Is the evidence currently on the side of a young or old earth?

[r_speir]

@RonSewell

So why were tree rings forming during the flood as fast as radioactive decay was speeding up?

No, rejected. You will find no allegiance here to rapid radioactive decay during the Flood.

[John_Harshman]

@colewd

When I have expressed skepticism about the age of the earth Nathaniel has referred me to others who have more expertise.

Who were those others? Stone-cold Steve Austin?

[T_aquaticus]

@r_speir

But what we are claiming is that is not science at least, not legitimate science.

Why isn’t it legitimate science?

The KBS Tuff was first dated in 1969, after Behrensmeyer discovered stone tools at Koobi Fora in the layer of the Tuff. Argon/Argon dating was performed by Frank Fitch at Birckbeck College in London and Jack Miller at the University of Cambridge in Cambridge, UK, who found a most likely age of 2.61 Ma for the KBS eruption.[5] This find had important implications for the anthropological community because it provided a very old age for the tools found by Behresmeyer, and for associated crania including KNM-ER 1470, attributed to the genus Homo.[6]

The date was called into question because efforts to replicate the findings produced KBS Tuff ages ranging from less than 1 to over 220 Ma. A study of pig molar anatomy from the site, by Vincent Maglio and Basil Cooke, suggested an age closer to 2 Ma or even less, using methods of biogeochronology.[6] Similar investigation using antelope remains by Alan Gentry at the British Museum of Natural History also contradicted the Argon-Argon 2.6 Ma Tuff.[6] Another problem that emerged was that the 2.6 Ma date for the KBS Tuff, provided by Fitch and Miller, made alignment of the Koobi Fora (east Turkana) geochronology with the Omo (north Turkana) geochronology impossible.[6]

The conflict was resolved after geochemist Garniss Curtis and his student Thure E. Cerling conducted independent investigations of the age of the KBS Tuff using Argon-Argon and Potassium-Argon dating at the Berkeley Geochronology Laboratory. Curtis and Cerling found that the material dated by the Cambridge team actually belonged to two separate tuffs, which they estimated at 1.8 and 1.6 Ma.[6] This date was confirmed by Potassium-Argon dating conducted by Ian McDougall, and later Fission-Track dating conducted by Andy Gleadow.[6] [7][8]
KBS Tuff - Wikipedia

Which part are you saying is not science?

@r_speir

You make us do all the explaining. Now, you do some. Why do the radio-dates not agree when you take different readings using different elemental decay [of the same site]? Why so diverse?

You can check out Talkorigins:

The KBS Tuff controversy illustrates many of the problems with radiometric dating, but it equally illustrates that the problems are not insurmountable.

The KBS Tuff (for “Kay Behrensmeyer Site,” after the geologist who first described it) is a layer of redeposited volcanic ash, so it contains a mixture of older sediments, too. It is still possible to date the layer, but care must be taken to choose only the youngest rocks, else one would be dating the age of older sediments washed into the layer, not the age of the layer itself. This is what happened with the first ages reported from the tuff. In a study to test the feasibility of dating samples from the tuff, the samples were contaminated with non-juvenile components which could not be separated out, giving ages over 200 million years. It was recommended that new samples be collected from which suitable individual crystals could be separated (Fitch and Miller 1970). These new samples were dated at 2.61 +/- 0.26 million years, based on the 40Ar/39Ar dating method (Fitch and Miller 1970).

Discrepancies with this date soon turned up, though. Work with animal fossils, particularly of pigs, showed that the strata in question matched younger strata in the nearby Omo Valley. In its early stages, this fossil work was imprecise enough that the 2.61 Myr date could still be justified (Maglio 1972). However, the fossils continued to point to a younger date as the quality of the work on them improved (White and Harris 1977). And in 1975, another lab, using K-Ar dating, reported dates of 1.82 and 1.60 Myr (Curtis et al. 1975).

Fitch and Miller turned to an independent method to resolve the discrepancy, fission-track dating. Initial results gave an age of 2.44 +/- 0.08 Myr (Hurford et al. 1976). This fit well with the age of 2.42 Myr, which Fitch et al. (1976) recalculated from their original results. Subsequent 40Ar/39Ar measurements they took gave a scattering of ages from 0.52 +/- 0.33 to 2.6 +/- 0.3 Myr. They attributed the spread to reheating of the crystals after deposition. Paleomagnetic studies gave ambiguous results (Brock and Isaac 1974; Hillhouse et al. 1977).

The weight of evidence soon began to converge on an age near 1.9 Myr, though. A study of trace elements in the minerals showed that the KBS Tuff correlates with the H2 tuff in the Shungura Formation, uncontroversially dated about 1.8 Myr (Cerling et al. 1979). The 1.60 Myr age reported by Curtis et al. (1975) was found to be an error due to a faulty balance (Drake et al. 1980). A later fission-track study which took pains to eliminate possible errors gave an age of 1.87 +/- 0.04 Myr (Gleadow 1980). Because the controversy had become quite heated, another expert, Ian McDougall, was called in to do independent dating. He came up with an age of 1.89 +/- 0.01 using K-Ar dating and 1.88 +/- 0.02 using 40Ar/39Ar dating (McDougall et al. 1980; McDougall 1981, 1985). Geological evidence and the consistency of dates derived from various sources indicates that reheating after deposition is unlikely.

The lessons to be learned from the KBS Tuff dating controversy are not that radiometric dating does not work, but that it works with some caveats.

• Some formations are easier to date than others. The KBS Tuff was particularly difficult to date because it included volcanic sediments of several different ages. Furthermore, it looked the same as other tuffs, so care was needed to make sure the same layer was being referred to in different areas. All of this requires careful work from knowledgeable geologists. Were it not for its importance to determining the ages of important hominid fossils, geologists probably would not have bothered with dating it at all.
• Some dating techniques are simply inappropriate in some circumstances. As noted above, paleomagnetic study is not particularly useful at this site.
• Discrepant dates are not dismissed out of hand. In addition to trying to resolve the issue with further dating, the discrepancies caused people to look for the sources of error. The original erroneous date by Fitch and Miller could be an accurate date of a roughly 2.5 Myr ash layer, present in neighboring areas but apparently eroded from the Koobi Fora Formation. Apparently, some pumice from that volcanic event had been incorporated into the KBS Tuff. Samples sent to an independent lab for “blind” dating confirmed its older age (Fitch et al. 1996). Alternatively, this and other discrepant ages may be due to contamination with older material. Such contamination caused ages in the 2.0 - 6.2 Myr range in the analysis of Curtis et al. (1975) until they revised their sample purification procedures. A high atmospheric argon contamination in their samples and analytical errors may have contributed, too (McDougall et al. 1980).

The fission-track study which gave the 2.44 Myr age was the first such study to date zircons so young. The reanalysis by Gleadow (1980) noted problems with the standard methods and contributed new methodology for dealing with zircons with low track densities.

• People’s preconceptions and personalities can get in the way of evaluating the data objectively. In the KBS Tuff controversy, personality conflicts may have contributed to delay in the resolution and certainly contributed to the drama. But in the end, the objective evidence is a constraint that every scientist must meet. Replication, free access to information, and awareness of conflicts of interest help assure that personal foibles do not determine outcomes. Because such mechanisms were in place, all of the scientists who initially supported the older 2.6 Myr date for the KBS Tuff later came to accept the 1.88 Myr age (Lewin 1987).

Note that different methods give the same results when known sources of error are removed. K-Ar, 40Ar/39Ar, and fission-track methods ultimately all gave the same results. These results were correlated with strata of the same age at other locations on the basis of fossil and trace element analysis.
CD031: KBS Tuff dating

Which part are you saying is not scientific.

[PDPrice (Paul Price)]

I’m not entirely sure what you’re asking of me here. Yes, I do view Genesis 3:16 as the proto-evangelion–the first messianic prophecy. The serpent in the Garden is clearly identified as Satan in the Bible, not just an ordinary serpent. What that has to do with a young earth specifically I’m not sure.

[davecarlson]

@John_Harshman

Who were those others? Stone-cold Steve Austin?

Great, now I’m picturing Geologist Stone-cold Steve Austin driving a Zamboni into an angular uncomformity, while flipping the bird and drinking two beers at the same time.

[T_aquaticus]

@PDPrice

They have the power of numbers on their side. They can always bully their way through by saying, “Most scientists agree with our interpretation, so you need to get in line.”

I have given you a chance to show us evidence for changing radioactive decay rates in the past. We get nothing in return.

I have given you chance to explain how chemistry changed in the past. Again, we get nothing in return.

We have evidence on our side, which is why you have been unable to address these questions.

[Timothy_Horton]

@r_speir

I like people like John Woodmorappe who continually study and come up with new ideas to explain things like YEC

You do realize John Woodmorappe is pen name of Jan Peckzis, a high school science teacher who wrote YEC books just to make easy money don’t you?

John Woodmorappe (born October 1954) is the pen name of of Jan Peczkis, an author who has published several articles and books with the creation science groups Answers in Genesis and the Institute for Creation Research. His main works are Noah’s Ark: A Feasibility Study and The Mythology of Modern Dating Methods . … Peczkis is a teacher in the Chicago Public Schools and taught science to grades four to seven at Budlong Elementary School in Chicago until April 2006

John Woodmorappe / Jan Peckzis

.

[PDPrice (Paul Price)]

@Timothy_Horton

You do realize John Woodmorappe is pen name of Jan Peckzis, a high school science teacher who wrote YEC books just to make easy money don’t you?

Can you provide a citation for this claim? Your article claims to list Wikipedia as a source, but you cannot follow the link as the page does not exist.

[colewd (Bill Cole)]

@PDPrice

I’m not entirely sure what you’re asking of me here. Yes, I do view Genesis 3:16 as the proto-evangelion–the first messianic prophecy. The serpent in the Garden is clearly identified as Satan in the Bible, not just an ordinary serpent. What that has to do with a young earth specifically I’m not sure.

Hi PD
I am a rookie in this area and am interested in your arguments. My thinking is that since there is “imagery” in Genesis based on this passage, how do we demarcate imagery vs History? Is the message more important than the demarkation?

What I find remarkable about the Bible is the consistent message from 40 authors and 60 books. Also, the existence of Christ through the old testament prophecy as a central element of the overall story.

What I am asking for is an argument of why the YEC position is critical at this point.

[Timothy_Horton]

@PDPrice

Can you provide a citation for this claim? Your article claims to list Wikipedia as a source, but you cannot follow the link as the page does not exist.

As soon as you explain the consilience of the tree ring data, ice core data, lake varve data, speleothem data, ocean core data, coral growth data.

More on Woodmorappe / Peckzis

[PDPrice (Paul Price)]

@colewd

I am a rookie in this area and am interested in your arguments. My thinking is that since there is “imagery” in Genesis based on this passage, how do we demarcate imagery vs History? Is the message more important than the demarkation?

I don’t think it’s “imagery” in some kind of non-literal sense. I believe Satan literally took on the form of a snake, in a supernatural way.

@colewd

What I am asking for is an argument of why the YEC position is critical at this point.

Here’s a great article answering that question:

Does creation really matter?

[Faizal_Ali]

@PDPrice

You assert that uniformitarianism is a valid approach to historical science, as far back as you wish to go. We disagree.

Except when you need to rely upon it to support some of your silly ideas like “genetic entropy.” Then “uniformitarianism” suddenly becomes sacrosanct.

Uh huh, right.

[r_speir]

@T_aquaticus

The date was called into question because efforts to replicate the findings produced KBS Tuff ages ranging from less than 1 to over 220 Ma. A study of pig molar anatomy from the site, by Vincent Maglio and Basil Cooke, suggested an age closer to 2 Ma or even less, using methods of biogeochronology.[6] Similar investigation using antelope remains by Alan Gentry at the British Museum of Natural History also contradicted the Argon-Argon 2.6 Ma Tuff.[6] Another problem that emerged was that the 2.6 Ma date for the KBS Tuff, provided by Fitch and Miller, made alignment of the Koobi Fora (east Turkana) geochronology with the Omo (north Turkana) geochronology impossible.[6]

The above paragraph, in answer to your question of why it is not legitimate science. If one allowed only the radio-dates to decide, no one would be happy with the results. So what do we do about it? We begin revising the date to better fit the pre-decided biological or geological dates of the surrounding environment.

Why can’t radiometric dating stand on its own merits? Answer: because it is not a precise science. Actually, it is not an authentic science.

[T_aquaticus]

@r_speir

The above paragraph, in answer to your question of why it is not legitimate science. If one allowed only the radio-dates to decide, no one would be happy with the results. So what do we do about it? We begin revising the date to better fit the pre-decided biological or geological dates of the surrounding environment.

They revised the dates because of the evidence, which you failed to address.

The KBS Tuff controversy illustrates many of the problems with radiometric dating, but it equally illustrates that the problems are not insurmountable.

The KBS Tuff (for “Kay Behrensmeyer Site,” after the geologist who first described it) is a layer of redeposited volcanic ash, so it contains a mixture of older sediments, too. It is still possible to date the layer, but care must be taken to choose only the youngest rocks, else one would be dating the age of older sediments washed into the layer, not the age of the layer itself. This is what happened with the first ages reported from the tuff. In a study to test the feasibility of dating samples from the tuff, the samples were contaminated with non-juvenile components which could not be separated out, giving ages over 200 million years. It was recommended that new samples be collected from which suitable individual crystals could be separated (Fitch and Miller 1970). These new samples were dated at 2.61 +/- 0.26 million years, based on the 40Ar/39Ar dating method (Fitch and Miller 1970).

Discrepancies with this date soon turned up, though. Work with animal fossils, particularly of pigs, showed that the strata in question matched younger strata in the nearby Omo Valley. In its early stages, this fossil work was imprecise enough that the 2.61 Myr date could still be justified (Maglio 1972). However, the fossils continued to point to a younger date as the quality of the work on them improved (White and Harris 1977). And in 1975, another lab, using K-Ar dating, reported dates of 1.82 and 1.60 Myr (Curtis et al. 1975).

Fitch and Miller turned to an independent method to resolve the discrepancy, fission-track dating. Initial results gave an age of 2.44 +/- 0.08 Myr (Hurford et al. 1976). This fit well with the age of 2.42 Myr, which Fitch et al. (1976) recalculated from their original results. Subsequent 40Ar/39Ar measurements they took gave a scattering of ages from 0.52 +/- 0.33 to 2.6 +/- 0.3 Myr. They attributed the spread to reheating of the crystals after deposition. Paleomagnetic studies gave ambiguous results (Brock and Isaac 1974; Hillhouse et al. 1977).

The weight of evidence soon began to converge on an age near 1.9 Myr, though. A study of trace elements in the minerals showed that the KBS Tuff correlates with the H2 tuff in the Shungura Formation, uncontroversially dated about 1.8 Myr (Cerling et al. 1979). The 1.60 Myr age reported by Curtis et al. (1975) was found to be an error due to a faulty balance (Drake et al. 1980). A later fission-track study which took pains to eliminate possible errors gave an age of 1.87 +/- 0.04 Myr (Gleadow 1980). Because the controversy had become quite heated, another expert, Ian McDougall, was called in to do independent dating. He came up with an age of 1.89 +/- 0.01 using K-Ar dating and 1.88 +/- 0.02 using 40Ar/39Ar dating (McDougall et al. 1980; McDougall 1981, 1985). Geological evidence and the consistency of dates derived from various sources indicates that reheating after deposition is unlikely.

The lessons to be learned from the KBS Tuff dating controversy are not that radiometric dating does not work, but that it works with some caveats.

• Some formations are easier to date than others. The KBS Tuff was particularly difficult to date because it included volcanic sediments of several different ages. Furthermore, it looked the same as other tuffs, so care was needed to make sure the same layer was being referred to in different areas. All of this requires careful work from knowledgeable geologists. Were it not for its importance to determining the ages of important hominid fossils, geologists probably would not have bothered with dating it at all.
• Some dating techniques are simply inappropriate in some circumstances. As noted above, paleomagnetic study is not particularly useful at this site.
• Discrepant dates are not dismissed out of hand. In addition to trying to resolve the issue with further dating, the discrepancies caused people to look for the sources of error. The original erroneous date by Fitch and Miller could be an accurate date of a roughly 2.5 Myr ash layer, present in neighboring areas but apparently eroded from the Koobi Fora Formation. Apparently, some pumice from that volcanic event had been incorporated into the KBS Tuff. Samples sent to an independent lab for “blind” dating confirmed its older age (Fitch et al. 1996). Alternatively, this and other discrepant ages may be due to contamination with older material. Such contamination caused ages in the 2.0 - 6.2 Myr range in the analysis of Curtis et al. (1975) until they revised their sample purification procedures. A high atmospheric argon contamination in their samples and analytical errors may have contributed, too (McDougall et al. 1980).

The fission-track study which gave the 2.44 Myr age was the first such study to date zircons so young. The reanalysis by Gleadow (1980) noted problems with the standard methods and contributed new methodology for dealing with zircons with low track densities.

• People’s preconceptions and personalities can get in the way of evaluating the data objectively. In the KBS Tuff controversy, personality conflicts may have contributed to delay in the resolution and certainly contributed to the drama. But in the end, the objective evidence is a constraint that every scientist must meet. Replication, free access to information, and awareness of conflicts of interest help assure that personal foibles do not determine outcomes. Because such mechanisms were in place, all of the scientists who initially supported the older 2.6 Myr date for the KBS Tuff later came to accept the 1.88 Myr age (Lewin 1987).

Note that different methods give the same results when known sources of error are removed. K-Ar, 40Ar/39Ar, and fission-track methods ultimately all gave the same results. These results were correlated with strata of the same age at other locations on the basis of fossil and trace element analysis.
CD031: KBS Tuff dating

Refinement of measurements based on real evidence and scientific methodologies is exactly how science works.

[r_speir]

@T_aquaticus

Refinement of measurements based on real evidence and scientific methodologies is exactly how science works.

No I am sorry you are so wrong. The only reason, I repeat the only reason any re-analysis was required at all is because the surrounding environmental pre-set dates of biological impact and geological impact did not agree.

This amounts to nothing short of adjusting dates to agree with your paradigm.

[T_aquaticus]

@r_speir

The only reason, I repeat the only reason any re-analysis was required at all is because the surrounding environmental pre-set dates of biological impact and geological impact did not agree.

Yes, they had two dates that were in conflict with each other so they dug further to figure out why they contradicted each other. Why is that a problem? That’s exactly what science is for.

Furthermore, you can’t show us why the re-analysis is wrong or why it is not scientific.

[r_speir]

@T_aquaticus

Yes, they had two dates that were in conflict with each other so they dug further to figure out why they contradicted each other. Why is that a problem? That’s exactly what science is for.

Yeah, right. And we are asking for the same consideration. Why don’t you start carbon dating the soft tissue you find in mya fossils? That way we could reach a better and more agreeable conciliatory date…!!!

[AlanFox]

@AllenWitmerMiller

Indeed, the fact that tree rings do NOT form at a constant rate is exactly what makes them so useful in studying climate histories and major catastrophic events!

Indeed. And the fact that large trees produce large rings does not obscure the pattern of variation either. I already mentioned upthread that someone demonstrated this from scratch, just taking the raw data and showing there was one unmistakeable matching signal that shone out from the noise like a beacon.

[swamidass (S. Joshua Swamidass)]

Very high ratio of flags on this topic. It is spiraling. Everyone should just chill.