Adam, Eve and human population genetics, Part 14: addressing critics - Poythress, population genomics, and locating the historical Adam (conclusion) | The BioLogos Forum

Faith & Science Conversation
23

Albert,

I believe the cultural great leap forward had everything to do with the discovering of farming and the tendency of people groups to congregate into cities. Farming wasn’t discovered everywhere simultaneously (I may be wrong but I don’t believe Australian Aborigines farmed and I know for sure that the African San people remained hunter gatherers). After it was discovered in fertile valleys (like Mesopotamia, along the Nile and along the Indus valley), it spread very quickly to the rest of the Middle East and then to Europe.

24

That’s the thing. The origins of all the atoms in the earth didn’t originate with the big bang. The first atoms only started to form after the universe had cooled significantly. The largest radioactive atoms that we are talking about here could only have formed in supernovae when large stars die.

25

Hi Dcscccc,

I hope you don’t mind if I step in, but I find that Chris has gone to great lengths to politely and carefully address your points, and that your replies are not quite so careful. There are some issues in your reasoning that I hope to clarify below. Your initial defense “maybe this heat was in some point in the past even before the earth was formed” shows an important lack of understanding as to how radiometric dating works and it has been addressed by others, so I will ignore it.

  1. we find a process that can change the rate of radiomemtric method"

Yes, decay accelerates occurs under known conditions. Agreed so far.

“2)we have evidence that this process may was in the past.”

Yes, 200M kelvin has been and is being attained, but certainly not in our backyard; it is a condition that could not possibly have existed on the surface of the earth. Yet it is on the earth and in particular, during Noah’s flood, that you need to have these conditions in order to explain the pattern of radiometric results within the geologic column, yet seemingly, such conditions would result in there being no earth, let alone a geologic column (also, it may render the ark uncomfortable while taxing the pre-diluvian AC unit). So what do you do with this dilemma?

“3)we find that radiometric method can be wrong in a factor of 10^9 from the real age. so it cant be a scientific method from scientific prespective”

That does not make sense. If our evidence is that this extreme condition would change the rate and if it is obvious that this condition could not possibly have existed on the surface of the earth as the geologic column was being laid, then the only reasonable conclusion is that this does not give us grounds for doubting the results of radiometric dating. It is completely irrelevant for our purposes. You would need to look elsewhere to find grounds for rejecting the data.

“4) it could be that there is another natural process that can change the rate that we dont know about them yet.”

This is completely inadmissible; you don’t get to claim a discovery that hasn’t yet been made in order to refute a theory that has been well established. You are dealing with something that is a major problem in the creationist framework, while making perfect sense in the current paradigm, and until you make a discovery that solves that problem, don’t be surprised if most people are completely unconvinced by a promissory-note defense.

“5) we have evidences that the earth is young (i showed some of them above).”

Yet they have each been addressed repeatedly and conclusively here and elsewhere. It is up to you to look into the reasons why such evidences have long been considered bankrupt by scientists, but I’m not sure that this approach interests you, so I will do no more than suggest it.

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26

Ace, the cultural Great Leap Forward I was referring to, the one proposed by Diamond, Tattersall, Morris & Dawkins, occurred much earlier than the invention of agriculture. It was most evident in Europe in the CroMagnon culture with cave art, sculpture, grave goods and music. Thus, in my view at least and for religious discussions, it marked the beginning of mankind–the Adam of Genesis some 45 K years ago. It is interesting that current evidence points to a migration of archaic Homo sapiens out of Africa into the Mideast some 50K yrs. ago, just as some of the Neanderthals were migrating out of Europe to escape an especially severe cold spell. Apparently they met there and co-mingled for perhaps 1K yrs, living the same life styles and using very similar tools. Since the genomes of present day Europeans contain around 4% of Neanderthal genes, as do most Asian peoples, it is an attractive speculation that interbreeding between the ‘cousin’ species occurred in the area occupied by Israel at present.
Al Leo

27

hi again ace.

you said that: "The problem with lab tests is that they don’t use conditions out there in the field. "-

they are actually do consider those conditions .search the paper “biomolecules in fossil remains: multidisciplinary approach to endurance, the biochemist”

and its actually confirmed that we have a real sample of a dna:

http://www.amjbot.org/content/91/4/615.full

you said: " A scientist would look at the longest stalactite (not the average) to get a minimum bound on the age of the earth"-

not realy. because some of them can grow really fast. so we most take the average to get the real number and the average is about 10 cm per 1000 years…

you said:

“atoms that we are talking about here could only have formed in supernovae when large stars die”

ok. so the acceleration could happan during or after this process (and bren, im not talking about Noah’s flood).

hi bren, see my response to ace.

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I’m sorry Dcscccc, but from all appearances, you actually are talking about Noah’s flood. If I am wrong about this, and you are for some reason bent on trying to discredit the dating of supernovae based on radiometric methods, then you will be pleased to hear that you don’t have to, since this is not the point under discussion. We are discussing radioactive decay that is used to measure the age of rock layers and the embedded fossils and more to the point, we are discussing the vast apparent differences in age between rock layers that were left during the flood by your reckoning.

The creationist hypothesis is that the majority of rock layers on the surface of the earth were deposited within a short period during this flood, so the only available explanation (besides the obvious) for the different apparent ages between these rock layers would have to be accelerated decay rates during the flood year, affecting each of these layers as they formed.

If you pull the strings and make the accelerated decay kick in and drop off at some point earlier than this (protecting Noah and family), then it completely fails to account for (a) the apparent age differences between layers and for (b) why the ratios of decay products to specific isotopes (when compared with more stable isotopes of the same element) within the rocks matches the ratios expected from long ages of radioactive decay for only the unstable isotopes. You end up missing the whole point, failing to supply any answer for the real issues that the hypothesis faces. You still end up with no explanation for the heat needed to accelerate the decay for the susceptible isotopes during the flood (only some of them are affected by extreme heat), no explanation for how to handle the extreme heat causing or generated by this decay, and no explanation for why unstable isotopes that are not susceptible to accelerated decay due to heating seem to suggest the same extended timescales. You can focus on big bangs and supernovae all you want, but it will not make any difference since nothing of this nature can account for any of these points.

Basically, unless you are unexpectedly concerned with the dates of supernovae and inexplicably unconcerned with the dates of rock layers and fossils, you seem to be on the wrong track…

I hope these points make sense and that they help explain why discussions of supernovae and the big bang are not really relevant to the task that you have set for yourself (i.e. the explaining away of inconvenient data).

29

I may be missing something here, but my understanding is that radioactive dating cannot be used on sedimentary rocks, but only on igneous rocks. So sedimentary rocks cannot be directly dated, but only indirectly by making assumptions of adjacent igneous layers. My understanding is also that volcanic ash, is unreliable for most dating processes because of the indeterminate temperatures and rates of cooling associated with it, which affects inclusion of daughter products. Even without change in decay rates, the assumptions required for dating of sedimentary rocks are significant. These sedimentary layers cannot be dated as being significantly different, nor can they be directly dated by radioactive decay. Fossils are only imbedded in sedimentary layers, not in igneous rock.

Rocks that are moved, transported and redeposited, may potentially be dated older than the date of movement, but this does not date their formation in the place they now exist, and thus does not date the fossils either.

The inclusion of argon in new volcanic rock shows that the assumption of no argon in new basalt is a wrong assumption. It is proven wrong, so how can it remain an assumption for older rock? It would be as fair to suggest that argon inclusion was greater in the past, as to say that it was lower in the past. While a variability of 270,000 yrs might seem “okay” for K-Ar method, certainly a variance of 3 million years would be unacceptable. Furthermore, when Rb-Sr and Pb - Pb methods give the same rocks an age of 133 million to 3.9 billion yrs, then only pre-determined assumptions can say which method is valid, which of course is a scientifically invalid approach to “dating”. (Snelling, 2005) So it doesn’t really matter what the cause of the difference is, although it is interesting to discover or speculate. The point is that the big differences make the methods invalid.

Inconvenient data… The variance (high differences) of dates on rock when tested by different radioactive methods has been demonstrated, contrary to the claim that the methods substantiate each other. How do we know that when methods do coordinate or correlate with each other, that it is not merely due to coincidence, or due to similar processes resulting from similar incorrect assumptions?

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I also find interesting this calculation related to carbon 14 dating. If the entire world consisted of C14, it would apparently take 167 half-lives to reduce all of the C14 to only one atom of C14; this would take 956,910 years. You’ll note this is just under one million years. Mass spectrometers can detect 0.01% of the C14 levels we presently have in the atmosphere. One C14 atom in 10 to power of 16 atoms.

Yet C14 is found in diamonds, coal, dinosaur fossils. The amounts found were ten to fifty times the AMS detection limit. How much contamination would be required to get this level of C14 in material which had no C14? Due to the impervious nature of diamonds, diamonds are not vulnerable to infiltration of C14… thus no contamination.

31

Hi JohnZ,

Thanks for your comments. Not sure if you’re missing something. Let’s see. Sedimentary rocks are usually dated indirectly by dating igneous or metamorphic rocks embedded in or surrounding the sedimentary layers. This obviously depends on the principle of superposition, but since it has been recognized since the late 1700’s that in relative terms lower meant older and higher meant younger (except where there is obvious folding etc), this should be fairly u controversial. Even Creationists have long recognized this, and this is why the flood model has become rather more complicated than the bible might suggest, as they have attempted to account for the sequence of layers and the temporal sequence of events that they represent. If you find a fossil below a layer that has been reliably dated, then barring some detectable (based on wider geologic context) change in the sequence of layers or some interruption in the superposed layers, it must be concluded that the fossil is older. Similar arguments can be used to narrow down the age range for fossils in terms of upper and lower bounds. Obviously, once a rock is crystallized/compressed and additional layers superposed, you cannot rearrange the fossils without serious and obvious excavations.

You are understandably focused on whatever cannot be reliably used for dating, but it probably will not surprise you to hear that scientists only make a habit of depending on the layers that can be dated, the interpolations that can be reasonably made, and the methods that can be reliably used. Since I didn’t spell it out earlier (with reason, I think), I should also point out that my above comments also deal with the this data and not with the rocks that can’t be dated or the methods that should not be used.

Given that there are 40 available radiometric techniques and that they are routinely used to cross-check each other for given samples, it seems surprising that you are intent on a single method for which there are known limitations that are carefully accounted for. Your question “…It is proven wrong, so how can it remain an assumption for older rock?” leads one to the conclusion that scientists are stubbornly ignoring evidence that their assumptions are incorrect, a rather serious accusation to level at the whole community of professional geologists over the last half century. So let’s see if you or your scientific informants are calling them out or bearing false witness on an impressive scale.

Although argon, being an inert gas, is not usually incorporated during crystal formation, it was nevertheless discovered that this reasonable assumption is occasionally incorrect. It was realized (for some reason this tends to be accidentally left out from creationist sources) that we can actually use a couple of strategies to check such assumptions including looking for Argon in low potassium minerals like Quartz and using the 40Ar/39Ar isochron method, not to mention corroborating with other dating methods that do not depend on the quantity of Ar. Seems to me that if you can test an assumption, you loose the privilege of calling it an assumption.

Your assertion as to the vast inconsistencies between dating methods and between samplings is a common trope, dealt with repeatedly here and elsewhere, and since it is a shift in topics, I can’t deal with it extensively. Sufficed to say, the whole point of Snelling and RATE was to discredit radiometric dating (In fact, they literally needed to arrive at this conclusion), so I’m hardly inclined to be surprised at his results. There are many known and potential sources of contamination and many misapplications of dating methods, but these are much better characterized and more easily avoided than they used to be, and it is not the presence of instances of contamination, outlier results and inappropriate handling that should surprise us, especially when these are reduced with knowledge and care, it is instead the extensive and statistically (very) significant agreement across the many dating methods being used, across the many reliable samples being tested and throughout the geologic column that should come as a surprise (for creationists anyway).

Your final question is astounding. No, a combination of dumb luck and experimental artifact cannot explain the patterns you see, and yes, scientists may notice if this was an even remotely plausible hypothesis.

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32

Bren thanks for your response. Most of what you have said is not new to me… I think perhaps you missed the implications of your phrase: “If you find a fossil below a layer that has been reliably dated,…” The whole issue is “reliably dated”. This tough for us… how do we know? We can only get a hint of this from dating rocks we actually have the known date for, such as new volcanic rock. When the new rock is dated at varying dates of 350,000 years to 3.5 million years by K-Ar, and much older dates by at least three other isochron methods (RB-Sr, Pb-Pb, Sm-Nd), in fact up to 3.9 billion yrs, you can see that the methods do not corroborate each other on rock of a known age. When C14 is discovered in millions and billions of yrs old material at a level that is ten times the detection limit, then it certainly does not (NOT) corroborate the other dates. The helium diffusion rates do also not corroborate the other radioactive “dates”. Not only that, but the K-Ar “dates” for whole rock is not the same as for specific minerals within the rock, again begging the question as to why. They varied from 350,000 to 2.8 mill yrs.

So, instead of corroborating each other, we have four different ages for new Mt. St. Helen’s rock using K-AR. We have three different ages for relatively new Mt. Ngauruhoe rock, using K-Ar. We have three vastly different ages from three isochron methods (Pb-Pb, Rb-Sr, and Sm-Nd). All of these ages are incorrect, except for the reading of <270,000 yrs, which has no level of accuracy, but is technically correct, since 50 yr old rock is less than 270,000 yrs. But contrary to what you said, Bren, this is not concentrating on a “single method”, since there are at least four methods here identified.

So that is the question; are the radioactive dating methods reliable?

Whether Snelling tried to discredit radiometric dating or not, is not the issue. The issue is whether the instances, experiments, and data did discredit it or not. I could argue that those who like radiometric dating need to sustain it, so it is not surprising that they keep defending it, and finding examples where it seems to work. It’s useless to talk about motivation from the perspective of the actual data involved. Another example is dating of the KBS tuff in East Africa, which first was dated at 230 mill yrs (but this was incompatible with pig and elephant fossils), so revised then at 2.61 mill yrs, then finally (because of the discovery of a skull by R. Leaky) revised to 1.8 mill yrs. (Lubenow, 2008).

There are fossils with no igneous rock above them. They have only sedimentary layers above… how would these fossils be dated?

My last question was actually in the following post, about C14 dating. I will repeat it here.

I also find interesting this calculation related to carbon 14 dating. If the entire world consisted of C14, it would apparently take 167 half-lives to reduce all of the C14 to only one atom of C14; this would take 956,910 years. You’ll note this is just under one million years. Mass spectrometers can detect 0.01% of the C14 levels we presently have in the atmosphere. One C14 atom in 10 to power of 16 atoms.

Yet C14 is found in diamonds, coal, dinosaur fossils. The amounts found were ten to fifty times the AMS detection limit. How much contamination would be required to get this level of C14 in material which had no C14? Due to the impervious nature of diamonds, diamonds are not vulnerable to infiltration of C14… thus no contamination.

33

bren. like i said before- im not talking about the flood. you said:

“then it completely fails to account for (a) the apparent age differences between layers and for”-

what is the problem? some of the layers get more heat and some doesnt.

" (b) why the ratios of decay products to specific isotopes (when compared with more stable isotopes of the same element) within the rocks matches the ratios expected from long ages of radioactive decay for only the unstable isotopes."-

because the heat make similar acceleration in different isotopes. so we get almost the same result from many method.

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JohnZ,

You list these results as though they were a representative sampling of the usual data obtained, and of course, if they were, and if I were convinced that this was the case, I would immediately come over to your way of thinking. Because if they were, it would mean simply this; that scientists were committing fraud on a massive and systematic scale, routinely selecting only the data that matches the ages that they have somehow (not sure how) decided on in advance. The word for this is of course “conspiracy” and any one signing up for such a position goes by the name of a conspiracy theorist. Which doesn’t of course mean that they are wrong, but the shear scale of the implied cover-up makes one hopefully minimally cautious about embracing such a view. It becomes even more difficult to embrace when you routinely work as a scientist and you see how much critical and conscientious care is habitually taken with the data by your colleagues (and yourself!) in order to avoid biasing the conclusions.

As I said, this brings the discussion into new territory. My above comments to Dcscccc stand, and I think it obvious that he is somewhat unclear as to the actual physical consequences of his doing essentially whatever he’d like with the historical laws of nature, not to mention his odd focus on points that don’t obviously help his cause (like the Big Bang). If you have now decided to shift the focus and assert that radiometric dating doesn’t work at all then this changes everything. As an aside, I rather wish that we could make up our minds on what the problem is; either the dating methods yield consistent and correct relative results, but there was some period of accelerated decay, compressing the dates by several orders of magnitude, or the results are an inconsistent muddle, with scientists cherry picking data to make it tell the story they happen to favor; it seems unlikely that you can have it both ways. That said, I am well aware that creationists compile and disseminate lists of odd and inconsistent results, with the list getting longer and more impressive every year. I could perform a very similar trick at my own lab; every second experiment seems to yield at least one or two inexplicable data points. I have a short list of likely causes, and errors tend to proliferate under several conditions, but I often end up with inexplicable discrepancies (they sometimes don’t seem to match anything on my short list of usual causes), and this is par for the course with most lab work. My obvious reaction is to verify that the pattern of the remaining data, both positive and negative controls, is consistent and reliable,to judge whether the bad data points give me any reason to doubt the remaining data set, and to attempt to trace the cause (only sometimes possible). Now if I started to compile a list of such discrepancies, and presented it to anyone willing to listen as though it were a random sampling of usual results, I would quickly find that they all got the impression that my data was completely useless, a muddle of statistically insignificant data, and that any other conclusions I seem to come to are based on my dishonestly fudging the data. They would be completely wrong, but I could hardly fault them for their conclusion. From what I can see, this seems to be what happens with creationists; they collect and share any discrepancies they can find, without being obviously aware that (a) such bad data is a normal subset of all data produced in a lab setting, especially wherever the results are particularly susceptible to contamination or methodological problems,and (b) the claim of geologists is that the very opposite of this presented impression is true; that the results are generally quite consistent and convergent, with the overall pattern being unambiguous especially where contamination sources are handled carefully, so the point is simple; they are to be accused of lying. All of them. Your goal cannot be to show that some dating results are anomalous, since this is normal enough that it will only elicit a shrug as a response; you must instead show that the preponderance of the results are anomalous, and it is in this that only the blunt accusation of fraud could possibly do the work. You obviously have access to the growing list of bad apple data, but unless you are willing to agree that it is a minor (and normal) proportion of the data being produced by the labs that run the geologic samples, you must be prepared to go the distance and accuse the community of geologists of shocking and systemic dishonesty. I’m certainly not prepared to follow you in such an accusation, and I am as underwhelmed by lists of bad data in this field as I would be in my own, so if this is where you are coming from, then while I’m sympathetic and vaguely intrigued by conspiracy theories, we probably have little left to discuss.
It also seems that every time I bother to look into single instances of discrepant radiometric results presented by creationists, they are less than compelling. A good example is your contention that C14 was found to be far above the background in RATE diamond studies; it seems that standard procedures for radiocarbon work were ignored or incorrectly followed, with contamination being a rather obvious interpretation (except, apparently, where it happens to be an inconvenient interpretation). I won’t wrangle further on this for now, and I guess that the most I can hope for is that you gain a good sense for why I can’t follow you in your conclusions.

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35

“what is the problem? some of the layers get more heat and some doesnt.”

So not only did Noah have to handle heat that was far hotter than the core of the sun, but the temperature underwent abrupt and significant changes every few feet in the geologic column for some reason that you can’t even be bothered to suggest. Wow. I don’t even know how to respond to this. I really think it would be a time saver to just go with the idea that it was all miracle, and that the appearance of age is just an unfortunate coincidence. If we can both agree on this as the alternative theory, I would be happy with that and would have no more complaints.

“because the heat make similar acceleration in different isotopes. so we get almost the same result from many method.”

I’m not sure why this is presented as being specifically a response to isochron dating, but that aside; given that only a few isotopes undergo accelerated decay due to extreme temperatures, no, this proposal would not help you.

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36

bren, again- im not talking about the flood time. so your claim is irrelevant.

about your second claim - i dont think its true. because a lots of method get similar result:

http://www.0095.info/en/index_thesesen_95onesentencethesesagainste_radioactivedecayatplasmatemp.html

References:

(1) Edward Boudraux, Attenuation of accelerated decay rates by magnetic effects, Proceedings of the Cosmology Conference 2003, Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio.
(2) Edward Boudraux, Accelerated Radioactive Decay Rates, a Minimal Quantitative Model, Proceedings of the Cosmology Conference 2003, Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio.

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Please don’t waste my time again with links to papers that don’t support your arguments. I read the paper you mentioned and it’s clear to me that you haven’t read it. In the future I’m not going to bother to follow any more of your references unless you can demonstrate that you both understand the paper and you can point to that part of the paper which supports your claim.

Time-wasting and sourcing your claims with papers that are irrelevant to the discussion at hand seem to be favourite tactics of yours.

In this case, the lengths of time for DNA survivability were just estimates. They weren’t absolute statements that could be applied to all DNA ever.

because some of them can grow really fast. so we most take the average to get the real number and the average is about 10 cm per 1000 years

The average isn’t going to tell you the real number. It’s only going to tell you the average. There are many ways to date stalactites including radiometric dating and oxygen isotope measurements which give an indication of outside temperature. Some of these oxygen isotope measurements give readings consistent with the coming and going of ice ages over a period of 160,000 years.

ok. so the acceleration could happan during or after this process (and bren, im not talking about Noah’s flood).

When it comes to radiometric dating, your arguments display a clear lack of understanding. For example, we could perform uranium-lead dating on zircon crystals. The ridiculously high temperatures you’re talking about would destroy these crystals so zircon crystals have clearly never been exposed to those sorts of temperatures.

When zircon crystals form, the formation process incorporates uranium but strongly repels lead meaning that a newly formed zircon will never have any lead in it.

This isn’t an assumption. We have tested the formation of zircons and we understand the chemistry
behind it.

This means that when we date zircons using uranium-lead dating, we can safely conclude that any lead within them is the result of uranium decay and that these crystals have never been exposed to the types of temperatures that would accelerate this decay.

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“again- im not talking about the flood time. so your claim is irrelevant.”

That’s funny, because the very comment that I was responding to was the following: “what is the problem? some of the layers get more heat and some doesnt.” Sounds sort of like you were discussing rock layers. We are talking about the apparent age differences between the rock layers and every creationist I’ve spoken to thinks that just about all rock layers were deposited after Adam and mostly during the flood. Your only other option is that the unexplained and oddly varied heating occurred after the flood, vaporizing all of the fossils (which are for some reason still being found) and making the surface of the earth rather uncomfortable for every generation since Adam. And no, just to cut you off at the pass before you suggest anything shady, the differences in heating for the rock layers could not have occurred before there were rock layers.

“about your second claim - i dont think its true. because a lots of method get similar result:”

And yet your references support exactly what I said, listing only a few methods that are sensitive to the effects of extreme heat. This is fairly well established from what I can see, and it is well known that most of the relevant methods are not affected by heat, so no, you don’t get to escape the problem that way, please try again.

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ace, the paper estimation base on experiment and also consider differnet conditions. from the paper:

“the rates of which are believed to be controlled by temperature and pH”

“Fossils with diagenetic histories dominated by slow, chemicalprocesses provide us with the bestopportunity to explore fully the limits of biomolecular survival. These limits have been studied using the kinetics of chemical degradation forDNA, collagen and osteocalcin.”

"members of the ABG have conducted a comprehensive estimate of the limit of DNA survival, which they believe to lie at 17 500 years at a constanttemperature of 10|

so they actually do have a good estimation base on science.

now about the stalactite- you said that “It’s only going to tell you the average”. yes and this is the best estimation because we talking about most of the stalactites. and again- this estimation give us about not more then 10000 years in most of the stalactites. is this a coincidence?

you said that: " There are many ways to date stalactites including radiometric dating and oxygen isotope measurements "

yes. and we have many ways to date the age of the earth. and those ways also give us a young age. so we have evidence for both old and young earth. plus- see this article about problems with the oxygen isotope measurements:

about the zircon-lead. ok. maybe those crystals form after the acceleration?

but even if its true, what about all other methods? if a high temp can accelerate those methods, and we know that this temp was in the history of earth, then how we can trust those methods?

40

bren:

“And no, just to cut you off at the pass before you suggest anything shady, the differences in heating for the rock layers could not have occurred before there were rock layers”-

if the acceleration happaned from the formation of the earth, so just from the start all the rocks in the earth have some variations.

“And yet your references support exactly what I said, listing only a few methods that are sensitive to the effects of extreme heat.”-

the fact that a lot of the methods give similar result can be a very strong case for the acceleration claim. secondly- they not try to check all the different methods but some of them.

41

Dcscccc,

“if the acceleration happaned from the formation of the earth, so just from the start all the rocks in the earth have some variations.”

I find it difficult to make sense of this sentence but I will fix on what I think must be the meaning, apologies if I have misunderstood you. You seem to be claiming that the extreme heating (you don’t seem to be aware that the earth itself could not survive such heat levels, though I keep repeating it) occurred after the earth formed but before people or animals (I guess with the motive of keeping them safe). Dcscccc, please think this through carefully; this is before the rock layers were laid down! How is it remotely possible that this could explain a pattern of older dates in lower layers and successively more recent dates in higher layers? How would an incredible degree of heating that couldn’t possibly have happened anyway affect each of the atoms in advance to different degrees as a function of which layers they would later on end up in?! That doesn’t make sense at all and is statistically absurd. You just don’t seem to be considering this very carefully so please pay close attention to how this sounds.

“the fact that a lot of the methods give similar result can be a very strong case for the acceleration claim. secondly- they not try to check all the different methods but some of them.”

I will spell this out more carefully since you seem a bit confused about the reasoning, here are the logical outcomes in no particular order;

(a) if you have two radioactive isotopes, one is affected by heat and the other is not, then if there is extreme heat but a short time frame, one would appear young and the other old (because only one would undergo accelerated decay).
(b) if you have two radioactive isotopes, one is affected by heat and the other is not, then if there is NO extreme heat and a short time frame, both would appear young (similar ages).
© if you have two radioactive isotopes, one is affected by heat and the other is not, then if there is extreme heat and a long time frame, both would appear very old, but the one that is affected by heat would appear much older (within the measurable age).
(d) if you have two radioactive isotopes, one is affected by heat and the other is not, then if there is NO extreme heat and a long time frame, both would appear very old, and both would usually yield extremely similar (convergent) ages.

The outcome that we see according to geologists: both the isotopes that are affected by extreme heating and the ones that are not appear very old, and both usually yield extremely similar (convergent) ages. Please match this outcome to the logical result listed above and it will give you an idea of why I am focusing on correlating the results of isotopes that are unaffected by heat with the results from those that are affected by heat.

And I should point out (again) that you are ignoring the obvious; the earth could not physically survive such heat levels and you have no mechanism at all to account for it. I strongly recommend just going with miracles if you feel the need to persist. You scheme is profoundly unworkable without them.

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Bren, it is useless to talk about conspiracy, massive fraud etc. It has nothing to do with the facts raised. Of course, scientists are meticulous and careful; this is true for critics, peer review, and for investigative work. But again, irrelevant in this case. It does not address the data. Generalizations such as this appear to me to be a special pleading.

When radiometric dating is used, why do the forms for samples submitted ask how old the submission is expected to be? Why is that necessary? Why can we say one method will work in a given situation and not another? Why does not the data itself explain whether the method has worked or not?

In the example I gave, the rock was submitted in an unbiased manner, with no presumption of age. Yet the ages varied among the methods by a factor of 70 million? Are you then accusing the ones who submitted these samples in an unbiased manner, of fraud or conspiracy?

I have heard a quote (or read one) of one scientist saying that if C14 results corroborate their assumptions they use the “dates”, if they don’t, then they discard the results. I am not saying this is conspiracy, but of course, he is being careful and conscientious to use dates that make sense to him…

Of course all labs and all experiments have errors and variability. Our greatest difficulty is that we can only prove methods in the relatively short time period of human existence with historical evidence. If this is where the errors are greatest, then it reduces our confidence greatly in the interpretation of data which is attributed to time periods beyond human existence and verification.

So between the lines, are you saying that these rock samples or similar samples have been selected, dated by exactly the same methods, and have been found then to have all similar “dates” regardless of whether dated by K-AR, Pb, Rb-Sr, and Sm-Nd. Are you saying that similar samples or identical samples have found that all these methods have given results of less than 200,000 years, proving that these methods are valid after all? Is that what you are saying?

As far as C14, so now you are accusing the scientists of fraud in examination of diamonds…no? Really? On what basis? My understanding is that, diamonds aside, C14 has been found at these levels in most or almost all samples tested where C14 should not be detectable. This has been found mostly by non-creationist scientists, who were then all using non-standard procedures for radio-carbon work?

You say that contamination is an obvious interpretation… if it is so obvious, then you would know for example, how much contamination is standard or expected in all these procedures? One of the writers who raises these issues that I have brought up is a PhD in physical chemistry with his PhD thesis in mass spectroscopy. He seems to disagree that contamination is a viable excuse for these numbers.