The evidence for the world-wide flood is in the paleozoic and mesozoic, not in the cenozoic which is where these artifacts are found. It is possible that the date of the flood could be pushed back a few thousand years, but there are many secular geneologies that go back to Noah which support the current date, as well as the Mayans which support the same date for the flood.
Tree-ring dating is not as accurate as many believe. It was once thought that the bristlecone pines gave accurate tree-ring dates, but Lammerts discovered evidence that they can grow many in a single year.
I personally think that historical records from multiple, independent groups should be believed over tree rings. But I guess that's where a lot of the differences between creation and evolution lie.
Paleozoic: 570 to 245 million years ago
Mesozoic: 245 to 65 million years ago
Cenozoic: Last 65 million years
Neither of these has anything to do with the date of the global flood. We are talking 4,000-5,000 years, not millions of years. I do not believe even creationists can twist the data to say otherwise, though they may try. You can ignore some parts of science, but to ignore the results of hundreds of years of research by thousands of scientists, in multiple fields of research, with millions of facts and thousands of very well tested and documented theories is tough to do.
Tree ring dating:
It might interest you to know that trees go back at least 8000 years without being disturbed by Noah's flood! Dr. Charles Ferguson of the University of Arizona has, by matching up overlapping tree rings of living and dead bristlecone pines, carefully built a tree ring sequence going back to 6273 BC (Popular Science, November 1979, p.76). It turns out that such things as rainfall, floods, glacial activity, atmospheric pressure, volcanic activity, and even variations in nearby stream flows show up in the rings. We could add disease and excessive activity by pests to that list.Different locations on the mountain also affect tree growth in that factors such as temperature, moisture, soil thickness, soil type, susceptibility to fire, susceptibility to wind, and the amount of sunlight received vary, sometimes dramatically. For example, a tree growing near a stream would be less susceptible to the effects of drought. Even the genetic inheritance of a tree plays a role in that it will magnify or retard the above factors. Thus, even trees on the same mountain, of the same species, don't always cross-date as nicely as one might think.
Creationists sometimes seize upon such isolated facts in their desperate bid to discredit tree-ring dating. They either don't understand--or don't want to understand--that careful statistical studies have settled the issue beyond a reasonable doubt.
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/hovind/howgood-yea2.html#proof27.
It occurred in the paleozoic and mesozoic. You are still referring to the cenozoic, much of which is considered post-flood (the exact boundary is not certain, but usually either at the mesozoic/cenozoic boundary or late cenozoic -- see http://www.trueorigin.org/cfjrgulf.asp and http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/magazines/tj/docs/v10n1_cainozoic.pdf)
Sorry, flood is claimed to be 4,000-5,000 years ago. That is not in the paleozoic or mesozoic. Those are geological periods, we archaeologists deal with soils--very much younger and very easy to date.
There is also mtDNA continuity for 11,000 years on the west coast of North America, from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego. With the latest differentiation in Haplogroup A, experts have been able to track one of the population movements, and to establish in which direction it went.
No, I agree very much that this is one continuous population.
When you have a laboratory that can date something back to about 40,000-50,000 years, at which point the signal gets lost in the background noise, it doesn't take much contamination to give a reading in that range.
Actually, the equipment they used is accurate to 90,000 years. The background that was checked against was 70,000 years. There is no reason to discard dates at 50,000 years.
90,000 years is not correct. Some labs using AMS are striving for that but the standard labs top out at 50,000 or less. Please believe me over the creation websites, as I deal with radiocarbon dating on at least a weekly basis.
The real question is whether calibrated dates from the last 10,000 years are accurate, and that is something that everyone but the creationists can agree on. They are quite accurate.
Actually, two points.
(1) Those dates don't call creationism into question. While creationists disagree, it is a rather minor point.
(2) Creationists aren't the only ones disagreeing.
But, as I said, it is a rather minor point. My personal take is that I'll take written history over other methods any day. The other methods must assume a history to be accurate. With the historical method, the history is written down instead of assumed. But if you disagree and have a slightly elongated timeline its really not a major issue.
I think your replies, though polite and well reasoned, are saying that you believe the bible and will ignore or twist any data to make the answers come out right.
If this is not the case, let me know and we can continue. As enjoyable as these discussions are, I really have to get some work done occasionally!
It depends on what dating mechanism you use. There are many indications that radioisotope decay has been accelerated in the past. A few of them are:
1) Helium retention in Zircon rocks
2) Radiometric dates from the same rock conflict in a regular pattern -- dating methods using heavier elements and longer half-lives give larger dates, indicating that there have been modifications to their decay rates based on atomic physical factors in the past
3) Radiometric dates from beta decay products are drastically different from those of alpha decay products
Some of this data was presented to the American Geophysical Union during their centennial celebration of radioisotope geochronology. You can see the abstracts from the session here. The last three are from the RATE group discussing the evidences of accelerated decay in the past. RATE has the posters that they presented here (at the bottom of the page).
"Sorry, flood is claimed to be 4,000-5,000 years ago. That is not in the paleozoic or mesozoic. Those are geological periods"
Not according to the standard uniformitarian time scale, but there is reason to doubt the standard timescale.
"90,000 years is not correct. Some labs using AMS are striving for that but the standard labs top out at 50,000 or less."
The reason seems to be that they simply are not getting dates of organic objects older than that. They "top out" at 50,000 simply because that's the limit of carbon decay in the available time!
"Please believe me over the creation websites, as I deal with radiocarbon dating on at least a weekly basis."
So do the creationists. You seem to be thinking that creationists are not dealing with the data on a daily basis. In fact they are.
"I think your replies, though polite and well reasoned, are saying that you believe the bible and will ignore or twist any data to make the answers come out right."
If it were only the Bible saying this, then you may be right, but I think that in such a case I would opt for Montanism. But in fact the historic records of many societies not connected with Christianity tell the same story, with the same timeline. I take the word of eyewitnesses over circumstancial evidence, especially if the eyewitness accounts are in general agreement. Science doesn't know everything, and therefore using current scientific knowledge as a straightjacket on the past can distort our view. I think the eyewitness historical perspective sheds light on these places, and that is exactly what creationist research is doing.
"As enjoyable as these discussions are, I really have to get some work done occasionally!"
Best not to spend time on freerepublic if you want to keep your job :) If only we could get paid to debate!