Soft Tissues in Fossils

Faith & Science Conversation
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what what???
I would suggest that the actual reality of this is quite the opposite. If radiative decay was so consistent, how on earth did they manage to date rocks from the Mt St Hellens Volcano at many many thousands to even millions of years old?

Even apart from the volcano issues, having to use multiple methods of investigation in order to even come up with millions of years does not rely entirely on radioactive decay…so why even make this claim when it isn’t the sole source of evidence used in dating?

The final problem, given that scientists do not have an “ancient bar/standard”, one is applying current world values to millions of years ago. If the earth experienced volcanic activity, and given the inaccuracy of dating Mt St Hellens rocks and also a number of other volcanic events over the last 50 or so years, clearly it would be impossible to set any kind of threshold for millions of years ago. the best that one can do i believe is start at the point where those standards began to be measured by modern science. We cannot date back millions of years without knowing exactly what variables greatly corrupt the dating timeline. The reality is, we were not there and it is not possible to even accurately theorize on what that standard might have been.

We have a bible statement in Job telling us that Behemoths clearly lived with modern animals…something secular interpretations simply cannot allow because they do not believe God created all of these animals together (they don’t even believe in God). We have Central/South American rock paintings and other evidence where those tribes that date to around the time of Job or later in history have drawn images of their tribe/s hunting Behemoths exactly like sauropods and images of other dinasoars interracting with man far more recently than millions of years ago! So the evidence in favour of this isn’t just biblical. I cannot see how one can reconcile radio decay dating methods with the written history if that documented history clearly does not agree with it. Which is wrong? Obviously it isn’t the written history!

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This artwork is called the Nile Mosaic of Palestrina. It depicts Nile scenes from Egypt all the way to Ethiopia. Scholars now believe this is the work of Demetrius the Topographer, an artist from Alexandria who came to work in Rome. The top portion of this remarkable piece of art is generally believed to depict African animals being hunted by black-skinned warriors. These Ethiopians are pursuing what appears to be some type of dinosaur.

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You know fine what the answer to that one is, Adam. It’s been explained to you over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. For the benefit of anyone reading this thread who hasn’t already seen the explanations elsewhere, I shall repeat it.

Claiming that the results from Mount St Helens prove that the earth is young is like taking an old mechanical set of bathroom scales, seeing that they give a reading of 0.1 kilograms when you’re not standing on them, then standing on a new electronic set of bathroom scales and claiming that because the old one didn’t register zero, you could plausibly weigh nothing despite the fact that the digital readout says ninety kilograms.

The results of between 350,000 and 2.8 million years may sound like a lot, but these figures are less than one thousandth of the measured ages of the oldest rocks on Earth, which, for what it’s worth, were dated at 4.4 billion years using a completely different, much more accurate method.

And once again, there is nothing whatsoever “evolutionist” or “secular” or “anti-God” about this whatsoever. It’s how measurement works in every area of science.

For the simple reason that when multiple methods all give the same set of results, despite making different assumptions, that is cumulative evidence that those methods do, in fact, work as intended, and the assumptions were, in fact, correct. This is because for those results to all be wrong, they would have to be wrong in such a way as to all give the same wrong results as each other. Being wrong does not work like that.

Once again, this is how measurement and evidence works in every area of science. There is nothing whatsoever about this that is anything to do with “not believing God created all of these animals together.”

The reality is, we don’t have to have been there to accurately theorise and measure what the standards could have been back then. I’ve told you before and I’ll tell you this again, Adam. The “were you there?” argument is a lie.

This really belongs on the other thread, not this one. But suffice it to say, if you think that unambiguously depicts a sauropod dinosaur, you must be taking confirmation bias up to eleven. If it is a sauropod it’s a very badly drawn one: again, it’s neck is way too short. It could just as plausibly depict a large dog or an otter or something like that.

This is why young earthist arguments are such a joke. They present us with tiny samples with huge error bars, ambiguous drawings for which a sauropod dinosaur is only one among several other, more plausible interpretations, and on that basis they insist that hundreds of thousands of high-precision, rigorously cross-checked, tightly constrained measurements must all be consistently out by factors of a million despite the fact that those measurements all give the same sets of results as each other and also prove themselves time and time again in their ability to get real-world results such as finding oil.

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“The consistency of radioactive decay is strongly supported.”

“what what???
I would suggest that the actual reality of this is quite the opposite. If radiative decay was so consistent, how on earth did they manage to date rocks from the Mt St Hellens Volcano at many many thousands to even millions of years old?”

First, to clarify exactly what I said: The consistency of radioactive DECAY is strongly supported. Any change in decay rates involves significant change to fundamental physics and disrupts the existence of matter. (Unsurprisingly, decay of an atom by electron capture is affected by the availability of electrons, which in turn is affected by the chemical context of the atom, but no electron-capture decay is used in radiometric dating.)

It is true that there are some additional steps involved in the process of going from the fixed rates of radioactive decay to radiometric dating. But those steps are also strongly supported. Indeed, it is the very predictability of radioactive decay and the well-studied factors to consider in using radiometric dating that makes it easy for unscrupulous young-earthers to know what sort of dating techniques can give bad-looking results if you ignore the guidelines. For example, there are two basic problems with the supposedly anomalous Mount Saint Helens dating. First, you need to make sure just what it is that you are dating - in the case of the volcano, distinguishing between material newly produced in the eruption versus older crystals that were blasted out in the eruption. Second, as has already been pointed out, you need to properly consider the resolving power of a particular method. To give another metaphor, a one cup kitchen scoop will not work at all for measuring the volume of a lake, nor the microliter volumes that I use for PCR. But that does not prove that the one cup measure is no good for measuring how much flour goes into a recipe. Similarly, to get a useful radiometric date, you need to consider the limits of the isotope and of your measuring equipment. The half-life of carbon-14 is 5730 years. On the one hand, this means that a leaf that died yesterday and a leaf that died a month ago will not have significantly different levels of 14C - you need a somewhat larger time interval (or a disruptive event, in the case of 14C, such as a significant change in the number of atmospheric nuclear tests or a major burst of space radiation, though there is no similar option for the other isotopes used in dating rocks) to make a measurable difference. Conversely, once you get beyond about 20,000 to 70,000 years (depending on how clean your sample is and how good the equipment is), there’s so little 14C left that the unavoidable contamination from the air, touch, etc.) drowns out any signal from the sample. Also, the young-earth claims never mention the fact that using appropriate dating techniques for Mount Saint Helens gives accurate results. Michael Roberts tried working through John Wodemoreappe’s young-earth promoting list of several hundred anomalous radiometric dates. After zero of the first hundred examples proved to be accurate, he got tired of the exercise.

But also, radiometric dating is merely what gives the specific numbers. The record of events shown in the rocks and sedimentary layers requires a vast amount of time. This was suspected by the late 1600’s and conclusively demonstrated by the 1770’s. No young-earth view since then has seriously dealt with that fact. Instead, the approach has been to try to raise a bunch of piecemeal objections, with little to no concern for accuracy, and ignore the overall big picture.

If dinosaurs did overlap with humans, that would not pose any challenge to radiometric dating or an old earth. It would merely indicate that dinosaurs had survived for a long time in small populations without leaving fossil traces. In fact, the same silly claims about various ancient or supposedly ancient human references portraying dinosaurs are also invoked by Hare Krishnas as supposedly helping prove that humans have been reincarnating for hundreds of millions of years or by the ancient alien fraudsters to not clearly prove anything but simply to promote their conspiracy-theory slanders by calling into question honest science. The figure in the mosaic of Palestrina that you supply does not look much like a dinosaur - the neck, body, legs, and tail are all wrong in their proportions. Nor should we conclude that people back then had excessively skinny ankles.

“Which is wrong? Obviously it isn’t the written history!” The written claims about history made by many sources, including much of what is claimed about the history of science by atheists and young-earthers alike, are indeed wrong. (See, for example, the “History for Atheists” website, which is an atheist trying to get other atheists to clean up their act.) The description of Behemoth in Job is highly poetic (even the most ridiculous young-earth claims I have seen don’t claim that his bones are actually bronze, for example, and most realize that real animals don’t breathe fire - the latter metaphor is used of extreme anger elsewhere in the Bible) and brief. The fact that commentators suggest crocodile, elephant, whale, hippo, legendary dragon, etc. as possibilities reflects the fact that it simply isn’t a sufficiently detailed description to confidently identify what is being described. Likewise, the purported ancient human pictures of dinosaurs are not particularly accurate as representations of dinosaurs. Many can be seen, through comparison with other pictures in the same source, to be stylized representations of more familiar modern animals; those touting the “it’s a dinosaur” claim give the most dinosaur-like picture they can find, not a representative sample of the evidence. Of course, it’s also true that ancient people speculated about fossil bones. And there are genuine ancient pictures of extinct Ice Age mammals. Those do tend to be accurate enough to be thoroughly recognizable.

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Here we go again. There are thousands upon thousands of cataloged ancient statuary, painting, engravings and mosaics, which depict familiar animals, such as lions, horses, crocodiles, and so forth. Some of these are breath taking in terms of their artistic quality and fidelity. If ancient artists actually witnessed dinosaurs, we would be in similarly plentiful possession of accurate representations. We do not, because no human has even seen a living dinosaur.

This same mosaic depicts a HONOKENTAYRA, a lion body with the head of a woman:

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and here is a crocodile head on, well, something:

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The creature being hunted you showed in your post is actually labeled by the artist as KROKODILOPARDALIS, a crocodile - leopard.

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Here are two previous conversations about this topic:

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Even in prehistoric times they were carving critters that didn’t exist.
Consider this 40,000 year old lion man

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how exactly do you consider that to be a more accurate method when you cannot rely on the accuracy of a short time period?

Sorry, but that is not even consistent with the way in which we as individuals rate the integrity and honesty or the reliability of the monetary and indeed even the political system. Completel nonsense and not at all an answer to my question. So have you answered it before? No you have not…you have given a whitewash over the top and i still know (as does everyone) what is underneath. The foundational problem remains.

Mt St Hllens btw is not the only volcanic eruption where this problem arose…there were a number of others across the world that have been measured in modern times producing the same errant dates.

If your method of calculating a young tree is up the creek, then your method of dating an old tree is unreliable before you even attempt to date it.

Once again you fall into the same trap over and over again…you maintain that the starting point is a known threshold. That is simply untrue and is a major problem. It is not the methods specifically that are the problem here…they are but one part of the problem. The threshold presents a significant issue that is not being addressed. You continue to claim something works without first checking the underlying assumptions. These underlying assumptions make the claim that since there is no creator, things must have evolved. Since we see no evidence of any kind of evolution of the manner that explains the origins from primitive to where we are today, then it must have taken a lot longer than our known written existence. Science then simply deduces everything else from that point…in the exact same way they have done with the big bang. God did not initiate the Big Bang, secular Science interpretation uses the conservation of energy as a foundation principle…oh hang on, where did the energy and matter come from that started the big bang…hmm not any more as the conservation principle doesn’t fit!

Its no wonder the Darwinian view and interpretations of the science by its followers are contrary to the biblical account.

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Because that is how measurement works in every area of science, Adam.

One of the most fundamental, basic principles of measurement is that unreliability must be quantified. You cannot claim that any measurement technique is more unreliable than what is warranted by the measured discrepancies. Steve Austin’s study indicates that potassium-argon dating of dacites may have a systematic error of up to two or three million years or so. On that basis, you could claim that similar Precambrian dacites measuring 550 million years by the same method could be as young as 547 million years and no younger. To suggest that such Precambrian rocks could be young because Holocene rocks register two million years is like taking a set of bathroom scales, seeing that it registers one kilogram when you aren’t standing on it, then when you stand on it and see a reading of 90 kilograms, concluding that you could plausibly weigh nothing.

For what it’s worth, I took a look at Austin’s original research paper. [1] It turns out that Austin used a very basic and primitive form of K-Ar dating on the Mount St Helens dacites. He presents his study as if it were some sort of ground breaking research, or some kind of elephant in the room that “evolutionists” didn’t want you to know, but in reality mainstream scientists had been aware of the limitations of that particular form of radiometric dating since the 1960s at least [2][3] and had come up with ways of working round its limitations. Methods such as isochron dating, 40Ar/39Ar dating, and so on. In fact these modern methods have been tested on rocks from eruptions that have been documented within written history and have been shown to be accurate. For example, in 1997, Renne et al tested rocks from the 79AD eruption of Vesuvius using 40Ar/39Ar isochron dating and got an age determination of 1925±94 years.[4] Its actual age of 1918 years was almost slap bang in the middle of the error bars.

This is another fundamental, basic principle of measurement here, Adam. Unreliability is specific to the technique used and the context to which it is applied. You cannot claim that a modern, high-precision technique is unreliable on the basis of errors in an older, more primitive technique that preceded it. As I said, to do so is like taking an old, rusty set of mechanical bathroom scales, seeing that it reads two kilograms when you’re not standing on it, then weighing yourself on a new, electronic set of scales and concluding that despite getting a reading of 90kg, you could plausibly weigh nothing.

On another note, the 40Ar/39Ar studies not only established that modern radiometric dating methods are reliable, they also provided confirmation of where the errors in the older, naive K/Ar dating technique used by Austin in his Mount St Helens study were coming from. And guess what? Accelerated nuclear decay had nothing whatsoever to do with it.

And once again, you fall into the same trap over and over again…you demonstrate a complete failure to understand both the basic rules and principles of how measurement works and the full breadth of studies that professional scientists have actually carried out. You claim that major problems are not being addressed when in actual fact they are. You continue to claim that something doesn’t work without first checking that it really does make the assumptions that you claim that it makes. You continue to claim that the underlying assumptions have not been tested when in actual fact they have. You continue to blow measured discrepancies out of all proportion and ascribe to them a significance far beyond anything that is warranted. And you continue to repeat such factually untrue claims even after having been told not just that they are factually untrue but also why they are factually untrue. That is at best wilful ignorance and at worst dishonesty. “Darwinian views and interpretations of the science” have nothing whatsoever to do with it.

References:

[1] Austin SA. “Excess argon within mineral concentrates from the new dacite lava dome at Mount St Helens volcano.” Creation Ex Nihlo Techncal Journal 1996; 10: 335–43.

[2] Dalrymple GB. “40Ar/36Ar analyses of historic lava flows.” Earth and Planetary Science Letters 1969; 6: 47–55.

[3] Krummenacher D. “Isotopic composition of argon in modern surface volcanic rocks.” Earth and Planetary Science Letters 8: 109–17.

[4] Renne PR, Sharp WD, Deino AL, Orsi G, Civetta L. “40Ar/39Ar dating into the historical realm: Calibration against Pliny the Younger.” Science, 1997; 277: 1279–80.

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But not in transubstantiation science, which is higher, better, truer than mere science.

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How can your bathroom scale be trusted if it can’t detect the weight of a feather?

Every single method of measurement in science has a range in which it is accurate. Radiometric dating is no different.

The Ar/Ar method is much better for young samples, and as cited above, the worst deviation is 0.25 million years. This would be a tiny fraction of error for rocks that are 100 million years old.

We could even quadruple the error for sake of argument, which would be 1 million years. We could say that anything at 1 million years or young is indistinguishable from brand new rock. That doesn’t help you, however. There are tons of examples of K/Ar and Ar/Ar ratios that are well above that expected for rocks that are 1 million years and younger. The small error that exists in the method is not enough to make the signal go away.

It is known, as shown in the study above. At worst, a rock might date 0.25 million years older than it is.

That’s like saying since there is no creator lightning must be created by thunderclouds. Can nothing natural occur in your universe?

We have plenty of evidence:

Just as Galileo’s interpretation of the movement of planets was contrary to the biblical account.

" But to want to affirm that the sun really is fixed in the center of the heavens and only revolves around itself (i. e., turns upon its axis ) without traveling from east to west, and that the earth is situated in the third sphere and revolves with great speed around the sun, is a very dangerous thing, not only by irritating all the philosophers and scholastic theologians, but also by injuring our holy faith and rendering the Holy Scriptures false."–Cardinal Bellarmine, 1615

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You still ignore the same problems over and over again.

  1. What is the threshold of parent element 100million years ago?

To put in simpler terms…how full was the hour glass?

You are making the claim that the parent child ratio has never been any different to today.

Since you werent there, nor is there any recorded threshold, you are relying on an assumption given to you by another scientist who says…there is no room for God in science. That individual then assumes that since he cannot see major evolutionary change in our recorded history, probability says it must take millions of years…so millions of years it must be. Any research to the contrary is discounted and a construct of only those theories supporting the original are allowed. The entire lie is built from there.

  1. With the big bang…where did the energy and matter come from that started the big bang and, who started it?

  2. Why is it that in all life, code and composing that code into something useful comes from an intelligent mind (as illustrated in computing)? We know that dna contains instructions…code.

I have a consistent answer to all three questions above. Its scientifically and theologically consistent. No conflicts. Those odds are far better than saying the theological as written is wrong.

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What is the total of kinetic, vectored energy in the universe?

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It essentially has to be in most cases, given that chemical bonding hasn’t changed dramatically: for instance, zircons will include uranium in their crystal structure, but actively exclude lead. Therefore, any lead within a zircon must be from radiometric decay.

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Full enough to measure. It’s the same as your bathroom scales. How do you know you weigh enough for something to register on your bathroom scale? You step on it and see if detects weight. The same for rocks. You measure the amount of 40K and 40Ar in the rock. If there is enough to reliably measure the ratio of the two isotopes then you have results.

Your threshold is nonsense, as is your claim that a 4.5 billion year old Earth removes God from science.

We measure the rate of decay of 40K in the lab. We understand what causes radioactive decay, it is based on the most fundamental nuclear forces such as the strong and weak nuclear forces. You would have to change the fundamental properties of nature in order for radioactive decay to change, the very same properties that creationists so often claim have to be finely tuned for life to exist.

There is no research to the contrary. There is no research demonstrating that the decay rate of 40K can change by orders of magnitude at pressures and temperatures conducive to the solidification of these rocks.

We don’t know, and we don’t have to know in order to determine that radioactive decay rates are constant.

That’s an unfounded assertion. You need evidence for those claims. You claim to have research, but apparently all you have is bald assertions. Do you know the difference between scientific research and bald assertions?

You only have assertions. No science.

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Precambrian Pollen Problems (invoked earlier in this thread)

Two supposed examples of more modern remains of organisms in Precambrian rocks have current popularity in young-earth circles – bits of wood and insects reported from the salt of the Salt Range in Pakistan, and reported pollen out of the Roraima Supergroup in Guyana. There are several problems with these claims, however.

One basic problem is consistent standards. Young-earth sources claim that old-earthers are hushing these up to conceal the existence of problems with an old-earth view. But if this were true, what should we conclude about all the problems for a young earth that are never mentioned by young-earth advocates? Also, finding something unexpected is a great shortcut to scientific fame – good evidence of such fossils in these layers would be a major discovery, and the fact that more information hasn’t showed up is likely to reflect that no one has found these convincing enough to be worth pursuing. Similarly, there is inconsistency in claiming that a couple of perceived problems for standard geology allows throwing all of it out, while ignoring both the large number of things that standard geology explains well and the many problems for a young-earth position. There is a highly consistent pattern throughout the geologic record of particular types of fossils being found in particular layers. Exceptions deserve to be investigated, but the best explanation is the one that addresses all of the evidence the best. Kuhn’s “paradigm shift” model badly neglects this aspect of science. To become successful, a new scientific model needs to explain more than the previous model did – just finding a problem is not enough to justify a change. A similar error is prevalent in political advertising these days. Claiming that the other candidate is awful should not be enough to get elected – it should be necessary to demonstrate that your own candidate is actually better.

Another problem is that many similar claims to find out of place fossils, promoted by young-earth advocates are wrong. George McCready Price, the main originator of the modern attempts to claim that geology is overwhelmingly incorrect, cited several supposed examples of fossils appearing in some layers but missing from ones in between in his Common-Sense Geology. Conveniently for me, he selected clams as a particular example to cite. I know that the clams that he says were missing from some layers actually were well-documented as being in those layers at the time that Price wrote. Price’s research was definitely inadequate. This pattern of inaccuracy on the part of young-earth sources doesn’t make one optimistic that a new claim will be better.

There are processes that can put a fossil apparently out of place. These have to be taken into account in determining whether any particular occurrence is really unusual or not. Reworking is the process where an older fossil is washed out of one layer and then deposited into a new one. For example, there are many places around the world where fossils are washing out of cliffs by a beach and getting mixed in with the modern beach deposits. A hole or crack can let younger fossils fall down in among older material. For example, a famous set of skeletons of the dinosaur Iguanodon were found by Belgian coal miners. The coal is Carboniferous, far older than the Cretaceous dinosaurs. But the dinosaurs are not in the coal. Instead, they are in a large sinkhole, filled with Cretaceous sediment. Either in life or after death, the dinosaurs fell into the hole and were buried. For small fossils such as pollen, contamination must also be considered. As allergy sufferers know all too well, pollen spreads all over the place. Making certain that pollen grains or other material actually comes from a rock sample rather than from the air or other sources requires appropriate precautions – were the samples adequately cleaned? Do the “fossils” match the rock, or are they fresher-looking? (For example, a specimen of a very modern-looking fly in amber was noticed to have a crack going all the way around the middle of the piece of amber – someone got a piece of amber, cut it in half, stuffed in a fly, and sold it for a higher price). Do you find just a few, or does everyone studying the same layer find lots of them? Do the rocks have obvious cracks or other evidence of change that could allow mixing? These are some clues that can help to distinguish between contamination and authentic finds.

Another problem is that both of these claims raise problems for other young-earth arguments. Young-earth advocates are surprisingly quick to make one argument and then contradict it in their next argument, if not within the same argument. For the Salt Range salt deposit, the salt is incompatible with a global flood. Salt is deposited by the evaporation of salty water and is dissolved when more water is available. The only way to deposit salt during a global flood is if the floodwaters are extremely hypersaline, killing practically all aquatic life except for certain bacteria and archaea. Otherwise, you need to have a dry setting for the salt deposit (including the option of some sort of salt lake surrounded by land). Additionally, the salt deposit has physical and chemical layering. Changing isotopes and mineral types through the section (Strauss et al. 2001; Mazumdar & Strauss, 2006) requires time for the seawater to change as the minerals are being deposited. Some of the changes in isotopes can be traced globally, requiring enough time for changes in ocean chemistry to spread around the world. At modern-day rates of currents, it takes about 300 years for chemical shifts to spread throughout the ocean. That could be slower or faster under other ocean conditions, but speeding it up to happen within a fraction of a day, as a flood geology model would imply, is rather difficult – such water movements would require enough energy that you’re vaporizing the earth rather than just moving water.

The Roraima rocks, unlike the Salt Range ones, are highly metamorphosed, with minerals indicating temperatures around 500 degrees C or more. But pollen, like some of the so-called “soft tissue” fossils, is made of tough organic molecules (mostly cellulose), not “hard” minerals. Claiming that the pollen from these rocks really belongs there is an assertion that “soft” tissues can survive some extreme conditions. Also, the formation of the new minerals at high temperature takes a while. The existence of minerals formed by sustained heat applied to previously-deposited sedimentary minerals requires a considerable amount of time, and there is no room for anything to happen gradually in a young-earth model.

Since the initial report of biological materials in the salt at one mine in the Salt Range beds, further study strongly indicates that they are contamination. Salt is somewhat squishy – it can slowly bend and flow, somewhat like ice in a glacier. It also easily dissolves and re-precipitates. So stuff that gets on the surface of a salt deposit can work its way into the salt, and the initial identification of the organic bits as fossils rather than as modern contamination was a mistake.

There is a detailed discussion of the reports of fossils out of the Roraima Supergroup at Responding To Creationism - Roraima . Two reports of fossils from the group exist, but both are not well-documented, making interpretations challenging. The first (Bailey, 1964) was corrected by Allen (1967) – the supposed fossils were actually structures from volcanic ash. The second, Stainforth (1966), was popularized in young-earth circles by Silvestru (2012). Stainforth’s material was examined by palynological experts, but no firm conclusion was reached about the age or source of the pollen. The pollen did not seem to be highly altered, as would be expected if it were present in the original rock before it was metamorphosed. One worker reported that the pollen abundance went down considerably if the samples were better cleaned. Both of these observations strongly point to the pollen not actually coming from the Precambrian rocks. Many further studies have been done on the Roraima supergroup, but not finding more pollen, again suggesting contamination is likely (although someone looking at other aspects of the rock might not look for pollen). [bibliographic references given on the cited webpage]

Harald Strauss, Dhiraj M. Banerjee, Virendra Kumar. 2001. The sulfur isotopic composition of Neoproterozoic to early Cambrian seawater — evidence from the cyclic Hanseran evaporites, NW India. Chemical Geology, 175(1–2):17-28. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0009-2541(00)00361-2.

A. Mazumdar, H. Strauss. 2006. Sulfur and strontium isotopic compositions of carbonate and evaporite rocks from the late Neoproterozoic–early Cambrian Bilara Group (Nagaur-Ganganagar Basin, India): Constraints on intrabasinal correlation and global sulfur cycle. Precambrian Research, 149(3–4):217-230. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.precamres.2006.06.008.

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For a relatively detailed but accessible account of how radiometric dating determines what the starting amounts of various isotopes were and other aspects of applying it, Radiometric Dating is a good source.

As Paraleptopecten already pointed out, some isotopes will not be present in certain types of crystals. A relatively obvious example is argon-40, which, being a noble gas, will not be present in significant amounts in a crystal, but can get trapped in a crystal if it is formed within the crystal by decay. (There are rare potential complications, which can be tested for by examining the amounts of other argon isotopes). In other cases, there is some of the daughter isotope present to start with. But if you have magma that is cooling into minerals, the various isotopes of any one element will be in fairly constant proportions and have minimal chemical difference. Mineral #1, depending on its chemistry, will have a certain proportion of rubidium and of strontium in its crystal structure. Mineral #2 will have a different proportion. But the strontium will have the same amounts of 87Sr versus 86Sr - there’s no mechanism producing significant sorting of those within one magma body. Over time, as the 87Rb decays into 87Sr, minerals that had more Rb to start with will show a bigger gain in 87Sr relative to 86Sr. Measure the amounts in several minerals, and you can work out what the starting proportion of 87Sr to 86Sr had to be to get the observed results.

For 14C, comparison with materials of known age (tree rings, lake layers, etc.) gives a reference amount of 14C. Most things being dated with 14C get it from air, which is mixed around the globe on very short time scales, so things of the same age (as long as they actually do get their 14C from unpolluted air) should match in 14C content. 14C dates also match the biblical record, e.g., Hezekiah’s tunnel dates from Hezekiah, crank misinterpretations of the Dead Sea Scrolls as reflecting an imaginary conflict in the early church are hard to maintain when some of the scrolls in question date from before 100 BC, major construction occurred in the time of the united monarchy, etc.

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In other cases, you can have older rock embedded in newer rock, as discussed at this website:

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Yes. In the case of igneous rocks, the task is first, making certain that you are dating something that is not a xenolith (does it match the rock as a whole) and second, considering the amount of time the rock took to completely crystalize. Volcanoes generally erupt a mix of crystals, lava, and gas. The crystals may have been growing for a while underground before being erupted. The timeline can be much longer for a blob of magma slowly cooling deep underground, where it is well-insulated. The zoning that you mention is indeed evidence that the crystal took a while to grow, experiencing some changes in conditions (such as temperature, pressure, and/or magma chemistry) during that time. Technological improvements are enabling the dating of particular zones in a single small crystal. (Under a young-earth model, there is not time for all this to happen.)

For metamorphic rocks, checking the degree of metamorphosis is important. What minerals were altered enough by metamorphosis to reset the radiometric dating (so that you measure a date of metamorphosis) and which ones retain the isotopes under those conditions?

Sedimentary rocks may contain datable bits of the rocks that eroded to make them; they must be younger than the youngest eroded pieces, but how much younger could vary by a lot. Very young sedimentary rocks may have significant 14C in carbonate or organic material, and some corals pick up enough U and Th from seawater to be datable (using the decay series - how much of the short-lived daughter isotopes are present). Apart from that, the only moderately common mineral that forms in some sedimentary environments that has significant amounts of a radioisotope is glauconite. But as you might guess for a clay mineral forming on the bottom of the ocean, it easily gains and loses atoms under near earth surface conditions, so it is rather unreliable.

In all these cases, the key factor to look for is consistency. Is the method giving consistent results, or not? Radiometric dating has caused revision in how old we think something is; it is not dictated by previous bias.

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Exactly. He’s never in it in the first place.

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Holy smokes here @adamjedgar this went pretty far down the rabbit hole here.

Maybe we can take some of these claims step by step? I hope that’s okay…

  1. As far as parent or daughter elements go, let’s start a new thread for that. There are methods like the isochron or Concordia methods that are helpful, but also certain rocks don’t incorporate the daughter molecule (like zircon crystals don’t incorporate lead). For some parent/daughter combinations, the ratio is very well understood like the ratio of Sr87 to Sr86 over the past four billion years:
    image

  2. You accuse scientists of relying on another scientist who says… there is no room for God in science. That is silly. That’s not how science works and frankly an absurd accusation. Me, as a scientist, don’t give a flying fox what the person doing research next to me thinks about God or not.

  3. The bizarre claim continues after the “then assumes that since he cannot see individual change…”

I think here… my question is, why or how do you think science works like this? What do you do for a living, Adam? I’m a scientist, and this is really silly what you are saying. I worked closely with many physicists who wanted nothing to do with God, and nobody thought this way. You can’t just assume something took millions of years just for funsies. That’s ridiculous. I was even a young earth creationist like yourself when I worked with some of them and found no such ridiculousness.

  1. It’s silly to think that scientists reject research to the contrary. Every scientist dreams of overturning some field of science or proving the other people in the room wrong. Have you met real scientists? Their job is building experiments to demonstrate why what we currently think is wrong and/or exploring what we don’t know.

  2. I personally hate that you’ve been fed a lot of particular sorts of information over the years. You’re obviously a smart individual who earnestly cares what’s true. I wish you the best in your search and journey, but the path you are currently on, seems to be leading you do some very bizarre ideas about how actual humans live. Why and how?

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