Re: Wayne State University Religion and Science Conference notes

Well, that goes to show you how much I know about dating. Thanks, Charles.
Interesting sidelight: I once taunted the creationists on talk.origins with the
following question: When a geologist presents results that have been derived by
isochron dating, what questions should you ask him/her? The answer, which no
creationist even tried to guess, was "How many points on the isochron were
found, and what statistical tests were applied for goodness of fit to a
straight line, and of course, what standard deviation was observed?" I once
asked Davis Young how many points people typically obtained on an isochron and
his answer was, "Just enough to plot the line and see by eye that the points
line up. Isochron dating is expensive and besides, the points either line up or
they don't."

--- Charles Carrigan <CCarriga@olivet.edu> wrote:

> Bill,
>
> Thanks for the interesting summary for those of us not able to attend. One
> comment and one question below.
>
> _______________________________
> Charles W. Carrigan, Ph.D.
> Assistant Professor of Geology
> Olivet Nazarene Univ., Dept. of Physical Sciences
> One University Ave.
> Bourbonnais, IL 60914
> PH: (815) 939-5346
> FX: (815) 939-5071
> ccarriga@olivet.edu
> http://geology.olivet.edu/
>
> "To a naturalist nothing is indifferent;
> the humble moss that creeps upon the stone
> is equally interesting as the lofty pine which so beautifully adorns the
> valley or the mountain:
> but to a naturalist who is reading in the face of the rocks the annals of a
> former world,
> the mossy covering which obstructs his view,
> and renders indistinguishable the different species of stone,
> is no less than a serious subject of regret."
> - James Hutton
> _______________________________
>
>
> >>> Bill Hamilton <williamehamiltonjr@yahoo.com> 4/28/2006 7:26 AM >>>
> >Professor Baskaran appears to be a Christian believer. He spoke about the
> >reliability of the various dating methods geologists use, emphasizing that
> >geologists are reluctant to be certain of a date that is not verified by
> >multiple means of dating.
>
> I have no idea who Baskaran is, but stating that "geologists are reluctant to
> be certain of a date that is not verified by multiple means of dating" is not
> the best way of putting it. I don't know any geochronologists who think this
> way - e.g., "ok, i've dated this rock once, now i've got to date it again by
> another method before I can have confidence in the data". Geologists rely on
> numerous dating methods, but one does not have to date a geologic event by
> multiple means in order to be certain of it. Rather, different methods have
> different levels of reliability, and the method chosen is dependent on what
> kinds of materials and questions are being investigated. Further, some skill
> is required to do this kind of work, and quite frankly, some geochronologists
> are more skilled at different methods than others. Even more frankness, some
> geochronologists are really bad, using techniques that should simply not be
> used (Pb-Pb evaporation on zircon from high-grade terranes comes to mind).
> Yet this method is still sometimes employed and published in the literature
> (and then subsequently challenged later by someone else!). Other
> geochronologists are excellent at what they do, and if they publish a date,
> you can be sure it is pretty reliable. Often when a rock is dated that has
> been dated previously, the reason is because either new methods are available
> that are more reliable than the old, or the new investigators simply doubt
> the data or methods employed by previous workers for some reason.
>
> Some rocks have been dated multiple times by various techniques, and their
> exact ages are debated. But this really comes down to the size of the error
> bars that one is willing to live with, which will depend on what questions
> are being addressed. The goal of a geochronologist is to truly address the
> confidence (which includes both precision and accuracy) that one can have in
> a particular date (remember that any date is a mean + a standard error), and
> this does not require multiple means of dating. I would like to hear the
> whole talk by Baskaran if at all possible.
>
>
> >Augustine taught that metaphorical or allegorical interpretation should be
> used
> >where literal interpretation is ruled out by science.
>
> Does anyone know where this comes from, and have a direct quote?
>
>
> Best Regards,
> Charles
>
>
> > BEGIN:VCARD
> VERSION:2.1
> X-GWTYPE:USER
> FN:Charles Carrigan
> ORG:;Physical Sciences
> EMAIL;WORK;PREF;NGW:CCarriga@olivet.edu
> N:Carrigan;Charles
> END:VCARD
>
>

Bill Hamilton
William E. Hamilton, Jr., Ph.D.
248.652.4148 (home) 248.303.8651 (mobile)
"...If God is for us, who is against us?" Rom 8:31

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Received on Fri Apr 28 14:53:27 2006