That is simply not true. If you read the link I provided about how fossil dates are established you’d know that.
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If the geology was wrong would the biology conclusions of evolution be wrong? YES!
So is biology evidence for evolution independent of geology? No or little!
Is evolution conclusions based on biological evidence???
I don’t understand what point you’re trying to make. Are you criticising NatGeo for not explaining how the date was arrived at, what the error bars are, etc, or are you railing against radiometric dating in general?
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If you have something to refute about what I wrote, please let me know, or write it instead of claiming that the supposed problems are not factual. However, I would be happy to read it.
How do these “young life creationists” reconcile life being young while the earth is old - do they believe that only the deepest, oldest rocks are actually old, and that all strata containing life were deposited in a few thousand years?
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Pick one item instead of the laundry list of YEC complaints and we can discuss it. You can get most of the answers from the links already provided but you don’t seem willing to learn on your own.
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I’ve only encountered one before. Perhaps I should have said Young Life Creationist. Nothing for them to reconcile. The fossils are young. All evidence to the contrary is dismissed. I don’t know how they do it, lol!
I was just hoping to prevent people from talking past each other in the case that @LarrI accepts an old earth.
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Your tutorial does not describe the technique used. It just describes the element and shows the dates. It’s does not describe the mathematical formula used for each of the isotopes, which is critical. Further, it’s obvious that all of these dates are extrapolations based on the dates. But one, meaning you, should be able to use your reasoning ability to see that the likelihood of the age of the earth being in the billions simply because of extrapolation based on the decay of any or a range of isotopes is minimal.
Technique used for what? We can’t correct your misunderstandings unless you can be more specific about your complaints.
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So your complaint is that a popular-level magazine like National Geographic doesn’t usually provide citations by means of footnotes to primary sources? I don’t know of any popular-level magazine which provides academic-style footnotes—not just on ages but on virtually anything. Is that your complaint?
In a typical Time magazine article, they will state all sorts of facts with at most an attribution to another periodical (e.g., “The Wall Street Journal reported that the average dividend paid by a Dow-Jones Industrial in 2017 was…”) or the name of someone they interviewed and what they stated. (They don’t demand that the person interviewed provides sources to verify his/her remarks.) Or do you only see it as problematic when it is something reported from a science journal or an interview with a scientist?
In any case, you seem to have ignored my request for an example of some scientist or science journal (or even an average journalist) claiming an exact age.
That is the question I’m asking you! Why should a popular-level magazine have to provide “some kind of qualifier” for a science fact—especially when it is easy to find textbook information. Should they provide a citation when an article states the oxygen percentage content of the atmosphere or the atomic number of Carbon?
When National Geographic publishes a story on Leonardo Da Vinci, should readers demand that they footnote all of the facts stated in the article? Each issue of the magazine would have to be many more pages in size.
You didn’t address any of the other issues and questions I raised, so are you conceding those points? I look forward to your reply.
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You have responded with nonsense. The fact that we know that both Dubai and airports exist has nothing at all to do with the conversation. The conversation was about time passing and your comment that suggested that one cannot know that a certain amount of time has passed without actually experiencing it, which is entirely incorrect.
You do not need to be able to show that radiometric dating is reliable, because it can be independently verified through simple observation. If you would review this post you can see how this is so:
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Accusing hundreds of thousands of academics of malfeasance is not tge best strategy on a site managed by an academic.
That would depend, woudn’t it?
What? It would “depend” if in fact hundreds of thousands of academics WERE guilty of malfeasance?
Sayyy… you are starting to get a little nadty there, aren’t cha?!
@swamidass… you gotta let me moderate these two… they are downright hostile and attacking your very integrity!
Earlier, you were saying that dates were just made up from whole cloth. I would hope that you have been convinced that dates are derived from scientific measurements and are not just made up.
Do you have any reason why radiometric dating should be mistrusted? Do you have any scientific reasons for rejecting these measurements?
There hasn’t been any evidence to shift the date in the last 50 years, so why should it change? The meteors that people date keep returning the same values, so that is where the value sits.
Here is the measurement of 3 meteors using 4 independent radiometric dating methods, and they all return the same date really close to that 4.5 billion years.
That is as solid as scientific evidence gets.
First, 4 independent methods using different isotope pairs were used. The chances of them all being affected in the same way is extremely, extremely low. Second, rocks are closed systems for these elements. We know this because we can study them.
We can directly measure decay rates, and we know that they are governed by fundamental physical laws. If those laws were different in the past then life itself would have been impossible.
The decay rates of the isotopes used in dating methods can’t be easily altered. The energies needed would destroy the rock itself.
You use the lead isotopes that uranium decays into.
The decay rates are factored into the method.
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@LarryI, I hope you read that paragraph very carefully and grasp why your misunderstandings of radiometric dating are so fatal to your positions. You are assuming that because you don’t understand the science, nobody does. This is all basic high-school science.
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Thanks for your response. The point that I am making is that not some of the articles explain how they arrive at this date of millions or billions of years. None of the articles explain it, especially in National Geographic. Why? Because it’s not practical to explain it and it’s just easier. I found this explanation in space.com: https://www.space.com/24854-how-old-is-earth.html
I offer this insight into the age of the earth:
"Fifty thousand years ago, a rock hurled down from space to form Meteor Crater in Arizona. Shards of that asteroid have been collected from the crater rim and named for the nearby Canyon Diablo. In 1953, Clair Cameron Patterson measured ratios of lead isotopes in samples that put tight constraints on Earth’s age.
The Canyon Diablo meteorite is important because it represents a class of meteorites with components that allow for more precise dating. Samples of the meteorite show a spread from 4.53 to 4.58 billion years. Scientists interpret this range as the time it took for the solar system to evolve, a gradual event that took place over approximately 50 million years."
What you will notice in all of this is that there is not recognition that there is any possibility of error in all of this calculation or that this calculation if based on extrapolation from the isotope of an element. Further, the fact that there is no scientific explanation of how the universe started means that we don’t know how the universe or the earth started at the supposed 4.5 billion years ago. It would be better for a Las Vegas odds maker to predict how long it took the earth to form than for scientists to predict that it took 50 million years for the earth to form.
Also, there is no differing information regarding the age of the earth. It’s all settled. This just makes it all the more problematic because there is no room for debate. No one disagrees with this age of the earth? How convenient. Let’s remember that most scientists have no clue as to how the universe formed based on our natural laws. We don’t know how it all started. But we are sure that it all started 4.5 billion years ago. That’s the problem. We don’t know unless we have a starting point. And what is the starting point? If you don’t have a first cause, why should anyone believe that it started 4.5 billion years ago?
Mr. Miller. If there is no qualifying information in regard to age, as in 400 or 200 or even 4.5 billion, then it’s assumed that it accurate, since there is not information presented that says how the date was arrived at or how accurate the date is. There is a reason for this. First, that’s it’s impractical to explain it, and sometimes it’s just boring. Second, it’s harder to disprove if one uses round number since it sounds like the person writing it is absolutely certain that it’s right. In dating terms, it would be more accurate to say this date within this many years, or with this degree of accuracy or with this degree of error. When is the last time you heard to read that?
(1) Why are you assuming that the science of dating the universe depends upon knowledge of a first cause? That makes no sense.
(2) Those of us who are Christ-followers believe God is the first cause. So there’s no problem and no conflict.
(3) Indeed, most Christians believe a rational God produced a universe that can be understood, a universe where the observed evidence tells us what happened in the past. No problems there.
That was easy.
Larry, if you truly want to understand why popular magazines take the science for granted, then it’s time to pick up a textbook and educate yourself on the evidence which supports radiometric dating. We can’t do that work for you.
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