Apologetics: reliability of dating methods
i chanced by another article on the net. it called "The Accuracy of Fossils and Dating methods", written by Michael Benton, PhD. in it, he claims that the current dating methods are accurate. these dating methods include the most famous one of all, Carbon-14 and several other isotope methods like rubidium/strontium, thorium/lead, potassium/argon, argon/argon, or uranium/lead.
firstly, a background. what is radioactive dating? well, take carbon-14. radioactive elements like carbon-14 decay, or break down at a (supposedly) constant rate. by measuring measuring the amount of broken down element with the amount of non-broken down element, together with it's half-life, they estimate the age of whatever they are dating.
sound plausible huh? the problem is, such dating methods have been used to date rocks that have been formed from volcanic eruptions about 20 years ago, and these dating methods gave an estimate of about 200,000 years. riiiiggghhhtttt... in another case, different portions of the same rock were broken down and sent to different labs for testing, but they all gave different answers, varying between 20,000 years to 200 million years. how brilliant.
an argument that they like to use to counter this is that this method is not accurate for something recent but is accurate for something very old. dating something recent would probably mean knowing the age beforehand, like the volcanic rock. dating something old would mean stuff like rock strata, fossils etc., that they do not know the age of. so you mean to say that radioactive dating is accurate for something they don't know but inaccurate for something they know? even if that wasn't the case, why shouldn't it work across the board? what makes them think that just because it gives wrong answers for new rocks it would give right answers for old rocks? that simply smacks of willful ignorance or in other words, deliberately dumb.
in the 2 paragraphs before the conclusion in the article, he says "The first radiometric dates, generated about 1920, showed that the Earth was hundreds of millions, or billions, of years old. 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. "
then he goes on to say that "Every few years, new geologic time scales are published, providing the latest dates for major time lines." effectively, he's saying that every few years, the estimates change, and rival labs all arrive at the same answer every few years. now that sounds even more suspicious. you mean to say that before that they made the same error, then as time goes by they make the same error again (it keeps getting "refined") and they "keep arriving at the same answer every few years"? sounds more like a conspiracy to me.
by the way, one of their assumptions is that the decay rate never vary. if it varies all radiometric dating methods would be thrown out of the window. however, decay rates do change. things like supernova explosions, solar flares (events that give out a heck load of radiation) would increase the rate of decay. there might not be alot of radiation that reaches earth, but due to the exacting nature of radiometric dating (they "count" the number of, for example, C-14 atoms), a tiny change in their values will mean wrong dates.
i've been watching this series of videos by a guy called ken hovind (very fascinating!!! everyone should watch them...), and in it he says that one reason people propagate the idea of evolution is that the only other alternative, Creation, is unthinkable. they don't want to admit that there is a Creator who is the moral absolute and the infinite. some people want to be god.
well, what to do??? sigh...
firstly, a background. what is radioactive dating? well, take carbon-14. radioactive elements like carbon-14 decay, or break down at a (supposedly) constant rate. by measuring measuring the amount of broken down element with the amount of non-broken down element, together with it's half-life, they estimate the age of whatever they are dating.
sound plausible huh? the problem is, such dating methods have been used to date rocks that have been formed from volcanic eruptions about 20 years ago, and these dating methods gave an estimate of about 200,000 years. riiiiggghhhtttt... in another case, different portions of the same rock were broken down and sent to different labs for testing, but they all gave different answers, varying between 20,000 years to 200 million years. how brilliant.
an argument that they like to use to counter this is that this method is not accurate for something recent but is accurate for something very old. dating something recent would probably mean knowing the age beforehand, like the volcanic rock. dating something old would mean stuff like rock strata, fossils etc., that they do not know the age of. so you mean to say that radioactive dating is accurate for something they don't know but inaccurate for something they know? even if that wasn't the case, why shouldn't it work across the board? what makes them think that just because it gives wrong answers for new rocks it would give right answers for old rocks? that simply smacks of willful ignorance or in other words, deliberately dumb.
in the 2 paragraphs before the conclusion in the article, he says "The first radiometric dates, generated about 1920, showed that the Earth was hundreds of millions, or billions, of years old. 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. "
then he goes on to say that "Every few years, new geologic time scales are published, providing the latest dates for major time lines." effectively, he's saying that every few years, the estimates change, and rival labs all arrive at the same answer every few years. now that sounds even more suspicious. you mean to say that before that they made the same error, then as time goes by they make the same error again (it keeps getting "refined") and they "keep arriving at the same answer every few years"? sounds more like a conspiracy to me.
by the way, one of their assumptions is that the decay rate never vary. if it varies all radiometric dating methods would be thrown out of the window. however, decay rates do change. things like supernova explosions, solar flares (events that give out a heck load of radiation) would increase the rate of decay. there might not be alot of radiation that reaches earth, but due to the exacting nature of radiometric dating (they "count" the number of, for example, C-14 atoms), a tiny change in their values will mean wrong dates.
i've been watching this series of videos by a guy called ken hovind (very fascinating!!! everyone should watch them...), and in it he says that one reason people propagate the idea of evolution is that the only other alternative, Creation, is unthinkable. they don't want to admit that there is a Creator who is the moral absolute and the infinite. some people want to be god.
well, what to do??? sigh...
posted by Jase | 12:33 AM
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