>From: Susan Brassfield <Susan-Brassfield@ou.edu
>> Allen Roy:
>> > So far, no one has addressed the real issue. Did I misquote the
>> >author? Did I quote out of context?
Susan:
>> yes, in that the problems you mention have solutions and you avoided
>> quoting those.
Allen:
>Are you for real Sue? There are no solutions or fixes. The assumptions for
>the method are invalidated. All it would take is one invalidation, but
>two of the assumptions are "commonly" invalidated. This means that the
>method cannot work, period!
ok. You seemed to have shifted your story here a bit. You originally said
that the assumption of age was the assumption that couldn't be proved.
The assumption of a great age for the earth predates radiometric dating by
quite some time. Early estimates were based on geological observation--and
the assumption then was that the earth was 6000 years old. Assumptions
can't effect the data for long. If evidence doesn't bear out your
assumptions you have to dump your assumptions and early geologists did. In
the 1770s Buffon thought the earth was about 3 billion years old. In the
1897 Kelvin thought it was 20-40 million years. In the early part of this
century the development of our understanding of astronomy--including
Einstein's theory of relitivity--provided geologists confirmation for their
observations. When radiometric dating came along the assumptions of great
age were already there because the evidence was there.
The basic problem with your argument is, if you were correct, the
geologists would get random dates for the age of the earth. That doesn't
happen. Geologists all over the world, using different radiometric methods
get similar dates.
You were in such a hurry to sneer at talk.origins that you missed the fact
that the argument you are making, since it is a very common creationist
argument, is addressed directly.
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-age-of-earth.html
"1. Reference to a case where the given method did not work
This is perhaps the most common objection of all. Creationists point to
instances where a
given method produced a result that is clearly wrong, and then argue
that therefore all
such dates may be ignored. Such an argument fails on two counts:
First, an instance where a method fails to work does not imply
that it does not ever
work. The question is not whether there are "undatable" objects,
but rather whether
or not all objects cannot be dated by a given method. The fact
that one wristwatch
has failed to keep time properly cannot be used as a justification
for discarding all
watches.
How many creationists would see the same time on five different
clocks and then feel
free to ignore it? Yet, when five radiometric dating methods agree
on the age of one
of the Earth's oldest rock formations (Dalrymple 1986, p. 44), it
is dismissed without
a thought. "
Susan
----------
For if there is a sin against life, it consists not so much in despairing
of life as in hoping for another and in eluding the implacable grandeur of
this one.
--Albert Camus
http://www.telepath.com/susanb/
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