Originally posted by: DrPizza
Originally posted by: soccerballtux
If the speed of light is decaying exponentially, why can't the rate of decay of carbon-14 be decaying exponentially as well? If you interpolate the curve on the decay of the speed of light backwards into history, you reach infinity at about 10,000 years. If the same thing happens with Carbon-14 decay (which it indeed may, as UCLA Labrat referenced above), then carbon-14 would finally line up with the 13 or so other methods we can use to date fossils (which by the way, all agree on the age of the fossil...in contradiction with Carbon-14 dating which is about 5 orders of magnitude off from these 13 other methods. About 11 of these dating methods find nothing older than 10,000 years, one finds the oldest materials to be about 50,000 years, the last one 100,000 years, and then of course Carbon-14 which says 100,000,000,000 years. Lol.).
For the speed of light thing, of course these people claim the speed of light ratings done in the 50's were not accurate...didn't have good enough measurements, blah blah.
"For all the self-proclaimed "tolerance" among evolutionists, that they demand of the "religious nutbags", they're awfully intolerant of our views."
Yes, very intolerant of people who spout nonsense or attempt to cut and paste on subjects they know very little about. Can you explain your carbon 14 dating that says 100,000,000,000 years thing? Carbon 14 is NOT able to date things that old.
Where do you get the idea that the speed of light is decaying exponentially?
Originally posted by: uclaLabrat
I'm not at all sold on carbon dating. The assumptions are essentially untestable from what I've read. That said, they assume in carbon dating:
I really don't think the dating techniques are the gospel they are purported to be.
The religious nutcases have been brainwashed. They're trained not to examine other data when it's contrary to their own views. And, they think that training applies to scientists as well. On the contrary - scientists are constantly looking at new data to refine their techniques and knowledge. You brought up a bunch of arguments against carbon dating. Here are some more: different plants are able to be "picky" about which type of carbon they absorb. Thus, the ratio in animals will vary depending on which plants they eat. Another issue: C14 levels vary locally. They're not constant every where, or even across time. Do you really think that scientists have ignored this evidence and just blindly measure C12/C14 ratios, plug the numbers into a formula and report the answer? That's the 8th grade version of C14 dating. It's much more complicated than that.
Here's another thing about scientists: they don't have an agenda. They don't give a damn how old the earth is. They don't try to make the data "fit" a conclusion that they already have. That's what religious fundamentalists do though: they try to interpret data to make it "fit" their preconceived notion that the earth is 4000 years old. And they can be quite convincing to ignorant people who really don't have much education & lack the ability to say "but that doesn't explain..." And, it appeals to the common sense of those people. It's pretty easy to tell those people that "scientists calibrate carbon dating to things of a known age, thus it's impossible for them to calibrate carbon dating beyond recorded history" then explain to them why suddenly everything goes haywire if you attempt to extend carbon dating 1000 years beyond recorded history. Fortunately, scientists ARE trained to consider ALL of the evidence. The main evidence given by the religious fundamentalists is their literal interpretation of the Bible. But, they're not going to mention to you that there are other means of dating, and quite coincidentally, they all have the same ball park ages for a lot of older items. Soccerballtux tried to dispute carbon dating and all other radioisotope dating with some nonsense about exponentially decreasing something or other.
In case you didn't know it, continents move around. California residents should be well aware of this whenever the ground trembles. And, with satellites, the rate that the continents are moving can be measured. If you look at geographic features - types of rocks, types of fossils, fossil layers, etc., you can figure out where some of those pieces were once connected. i.e. California's going to be one of the contiguous 48 states forever. 50 million years from now, anyone looking at the East coast of California is going to be able to say, "hey, this matches the west coast of the U.S. And, our satellites show that Cali is moving away from the U.S. I'll bet that at one time, they were connected right there. And, wow, look at this fossil of a californian. They're only found two places on earth: In California, and on that West coast of the U.S. Gee, that's even more evidence they were connected.
Now, extrapolating from the rate that California is moving away from the U.S., you would be able to take a rough guess at how long ago California was actually attached to the U.S. And, whadya know, that radio active isotope dating gives the same approximate age as well. Gee, and we've been studying erosion rates, and both coasts show the same age of erosion by the ocean. And so on. The scientists say to themselves, "wow, all these different aging techniques all line up with each other." The religious fundamentalist says "wow, every one of these aging techniques is wrong because; and they're all wrong by the exact same amount, and when the scientists finally listen to us and correct for these factors, they'll find out that we were right all along. The Earth is exactly as old as the literal interpretation of the Bible tells us."
Oh, and as far as calibrating C14 dating, there are other processes that can be used to help calibrate. One that's used is stalactite/stalagmite formation. (You'll have to google how they do it; I would have to google it myself for more info.) But, the point is, now people like Soccerballtux are going to have to make up another reason why stalactite formation was accelerated back then, but has slowed down now, and he'll have to come up with a reason that makes sure that none of those stalactites or stalagmites started forming too long ago; it would be contrary to his preconceived conclusion. (He also has to explain how something that's moving 1 inch per year now covered 1000 miles (over 63 million inches) in just 4000 years. Once he succeeds in that, I'll have to ask him to revise those speeds, or explain the incredible coincidences that show other arrangements of the continents, all the way back to pangea.
None of these dating methods are perfect, but these other processes are all in general agreement. That's why for younger specimens, C14 dating gives an answer of "+/- 50 years" but for older specimens, it might be "+/- 1000 years." (I didn't look up the precision; that should be good enough to get a good idea of what I mean though.) Scientists are aware of the weaknesses and relative amounts of error possible in their model. They account for this error. But, they don't start with an assumption of the correct age for the earth and calibrate all their processes & come up with hair-brained explanations to show why all these other processes are wrong.
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