And when did this occur?
Shifts in language are not one-time events.
And what tree would that be from?
A previous tree life form. At some point in time plants shifted and became more and more like what we see as trees today.
http://www.cryingvoice.com/Evolution/Radiodating.html
An interesting article. I have examined it.
In the following, we will take a closer look at these and other methods, and we will make an assessment of their accuracy. At the end we shall conclude that these dating methods are so unreliable that ultimately rocks and fossils cannot be dated by these, thus evolutionists must rely solely on theory.
The opening statement misrepresents the word "theory". Apparently the author of this article is unaware of the meaning of the word "theory" in a scientific context. Curious that the author misuses the word in exactly the same fashion that you do. This does not speak well of the author's credibility.
We have seen on the previous pages, that evolution cannot happen, regardless of how much time is available; one thousand or one billion years. Long time does not make possible the impossible. A tornado could rumble through a junkyard for billions of years, and still would not be able to assemble a Rolls Royce, let alone a whole Rolls Royce factory!
The author here employs a false analogy, comparing elements of a junkyard and a Rolls Royce as analagous to biochemicals and imperfectly replicating organisms. Not only is the analogy invalid because of the differences of the objects involved, but the events being described are also not analagous to the process of evolution. Again, it appears as though the author knows little about evolution, or is not being honest.
Since evolution has not been observed in our time
This statement is simply false.
and it has not been observed in the past either,
Artifical selection has been practiced in the past for centuries. Evolution "in the wild" has not been readily observed in the past because no one was looking for it.
the only hope remaining for evolutionists is the availability of unimaginably long periods of time. Their utmost desire is to demonstrate the existence and scientific validity of these long periods of times.
The author here is misrepresenting the strength of evidence for evolution.
Several types of radiodating methods are used today, but when applied to the same sample, they give different dates[1].
The author provides a source for this claim, but it is in the form of one sentence written in 1956, without any context. I am unable to evaluate whether the quote is from a writing that actually supports the author's conclusion; there are known factors in dating methods that can yeild inaccurate results, but researchers are aware of these factors and can compensate for them, without the context of the referenced article, I am unable to determine whether or not the author of the reference was actually claiming that dating methods are not usable.
A very good example of how scientists interpret the results of their radiodating method is presented in reference [2].
Again, no context is provided for the reference, just a single quote. Given that
creationists frequently select single statements, employed out of context to make it appear as though the speaker was delivering a point completely contradictory to the position that they actually hold and the statement that they actually made, I am reluctant to automatically trust the authority of this claim.
They select only the "most reasonable" dates, the ones that agree with the evolutionary theory of long ages and discard the ones that do not fit in. Well, this method is far from an objective and precise scientific approach!
This claim is without any actual evidence. The author provides no information to show that the selection of ages from a list of varying ages is done solely to support the theory of evolution.
The author then lists a series of problems with radiometric dating, however geologists are already aware of potential factors that can skew results. This is, in fact, why multiple redundant dating techniques are used, and why study is done on the material to be dated to rule out potentially inaccurate tests.
Hawaiian lava flows known to be less than two centuries old have been dated at up to 3 BILLION years old!
This is a rather well-known
creationists misrepresentation.
Laboratories that "date" rocks insist on knowing in advance the "evolutionary age" of the strata from which the samples were taken—this way, they know which dates to accept as "reasonable" and which to ignore.
This claim is made without evidence.
2. Radiocarbon Dating
Given how frequently I have observed creationists misrepresent the facts of carbon dating, I am reluctant to continue. However, I will analyze the claims made.
If a C-14 date supports our theories, we put it in the main text. If it does not entirely contradict them, we put it in a footnote. And if it is completely 'out of date,' we just drop it.
This is another quote without any context. A bit of
research shows that this quote specifically related to study of Egyptian archeology, not a study of biology or evolution in particular.
mortar from the 785 year old Oxford Castle in England was dated at 7,370 years old
This is a very strange claim. I was not aware that mortar was the remains of organic material. I was also not aware that the mortar used in constructing castles approximately 800 years ago came into existence spontaneously with the construction of the castle. For this claim to have meaning, however, both must be true.
# freshly killed seals were dated at 1,300 years and seals dead for 30 years at 4,600 years
# living snails being dated at 2,300 years old
Seals and other aquatic life cannot be accurately carbon dated for known reasons. Researchers are aware of this limitation and thus carbon dating is not used for such specimens.
Snails and mollusks cannot be carbon dated for the same reason.
new wood cut from growing trees after few days was dated at 10,000 years
I am unable to find any references for this claim. That is, I cannot find a documented example where this has occured, thus I cannot evaluate the accuracy or honesty of the claim.
muscle tissue from beneath the scalp of a mummified musk was dated to 24,000 years, while the the radiocarbon age of hair from a hind limb was established to be 17,200 years—a rather long living animal as it appears!
I am unable to find any references to the study that produced these dates. The earliest publication to which I have tracked this is
Creation, Evolution, and the Age of the Earth authored by Wayne Jackson. No references to any peer reviewed articles regarding this can be located. However, I will note that this claim does appear markedly similar to a creationist claim regarding different ages derived from a single mammoth specimen, except that
despite creationist claims, the different dates actually derived from different mammoths.
We cannot just assume that the C-14 concentration in the carbon dioxide cycle has always been constant, that the cosmic ray flux has always been the same [8] and that no contamination of the sample occurred.
This is true. This is why researchers use a calibration curve to account for different levels of Carbon-14 in the atmosphere, and why they make themselves aware of contamination sources to avoid dating samples that are potentially contaminated.
These assumptions are obviously erroneous, otherwise how can one explain that hair from a mammoth has been dated at 26,000 years while the peat right above the carcass at only 5,610 years?
The author demonstrates that he has done little research; as you can see, I have already addressed this claim. The claim is false, yet creationists continue to make it.
Because of the short half-life of C-14, this method is only suitable for dating relatively young samples. Practically, any organic material would be left with an undetectable amount of radioactive carbon after 10 half-lives of C-14.
This is true, and known. Carbon-14 dating is not used for dating samples to more than 50,000 years.
This means that most of the fossils claimed to be millions of years old, would have to show an "infinite" age. It is not so.
The author is correct that it is not so, but not for the reasons that he gives. Fossils are not dated with radiocarbon dating. The author is either misinformed, or not being honest with his claims when he imlpies that Carbon-14 dating is used on fossils.
Radiocarbon dating of coal deposits gave ages less than 50,000 years, when the evolutionary theory claimed them to be millions of years old.
It is not the theory of evolution that dates coal, but existing dating procedures. An explanation of Carbon-14 dates of coal can be found
here.
After the discovery of the radiocarbon dating method, scientists tried to correlate their results with the dates "established" a century before.
The author claims this, but provides no evidence that this has occured.
But they have not been able to do so.
The author also has provided no actual evidence to show that dating techniques are as wildly inaccurate as he claims. He has provided a very small selection of out-of-context quotes with no actual research backing them up, and a few incidents that are indicative only of creationist ignorance of dating methods and techniques.
Of thousands of measurements, they have been able to correlate only three.
No reference is provided for this claim.
These three successes were enough to make the original century old fossil/strata dating "scientific". It is on this basis that evolutionists claim that the fossiliferous strata have been dated by radioactive minerals!
Again, no references are provided.
[new wood cut from growing trees after few days was dated at 10,000 years] I am unable to find any references for this claim. That is, I cannot find a documented example where this has occured, thus I cannot evaluate the accuracy or honesty of the claim.
I've seen it before -- it's a typical creationist distortion, so it's no surprise that "taxesareforever" is fond of using it.
Here's what I wrote to the last grossly dishonest creationist who tried to pull that one:
Wood freshly cut out of living trees has been carbon dated at 10,000 years, BECAUSE, Race, that tree grew in a busy airport, and got a significant amount of its CO2 from the nearly constant exhaust of jets which were burning ANCIENT hydrocarbons.
Now, please explain how many actual paleontological specimens grew near a constant source of burning fossil fuels all their lives?
Your source sort of "forgot" to mention this so that it could try to cast doubt on ALL radiocarbon dating, didn't it? Lying by omission in order to leave a misleading impression is still lying.
The source of this grossly misleading claim is "Time Upside Down," in Creation Research Society Quarterly (a creationist "journal"), June 1974, p. 18.
Note the difference in methdologies between scientists and the creationists. Scientists note the fact that plants which are in a place where they will "breathe" substantial amounts of exhaust from fossil fuels will produce incorrect results from C-14 dating, for VERY OBVIOUS AND WELL UNDERSTOOD REASONS, and thus scientists don't use C-14 dating for plants in such situations (they'll use other methods) because scientists are interested in getting *accurate* dates when they date something.
Creationists, on the other hand, SEEK OUT cases where it's OBVIOUS that C-14 dating will be invalid, run the dates anyway, then use the fact that they got INVALID results from their PURPOSELY INVALID usage of the method as a cheap and dishonest excuse to try to imply that C-14 dating is unreliable when applied to samples from VALID sources. It's like purposely using a mercury thermometer to "measure" a sample at a known temperature of -120 degrees, then using the fact that the thermometer indicates a temperature of -38 to "prove" that measuring any temperature under any conditions with a thermometer is bogus and unreliable, WITHOUT informing the reader that mercury freezes at -38 degrees and only a moron (or a dishonest creationist) would be reckless enough to use a frozen thermometer to measure anything in the first place. An invalid application of a process or measuring tool will of course produce invalid results, WHICH IS WHY HONEST PEOPLE DON'T USE THEM IN THOSE SITUATIONS. This says nothing, however, about the accuracy of such methods when used in *appropriate* situations, although the lying creationists would like you to believe that it does. Instead, the only thing it actually demonstrates is the gross dishonesty of creationists.
Let's have a show of hands: Is anyone willing to try to defend the grossly dishonest tactics of the creationists in cases like this? That question includes you, "taxesareforever" -- are you going to attempt to defend your sleazy use of this kind of gross dishonesty?