'm not posting about the direct sciences of any of this. I just wanted to make a few points to those that are purely against creationism. First off, you make one fatal mistake as scientists. You are supposed to keep an open mind. There may not be evidence to truly secularly support the supernatural, but there is no evidence to disprove it either. So yo just dismiss it out of hand is a bad idea, don't blindly accept it, but don't dismiss it either. As for a lot of the sources creationist scientists quote being unpublished or only published on creationist sites, thats because the majority of the scientific community is so biased against creationism than they wont let anything supporting it pass through. Its hard to publish anything when the publishers laugh at you when you even suggest it. So they go where they can to publish. That doesn't necessarily make them wrong. It takes just as much faith to believe either one. To deny even the possibility that the supernatural may have had some hand in anything is to contaminate science in the same way that atheists accuse creationists. The ultimate application is to suppose that the earth was created last week, and God created all of the evidence of an older earth, including our memories of previous times, at the same time. There is no way I know of to disprove that, bt adopting it is a pure leap of faith. There are at twenty independent methods of dating. That allows carbon dating to be used to cross-check, say, tree riings and coral growth rings. Scientists do not assume that accumulations are uniform unless there is a reason to make the assumption, they cross-check with other methods, and if there is no cross-check then the results will be known to be uncertain. It's really tedious going over the same material repeatedly for the sake of Creationists who never seem to learn anything. Objections fully answered 50 years ago are recited like scripture. They could just read a book or search the internet, but their job is solely to keep illusions going. One can easily make a list of reasons why clocks cannot be used to tell time, and would be just as convincing. Additionally, a good many arguments against an old earth are based on assumptions that circumstances have been constant, which is exactly why creationists refuse to accept dating methods such as dendrochronology. For example: The moon receding from the earth. Has it always receded at the same rate? Accumulation of dust on the moon. Accumulation of peat in peat bogs. Why must we accept your accumulation arguments, but you don't have to accept ours?