On 16/08/2014 12:11 AM, Jojo Iznart wrote:
...It is the inherent unreliability and irreproducibility of the
methods themselves that is causing a lot of controversy.
I don't know why you think radio-nucleotide dating is unreliable (unless
you only listen to the YECs!). Take a look at figure 1 in the IntCal13
publication
<https://journals.uair.arizona.edu/index.php/radiocarbon/article/viewFile/16947/pdf>
(and the rest if you are interested). You should appreciate that this
is a *calibration* curve - ie the date is not determined from the C14
ratio, but the date is determined by *independent* means (ie counting
tree rings, counting varves, measuring distance and assuming constant
growth rate, etc). This is then plotted against the age obtained by
blind use of C14 decay assuming an initial percentage at the current
value. Don't you think it is remarkable that all those thousands of
measurements by so many different methods all agree so well that we can
*calibrate* the C14 ratio vs age from them!
Would you rather base your world view on one or two outlier points, or
on the overwhelming trend of millions of data points that all fit and
are consistent with each other? The standard approach of science is to
trust the vast body of data that agrees with itself and toss out the few
outliers that cannot be fitted in because something must have been wrong
with the assumptions or measurement in those cases.
Egregious examples like a piece of leather from a shoe made in the
1800's dating to 600,000 years ago;
I wonder if you could provide a reference to this case as it sounds
rather interesting. It is easy to see how contamination can give a
young age for an old sample, but difficult to see what process can
produce the opposite effect! (The person who's shoe it was didn't
happen to be abducted by a UFO by any chance did they?!)
really are the reasons why radionucleotide dating techniques can not
trusted. I am not opposed to radionecleotide dating techniques
because I am religious. Au contraire, I am opposed to it because it
is so unreliable.
What if you really took a good look at the bulk of the data - not just
the few YEC outliers - and saw just how amazingly consistent and
reliable it is. Would you still be opposed to it? I suspect you would
and I suspect the reason would be one akin to love. But if you love the
truth above all else then you should have courage to follow even when
she would lead you out of your comfort zone!
