[split] Radiometric Dating

[Losty]

I was led to believe people would debate civilly on this site.

By whom?

[Lemonvariable72]

I think you're just a sock for another recently banned jesus freak. You get no benefit of the doubt.

I can say that I have never been on this site until I was directed to it yesterday. But obviously that won't convince you. If you would like you can report me to the site to have my IP checked. I just want a debate where I can get real world experience. I'm getting ready to leave high school to pursue pastoral ministries, and I want more real world experience than what high school students can offer. If you can't answer just don't take part in it. I just want to know the arguments against my position.

How about a formal debate thread then? pm me and we can hammer out the details.

[Creatard]

1) you have to assume the absence of the daughter isotope at the start of process.

In deed that is a solidly and verifiably grounded assumption, if the substance at the start of the process is a liquid and any daughter element in it, by well known and substantiated chemical and physical property of the daughter elments, would either precipitate, or outgas out of the liquid before it solidifies. Thus solidification marks the last moment of near total absence of daughter element. This is a pretty good assumption by any absolute scale and infinitely better assumption than a bunch of impressionable iron age yokels would have had any of the wherewithall to really known it really was god when they heard of the rumor of a Jesus or when some voice is said by a bunch of priests to issue from a box,

Also a pretty good assumption if the substance formed part of a living organism that must carry on exchange of chemical elements with an external reservior of known or strongly predictable content as part of its metabolism, so you know exactly how much daughter element there must have been in the substance right up to the minute when metablic function stopped. Again a vastly better assumption that some silly iron age tract by the name of bible is the word of god - an identification which no one can be shown to have any credible wherewithall to make, or that some fantasy of hearing god that came to your eagerly wishthinking mind would happen to corresponding to any form of reality as might be understood by any slightly intelligent and critical person.

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Yes, because mission projects in Africa and South America have done nothing to improve water systems and housing

And the knowledge that improving water system matters and how to improve it didn't come from your filthy bible or your good for nothing Jesus, and falsely selling the fruit of science in the name of your religion so you can trick more desparate gullible people to worship your "god" is no credit to what you are about to do.

Sorry, wrote that to the wrong person. Someone had posted that I needed to do something useful with my life.
You really like ad hominems an red herring don't you? If you assume a flood in the Bible, those daughter isotopes that would otherwise precipitate or outgas would be trapped in rapid burial causing the appearance of an older age.
The problem with your metabolic function is that the daughter cells are also taken up during its lifetime. Carbon 14 for example decays into nitrogen. We would not know how much nitrogen the animal would have taken in, so we would have to guess.
Anyways, last I checked evolution did not have a basis for fixing the water systems for those people. Im not saying atheists don't have morals, Im just saying that it did not come from evolution. I would be careful using the word gullible. Half the doctors with the ministries I've seen were initially atheists who examined the evidence. See Dr. Emil Silvestru. The difference between you and him is he got past his bias and read literature from the opposition.

[LastPoet]

[FatAndFaithless]

[pocaracas]

OH, you didn't....

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Oh awesome irony! A creatard! An actual creatard! One who is actually aware of its creatardness!

1) The start of the process can be analysed by the start of similar processes going on today, namely at active volcanoes.

2) When you measure decay rates of short lived isotopes, you get an exponential, not a constant. It is what the theory predicts, at least in first approximation. There's no actual reason why long lived isotopes would behave differently, seeing as they follow the same law, just with a different time constant.
What does the Earth's magnetic field have to do with nuclear decay rates?
You're wanting to compare the weak nuclear force with a far, far weaker magnetic force... it's effect is, at best, negligible.
3) Some radiometric dating methods actually rely on the presence of secondary and tertiary decay... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiometric_dating Just look at all the possible methodologies!!
You'd do well to read actual scientific sources, if you're going to argue science. Refrain from using your creatard literature - it's skewed for your presuppositional god.

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I actually selected that name intentionally to save you guys the time.
1) Again you are making an assumption that the composition of lava flows have always remained the same, and that atmospheric conditions would have the same effect as today.

One thing at a time, please.
"The composition of lava could have been different in the past" seems to be your claim. Now, knowing full well that all material on this planet came by through the process of nuclear fusion in a far gone star, all material in the planet's mantle is sort of stable, ie, no new fusion events, no fission either... So you have a nice soup down there... and the only way out is through volcanoes, or the occasional lava spill from some tectonic rift.
But it seems you're sitting on information about the ever changing composition of this soup.... care to share?

2) Yes, I already knew that is was exponential decay. My basis for this claim is the ratio of Carbon 14 to Carbon 12 in the atmosphere, which would depend on cosmic ray fluctuation, which would in turn be dependent on the earth's magnetic field. I was not trying to say the magnetic field had a direct impact, and I apologize for not making that clear. The strength of the magnetic field would influence how many isotopes would be created by those rays. Take a look at the formation of Carbon 14 to see how influential it is.

wow, wow, wow, big boy... cool it... who said anything about carbon-12 and carbon-14?
Weren't we trying to ascertain the age of the planet? Date the oldest rock possible? Look again in that wiki page... no carbon for stuff that old.

3)You just added more variables that may have not always been constant or you have to assume their initial composition as well.

Just because the problem becomes more complex, doesn't mean it becomes impossible.... remember this... it will most certainly arise again, in some other thread.

Hold on a sec, you just cited wiki but you say my sources aren't valid because they have a bias.

Yes, I quoted wiki... I see you require that level of education.
Your sources start with a book that contains within it a rather extraordinary claim. And then fit the rest of the world to that book. And nothing can convince them that the book is wrong.... "the book is right and everything else must conform or it is wrong."

Not only does every evolutionist article have a bias towards materialism, but in no world is wiki ever a valid source.

In the world of online forums, the wiki is usually good enough. If you want, I can cite $500 text books which repeat the content of the wiki and go into further detail. But... why?

Also, "bias towards materialism"? really? You're one of these?
oh, boy...
If there is a god, and that god made every material we see and that god interacts with that material in order to make your life better, then materialism can and will be used to detect that god's interaction. Thus far, there's zilch of that.
What we have is people who believe. People who, by pattern seeking, attribute to god some event for which they can't find the explanation. People who don't which to die. People who want their loved ones to remain alive. People who convince other people of the afterlife. People who indoctrinate new people. People who write books. People who create rituals and songs to praise the after-life king and, if applicable, all the court. People who register on this site to argue with us. People.

You people have a bias towards your self-delusion. Like all other similar delusions, it's unverifiable, unreproducible, unavailable.
It's the ultimate unobtainium. (oh, by the way, have fun with this link... it's the one true ™ wiki.

The only people I will ever site will have Ph.Ds in their field.

Let me guess... not necessarily the field which is being discussed, huh?

Also, by citing that wiki page you implied that I have not spent the time to study what I'm attacking. I've kind of spent the last 5 years of my life reading about this stuff from peer-reviewed journals on both sides.

On both sides? Which sides?
How many "sides" can get peer-reviewed journals on radiometric dating?

[Creatard]

I have a novel idea that might help you. Instead of desperately searching for gaps in the current scientific knowledge(which incidentally this is not really one of them) in a vain attempt to convince yourself that a well established theory has problems, why don't you provide the evidence you have for intelligent design. How about your first post be "Here is why intelligent design is correct and here is the scientific evidence that supports it." If your belief can be tested and proved let's see the affirmation. Stop wasting our time with this modified gaps argument and present the confirmation of intelligent design.

I posted my contentions against radioactive dating, because I was wanting to keep a narrow discussion topic. If you would like to discuss what you are suggesting you can PM me.

[popeyespappy]

The only people I will ever site will have Ph.Ds in their field.

Care to comment on the article I linked at the top of page 3? The one written by the Christian with the PHD in a relevant field that explains why starting ratios of daughter elements aren't a problem for potassium-argon and the associated argon-argon method, and how they deal with the same issue with the rubidium-strontium method?

[coldwx]

I have a novel idea that might help you. Instead of desperately searching for gaps in the current scientific knowledge(which incidentally this is not really one of them) in a vain attempt to convince yourself that a well established theory has problems, why don't you provide the evidence you have for intelligent design. How about your first post be "Here is why intelligent design is correct and here is the scientific evidence that supports it." If your belief can be tested and proved let's see the affirmation. Stop wasting our time with this modified gaps argument and present the confirmation of intelligent design.

I posted my contentions against radioactive dating, because I was wanting to keep a narrow discussion topic. If you would like to discuss what you are suggesting you can PM me.

No thank you. Create a thread like I suggested and we can discuss it out in the open so you can provide your evidence for all to see.

[Creatard]

I don't know enough to say how radioactive decay would be different with/without a creator, but I don't see your argument there. I know it does explain phenomena puzzling secular scientists. For instance the presence of Carbon-14 in diamonds and coal that are supposed to be billions of years old, the presence of soft tissue in fossils supposed to be millions of years old, and other examples.

As as been pointed out before, this is an argument from ignorance: "Scientists can't explain this, god does, therefore god is more likely." But also, on the soft tissue claim, that was fossl tissue that had been rehydrated, not naturally occurring soft tissue. You've fallen for a creationist exaggeration there.

By sacrifice do you mean that you would have to give up a materialistic bias or are you intending something different altogether?

You know, for someone who complains about the tones others use as much as you do, you really are being horrifically rude when you accuse someone you've never met and have only started interacting with today of bias. I know it might make you feel better to pretend the only reason we don't immediately agree with every point you make is because of some in-built bias that just makes us unreasonable, but you don't know us, you've never met us or spoken to any of us. You have no basis for saying that, and these kinds of reflexive, unthinking attacks on our character to cover for the inadequacy of your own points are dishonest and hostile to the tone of the conversation. Do try and avoid double standards in future.

On to the actual meat of your point, I see an issue nobody else has really addressed yet, so I figure I'd throw my hat into the ring. For the sake of discussion, let's say that radiometric dating is inaccurate and doesn't work at all. At best, what you have just determined is that we have an unreliable tape measure for indicating the age of the earth. What you haven't done is gone even one step toward demonstrating that the old earth proposed dates are wrong, or that your young earth dates are correct. Your argument at its strongest only shows the inadequacy of our measuring systems, and yet you're here claiming to know the age of the earth absent an accurate measure; how is it that you're doing that?

And how does a young earth, even if you can demonstrate it, point exclusively to your specific version of whatever god you worship? You've started a conversation that would produce a very mild result if successful, and then you're bootstrapping on a huge number of other claims that you seem content to keep hidden. Frankly I'm surprised my fellows here have let you get away with this kind of argument from ignorance for as long as they have.

Actually, I said there would be no difference between creator/no creator worldview in dating, because they would both come up with the same results. With some instances in uniformitarianism (and this is just what evolutionists say, not what I agree with), daughter isotopes present at the initial stage would precipitate out of the sample allowing the isotope to decay as theorized. In flood geology, those isotopes would not be able to precipitate because of rapid burial, giving it an inaccurately high age according to radiometric dating. Also, you did not consider that they found actual DNA within the fossil which cannot just be rehydrated.
Attacks on character? I pointed out your articles presuppose materialist causes, and that was their bias. I pointed out that you won't even look at any articles I cite simply because they are written by creationists. If I did the same thing on this site, I would be considered even more ignorant.

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Hey guys, I'm getting swamped by all the replies. Before you say I should have expected that, I was trying to avoid it by commenting on a dead line. If you have the patience to PM me then I don't have a problem with that, but I can't keep track of everyone's arguments.
To all those I offended I do apologize, it was not intentional. Im running on an hour of sleep and no food because I was reading up on your arguments, and the number of people I had to reply to pushed me over the edge. Some of my posts were made in haste and do not reflect the quality I wished to express. Again I apologize, I'm just not able to keep track of fifteen different people.