From: "Susan Brassfield" <Susan-Brassfield@ou.edu>
> 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.
I have not abandonded that point, just moving on to another.
> 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 assumption of a global catastrophe was not dispoven by data, but
interpretations of the data made within assumptions contrary to global
catstrophism were thought to disprove Global Catastrophism.
> 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.
As I pointed out before, Woodmorappe has shown that correlations to the same
accuracy as accepted between different radiometric dating methods can be
found just as often using lists of random numbers.
> 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
I have read all Talk.Origins nonsense. It's like the old joke, "how do you
know when a saleswoman is lying?" "Her lips move." How do you know when
Talk.Origins is misrepresing the facts and haven't a clue about Creationary
Catastrophism. When it's printed in their Archive.
> "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.
Woodmorappe shows in his latest book that there are not just a few instances
where a method produces "Wrong" results, but many, many instances. And he
further explores just how does one determine what is right and wrong, and
shows that radiometric dating is subjective, not objective. Dates can be
accepted or rejected as rationalized according to ones expectations or
presuppositions.
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. "
The analogy between radiometric dating and clocks is bogus. The issues is
not the rates at which isotopes decay, compared with the steady measure of
time by a clock. The issue is Actualistic interpretations of the measures
of isotopes. Five radiometric dates using different methods agree because
it is expected that they would and contrary evidence is rationalized away.
Allen
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