The California Collection/TheCaliforniaCollection.cdr/his065/datingms.arj/DATINGMS

Text File | 1991-04-17 | 19KB | 292 lines

Fldr:  Science
Mesg:  254   Date:  11/28/88   Subj:  Radiocarbon dating I
  To:  Chris Day               From:  David Menton

You raise the matter of carbon dating in estimating the age of strata
in the geological column.  Actually, no geologist would be likely to use
radiocarbon dating methods to date layers in the geological column as this
method is only suitable (at best) for ages up to about 60,000 years.  As you
know, the vast bulk of the geological column is believed to be much older
than that.  The layers of the geological column are generally "dated" by the
"known" age of the fossils they contain (no wonder there is always the "right"
fossils in the "right" layer) and the age of the fossils themselves is
typically dated by the "known" age of the strata they are found in.  I know,
it sort of goes round in circles doesn't it?  Now geologists do use other
radiometric methods to "calculate" the age of strata.  Potassium-Argon is one
such method.  BUT, when the radiometric dating fails to agree with
evolutionary assumptions about the fossils found in that strata, the fossils
win every time.  In other words, when radiometric dating greatly disagrees
with the "known" age of the fossils, evolutionists go with the fossils, not
the radiometric dating.  Never mind that they refer to radiometric dating
as "exact dating."

Since you ask about radiocarbon dating, and since it is so widely known and
discussed in the popular press and text books, I have decided to prepare a
message first on this method.  It is interesting that the teachers of
evolutionism always talk about the radiometric evidence for the immense and
"exact" date of fossils and strata but never seem to get around to critically
evaluating the dating methods.  Indeed there are few high school or college
students who could even give the basic principle of radiocarbon dating.  As I
have pointed out so many times on this board, evolutonism does not look nearly
so convincing when it is critically evaluated on its own terms.  In the next
message we will look at RADIO CARBON DATING.


Fldr:  Science
Mesg:  255   Date:  11/28/88   Subj:  Radiocarbon dating II
  To:  All                     From:  David Menton

We hear much about radiometric dating and especially radiocarbon dating but
few people know what is involved in such dating methods.  Since evolution
depends on immense periods of time for the CHANCE origin of highly complex and
integrated organs and organisms, evolutionists have tried to demonstrate that
the earth's fossils are "old enough" to have evolved in this way.  Actually,
the 14 billion years that evolutionists claim for the age of the universe is
inadequate to produce by chance any ONE of the known biologically useful
proteins, never mind people, but do the evolutionists have even these mere
billions of years for their evolution?  Let us first examine the mechanism of
radiocarbon dating.

Radioactive carbon (C14) is formed in the upper atmosphere from the action of
cosmic rays on "regular" nitrogen gas (N14) to produce radioactive carbon
(C14).  C14 in turn combines with atmospheric oxygen to form carbon dioxide.
This radioactive carbon dioxide is incorporated onto plants during their
photosynthesis.  Animals (and people) eat these plants (directly or
indirectly) untill they stop eating at death, after which there should be no
further ingestion of radioactive carbon.  From this moment on, the "clock is
set" as the unstable C14, which forms a small portion of all carbon in the
body, decays to stable carbon (C12), which is not radioactive.  Thus IF we
know the rate of production of C14 in the past, and IF the rate of formation
and decay of C14 has reached equilibrium, and IF we know that the rate of
decay of C14 into C12 has been constant from the beginning, and IF our
specimen still contains an adequate amount of C14, and IF we know the present
ratio of C14 and C12 in our specimen, and IF no C14 or C12 has been added or
removed from our specimen, THEN we can accurately date our specimen.  Watch
those IFs, they are critical.  For example, if the early earth had a water
vapor canopy, as the Bible seems to suggest, this might have slowed the
production of C14 in the atmosphere at that time making all dates, based on
current production rates of C14, appear OLDER than they really are.

First, our specimen to be dated must contain carbon, this alone eliminates all
rocks and minerals of all strata and even most fossils!  In other words,
radiocarbon dating is limited to organic specimens such as wood and bone and
even these must not be completely replaced by mineral during fossilization.
Second, if all other previously mentioned assumptions are true, the specimen
must be younger than approximately 60,000 years old to still retain enough C14
to be accurately datable.  This eliminates virtually any specimen of
evolutionary significance since even 100,000 years is a trivial amount of time
in terms of any real evolutionary change.

The reason for this severe limitation is that C14 has a half-life of about
5,600 years.  This means that after 5,600 years half of the original C14 will
have decayed into ordinary nonradioactive carbon (C12) and only half of the
radioactive C14 will be left.  After another 5,600 years half of this half of
the C14 will be left ect.  If a specimen were say 60,000 years old it would
have had its starting quantity of C14 (already small) halved 10 times!
Obviously the error factor for dating gets immense as you continue to halve
the C14.

In the next message we will examine some of the assumptions used in
radiocarbon dating.

Fldr:  Science
Mesg:  256   Date:  11/28/88   Subj:  Radiocarbon dating III
  To:  All                     From:  David Menton

There are good reasons for questioning all of our assumptions associated with
radio carbon dating, even the constancy of the rate of decay, but let's
consider the most interesting assumption.  If the earth is any where near as
old as evolutionists claim it to be, the rate of PRODUCTION of C14 in the
upper atmosphere should long ago have reached equilibrium with the rate of
it's DECAY.  To be precise, it is calculated that this equilibrium would have
been reached by about 30,000 years.  BUT, has the rate of production and decay
of C14 reached equilibrium?  NO!! The current rate of formation of C14 is 2.5
atoms/cm^2/second and the current rate of decay is only 1.9 atoms/cm^2/sec, a
difference of 24%!!  It has been estimated that the current ratio would have
been reached in no more than 10,000 years!!  This unexpected disequilibrium
was recognized by Libby who won the Nobel prize for radio carbon dating.
Think of it, C14 production would have reached equilibrium with C14 decay in
only 30,000 years.  Since evolutionists are dead certain that the earth is 4.5
billion years old, a process requiring only 30,000 years for completion should
have been completed atleast a few billion years ago.   How can it be that the
process gives the appearance of only being about 10,000 years along in
reaching equilibrium?  Could it be that the earth is roughly 10,000 years old?
UNTHINKABLE says the evolutionists - they need vastly more time than that for
their evolution. In fact, they need time measured in vastly greater units than
mere billions of years to make even a SINGLE specific protein of average size!

What about other dating methods such as Potassium-Argon?  We will look at them
in future messages.


Fldr:  Science
Mesg:  261   Date:  12/05/88   Subj:  Radiometric dating I
  To:  All                     From:  David Menton
Left  17:42:23, 12/05/88

We have found that there are some interesting problems with carbon dating.
First, samples to be dated must contain a substantial amount of carbon, but no
natural rocks and even few fossils contain adequate amounts of carbon for C14
dateing.  Second, the half life of C14 is so short (5,730 years) that it would
be useless for dating any fossil old enough to be of evolutionary interest.
Finally, the current rate of production of C14 in the atmosphere lags far
behind it's rate of decay yet the two should have reached equilibrium in only
30,000 years!  The present ratio in our atmosphere would have been reached in
less than 10,000 years!  Finally, it should be pointed out that radio carbon
dating is the ONLY radiometric method of dating for which there is any
opportunity of corroborating dates by independent non-radiometric methods.
The reason for this is that only C14 methods can date specimens YOUNG enough
to correlate with historical observations (recorded history only goes back
about 6,000 years).  For example, wood from timbers in an ancient castle can
be C14 dated and the date compared to the known historical record.  C14 dates
can also be compared to tree ring dates, which for the bristle cone pines can
be over a thousand years old.  In general, it has been found to be fairly
accurate back to about 3000 years, but even within this range, the older the
specimen, the greater the error in C14 dates.  Now if the relatively young C14
dates can be shown to be off by a considerable amounts due to certain
unwarented assumptions about either our dating method or our specimen, how
much in error might other radiometric dates be for which we have no
independent method of verification?

The other frequently used radiometric dating methods have just the opposite
problem of C14 dating; their half lifes are too long to be potentially useful
for measuring many dates of evolutionary interst and certainly are unsuitable
for measuring dates that fall within the range of recorded history.  The most
common method, Potassium-Argon (K-Ar) has a half life of 1.3 billion years,
Uranium-Lead (U-Pb) a half life of 4.5 billion years and Strontium-Rubidium,
47 billion years. For all ot these methods we might find that a specimen has
barely begun to loose an accurately measurable amount of original radioactive
material.  It's rather like having a watch with only a second hand and an hour
hand when we want to measure minutes.

Major assumptions of all radiometric dating is that we 1) know for certain
what the level of starting (parent) material was at the beginning, 2) what the
quantity of the decay product (daughter product) is today, 3) the rate of
decay has always been constant, and 4) no starting products or decay products
have been either added or taken away.  We might  compare radioactive decay of
a "parent" radioactive product into a daughter product with the burning of a
candle.  If you observe that a candle burns at one inch per hour and there is
only six inches of candle left to burn, you can calculate how long the candle
has been burning by measuring what is left of the candle - IF you know how
long the original candle was and you can be certain that the burn rate has not
changed and that nothing has been added or taken from the candle by other than
the burning process.


Fldr:  Science
Mesg:  262   Date:  12/05/88   Subj:  Radiometric dating II
  To:  All                     From:  David Menton

Radiometric dateing methods are often called "absolute" dateing methods and we
typically see figures like 3.4 million years +or-5%.  In fact there is no way
to know if indeed the error of the DATE is off by no more than +or- 5%.  One
can only argue that the ratio of the presumed parent material (original
radioactive material) and presumed daughter product (decay product of parent
material) in a particular sample have been measured with an accuracy of +or-
5%.  The "age" is speculative inference for which no real error or confidence
limits can be set.  In fact, evolutionists are well aware that several samples
from the same stratum may differ immensely in parent/daughter product ratios
and thus differ immensely in "age."  Dr. J.C. Engels writing in the Journal of
Geology 79:609 conceeded that: "It is now well known that Potassium-Argon (K-
Ar) ages obtained from different minerals in a single rock may be strikingly
discordant."  Dr. A. Hayatsu, writing in the Canadian Journal of Earth Science
16:974 said: "In conventional interpretation of K-Ar age data, it is common to
discard ages which are substantially too high or too low compared with the
rest of the group or with other available data such as the geological time
scale.  The discrepancies between the rejected and the accepted are
arbitrarily attributed to excess or loss of argon."  So, dates that do not fit
evolutionary assumptions about the age of the fossils in a particular stratum
are simply discarded or "massaged" to fit.  Naturally there must be plausable
reasons for this so in the case of K-Ar dating one merely needs to invoke
"extraneous argon" or "lost argon" to justify discarding samples that do not
fit ones evolutionary assumptions.  Evernden and Palmer, writing in the
Journal of Geophysical Research 73:2813 put it quite bluntly:  "Thus if one
believes that the derived ages in particular instances are in gross
disagreement with established facts of field geology, he must conjure up
geological processes that could cause anomalous or altered argon content of
the minerals."  One can indeed "conjure up" ad hoc explanations to dismiss
data that are incompatible with evolutionary scenarios, but then are the
results conjouring tricks or science?  Often times, evolutionists simply
ignore unwanted dates in their publications obviateing any need for
explanation.  Dr. David E. Seidmann, writing in The Bulletin of the
Geological Society of America 88:1660 said:  "In general, dates in the
'correct ball park' are assumed to be correct and are published, but those in
disagreement with other data are seldom published nor are discrepancies fully
explained."


Fldr:  Science
Mesg:  264   Date:  12/06/88   Subj:  Radiometric dating III
  To:  All                     From:  David Menton

Fossils are mostly found in sedimentary rock layers and since it is assumed by
evolutionists that the sediment comprising the layers of the geological column
were deposited sequentially over millions of years, one could theoretically
"date" a fossil by either determining the age of the fossil directly or the
age of the rock strata in which it is found.  There is absolutely nothing
about the physical appearance or chemistry of rocks that can provide evidence
of their age.  Only the radioactive decay of a parent product into its
"daughter" products can give us a "clock" that might determine age.
Unfortunately, it is rarely possible to date fossils themselves by any
radiometric means because fossils generally lack radioactive material and
their decay products.  Even worse, there is no way to directly date the
sedimentary rock either!  After all the particles of sediment in any
particular stratum of sedimentary rock may likely have washed in from a vast
number of widely separated eroded sources and thus could give us no coherent
single date for any sedimentary layer even if the particles contained
radioactive materials.  For example, where did the particles of silt come from
that make up the Mississippi river delta in the Gulf of Mexico?  Obviously
they may have come form anywhere, and every where, in the entire geographical
drainage basin that flows into the Mississippi river by it's tributaries.
Thus neither fossils or the sediment in which they are imbedded are dated by
radiometric means.  What then is "dated?"

Igneous rock, such as volcanic lava, is generally the only material "dateable"
by radiometric methods.  When such molten igneous rock hardens it contains the
parent radioactive materials that will then decay at presumably a constant
rate into daughter decay products, thus providing the potential of a
"clock."  Sedimentary strata, and the fossils they contain, are dated by
measuring the ratio of parent to daughter decay prducts in the igneous "dikes"
and "sills" of originally molten rock which have flowed into them.  Of course,
the particular fossils one is interested in may not be in strata having
dateable igneous "tuff" so that it is often necessary to date other strata at
other locations which do have igneous material and are believed to be the same
age based on the fossils they contain.  Naturally this assumes that the
evolution of the fossilized organisms "dates" the strata and is thus a
logically circular argument.

Radiometric dating is an expensive and time consuming task, and so it is not
done routinely.  In general, the assumed evolutionary age of certain "index"
fossils are used to "date" the strata in which they are found and then the
"age" of the stratum is used to date other fossils.  Certain organisms, mostly
plants and invertebrates, are believed to have existed on earth for known and
limited periods of time and it is these "index" fossils that are used to
"date" strata.  But even radiometric dating depends on a number of
evolutionary assumptions regarding the sequence and ages of strata and fossils
in the geological column.  When samples are submitted to a lab which does
radiometric dating, one is generally required to fill out a form which, among
other things, asks what strata of the geological column the specimen was found
in!  The labs have a good reason for asking this question as several specimens
from a particular stratum may very immensely in their apparent age.  Only by
knowing the "age" of the stratum the specimen was found in will the lab know
which dates are "correct" and which are "abberant!"  One thing is quite clear,
when "absolute" radiometric dating is in disagreement with the evolutionary
interpretation of the age of a stratum, the "absolute" date is thrown out and
they go with the fossil!


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