Carbon dating...and religious nutcakes

[JulesMaximus]

I'm having a debate with a cousin of mine on Facebook about this. She thinks carbon dating is not an accurate way of determining the age of something that has been dead a long time and she's saying that some other noodle head took a living animal and tried to carbon date it as evidence of this.

Anyone else have any completely insane family members?

 

[polarmystery]

carbon dating is not the only method of telling how old the earth / universe is.

edit: I also have some nut cases in my fam also.

 

[soulcougher73]

Sound logic and reasoning usually eludes religious people. But yes i have a few nutters in my family as well.

 

[lxskllr]

Not that I'm aware of, but I don't discuss things with people who say stupid shit, at least not for long. I'll either talk about something else, or nothing at all.

 

[Gigantopithecus]

Your cousin is actually right. Radiocarbon dating doesn't work particularly well past ~30,000 years and becomes increasingly inaccurate as age reaches ~40,000 years.

However, like polarmystery said, there are other radioisotope dating techniques, and other dating methods that don't use radioisotopes.

 

[Pardus]

Last time i discussed carbon dating with my girlfriend, she got mad at me and said "so your dating a girl named carbon behind my back".

Since then, we only dicuss worthless crap like lady ga-ga.

 

[SlowSpyder]

carbon dating is not the only method of telling how old the earth / universe is.

edit: I also have some nut cases in my fam also.

From what I understand carbon dating is only good for dating to about ~50,000 years back. Not really useful for dating the age of the universe or Earth. Elements with much longer half lifes can be used to some degree for that purpose, though.

Carbon dating has been tested against known events. I don't know how anyone can deny that it is fairly accurate. Religous nuts are the worst kind. :/

 

[disappoint]

I thought radioactive dating means you're into Japanese chicks?

On a more serious note Carbon-14 dating is good for about 60,000 years. Uranium-lead or Rubidium-Strontium is used for older samples (billions of years old) and is fairly accurate (+/- a few million years in several billion). The lack of knowledge and education in the age of the internet and easy access to information is appalling your family members should be embarrassed, as should some of mine.

My own father regularly insists that the world trade center was an inside job, and that we never landed on the moon. I think he just does this to get me to bop him upside the head with a cast iron skillet. I won't. The skillet is too precious.

 

[HamburgerBoy]

It's accurate to about 6000 years, but no more.

 

[grrl]

No one in my family is like that, but I had a born again coworker who liked to argue about carbon dating and how the theory of evolution "has been abandoned by most scientists".

 

[preslove]

It's accurate to about 7000 years, but no more.

 

[DisgruntledVirus]

My dad and I got into a debate a few weeks ago about if Intelligent Design should be part of public education. He thinks that "we should teach all options and let the children decide."

 

[Beev]

My dad is a hardcore evangelist. He lives for Jesus. I still love him, though . IMO if someone wants to do/think something, and they aren't bothering anyone, then let them be. Ignorant people will probably always remain ignorant.

 

[HamburgerBoy]

My dad is a hardcore evangelist. He lives for Jesus. I still love him, though . IMO if someone wants to do/think something, and they aren't bothering anyone, then let them be. Ignorant people will probably always remain ignorant.

Does your dad have children? If so, he's doing much worse than "bothering" them.

 

[Beev]

Does your dad have children?

I know what you meant, but this line made me lol

No, but he has grandkids via my stepsister that I'm sure he influences. They're all from Georgia so there was never any hope anyway

 

[blackdogdeek]

i love having insane familiy members. it makes gatherings so much more interesting for me.

 

[Gibsons]

My dad and I got into a debate a few weeks ago about if Intelligent Design should be part of public education. He thinks that "we should teach all options and let the children decide."

Tell him there are at least several hundred 'options' at a minimum, then ask him if he's got any ideas for narrowing them down.

 

[Scarpozzi]

All I know is that geological evidence shows that the Earth's mantle is liquid...and was liquified around 6.4 million years ago. This age of the moon & Earth are supposed to be roughly the same as it was cut from the Earth in "the big whack theory"

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/tothemoon/origins2.html

Science and religion will never be in agreement. It makes me want to found a church with murals of Jesus riding on the back of a Triceratops.
http://media.photobucket.com/image/jesus%20on a triceratops/polfunstuff/294_trike.jpg?o=1

 

[Ruptga]

I roomed with a guy for about a year and a half that would go looking for people to argue about this. He got his ass handed to him regularly, especially in junior/senior year when the biochem majors he was debating really knew their stuff. Anymore he's mellowed, but I don't think he can come to terms with the fact that while the bible has history in it it is not a history book. While that's a little pathetic, he was raised on a ranch in middle of nowhere Oklahoma as a Baptist and was homeschooled so he wouldn't be exposed to the godless world. Some parents just set their kids up for failure.

 

[edro]

I'm having a debate with a...completely insane family member...

There's your problem.

 

[alkemyst]

carbon dating is not the only method of telling how old the earth / universe is.

edit: I also have some nut cases in my fam also.

carbon dating is not used for that anyway...carbon-dating is for more short-lived objects.

There are several forms of radiometric-dating. Those that are non-scientists are easily confused and form false disproofs (and proving something is not true, doesn't prove anything else true).

The deeply religious and even the average man out there are terribly confused and ignorant.

 

[ch33zw1z]

Science and religion will never be in agreement. It makes me want to found a church with murals of Jesus riding on the back of a Triceratops.
http://media.photobucket.com/image/jesus%20on a triceratops/polfunstuff/294_trike.jpg?o=1

If you don't want 10% of my pay, I love holy dino's..

On topic, I don't even bother arguing with them. I just tell them to spend a night googling about things they question. It's not worth my time or increased blood pressure.

 

[gaidensensei]

Women deal by emotions, men by logic or rhetoric. Add that and i get the feeling there are more religiously inclined women than there are for men. Don't bother with it, it changes nothing.

 

[DisgruntledVirus]

Tell him there are at least several hundred 'options' at a minimum, then ask him if he's got any ideas for narrowing them down.

Yeah he claims it has "evidence" to support it which is why it is an "equal alternative theory."

 

[AstroManLuca]

All I know is that geological evidence shows that the Earth's mantle is liquid...and was liquified around 6.4 million years ago. This age of the moon & Earth are supposed to be roughly the same as it was cut from the Earth in "the big whack theory"

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/tothemoon/origins2.html

Science and religion will never be in agreement. It makes me want to found a church with murals of Jesus riding on the back of a Triceratops.
http://media.photobucket.com/image/jesus%20on a triceratops/polfunstuff/294_trike.jpg?o=1

I think you're off by a factor of about a thousand.

As for religious nuts, whatever, they're not hurting anyone except their children I guess, and we can always hope their kids will come to their senses and learn to differentiate religion from science.

What really confuses me are the ones who dismiss well-supported scientific theories that contradict the Bible, and then jump through all sorts of hoops to come up with new scientific theories that support the Bible. Of course the new theories are not well supported at all, but I just don't understand how someone can dismiss certain scientific findings but then try to use science to their benefit. It doesn't work both ways.

It's like Ptolemy's model for the solar system. As more detailed observations were made of planetary movements, his model became more and more complex in order to explain everything without "demoting" the earth from the center of the universe to just one of many planets.