Replies

"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."

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!