The Fallacy of Scientific Dating – Part I

 So much is determined and stated today using radiometric or carbon-14 dating, especially in geology and archaeology—that, is where such and such is determined to be so many hundreds or thousands of years old—that we have archaeological dates of settlements, towns, and people being dated to 5,000 or even to 12,000 years “before the present,” or more, making a specimen having existed in 3000 BC to 10,000 BC or earlier. In fact, entire civilizations and various “cultures” are based on this dating (Carbon 14 dating).

In fact, radiometric dating methods are used in geochronology to establish the geologic time scale. Among the best-known techniques are radiocarbon dating, potassium–argon dating and uranium–lead dating. Relative dating is used to determine the approximate age of a fossil by comparing it to similar rocks and fossils of known ages. Absolute dating is used to determine a precise age of a fossil by using radiometric dating (Carbon 14 dating) to measure the decay of isotopes, either within the fossil or more often the rocks associated with it. 

Many minerals are formed with small quantities of radioactive isotopes. For example, uranium is a common impurity in the mineral zircon. Most of the potassium atoms in potassium felspars are stable potassium 39, but a small percentage are unstable potassium 40.

This Carbon-14 dating is limited to a particular time frame in which the age of certain archeological artifacts of a biological origin are up to about 50,000 years old. This is based on knowing the half-life of parent isotopes:

What is known is that the duration of a half-life is unique for each radioactive isotope. Some examples: the half-life for the decay of potassium 40 atoms into argon 40 atoms is about 1.3 billion years, the half-life for the decay of uranium 238 into lead 206 is about 4.5 billion years; however, the half-life for the decay of carbon 14 into Nitrogen 14 is only 5,730 years.

Natural radioactive processes are characterized by a half-life—the time it takes for half of the material to decay radioactively. The amount of material left over after a certain number of half-lives can easily be calculated

 

The result is like a radioactive clock that ticks away as unstable isotopes decay into stable ones. Scientist cannot predict when a specific unstable atom, or parent, will decay into a stable atom, or daughter. But they can predict how long it will take a large group of atoms to decay. The element's half-life is the amount of time it takes for half the parent atoms in a sample to become daughters.

One half-life after a radioactive isotope is incorporated into a rock there will be only half of the original radioactive (parent) atoms remaining and an equal number of secondary (daughter) atoms will have been produced. The ratio of parent to daughter after one half-life will be 1:1. After two half-lives, half of the remaining half will decay, leaving one-quarter of the original radioactive parent atoms. Those transformed atoms bring the tally of daughter atoms to three-quarters of the crop of parent plus daughter atoms. The ratio of parent to daughter atoms after two half-lives is therefore 1:3 (one-quarter to three-quarters). Successive half-lives reduce the original parent to one-eighth, one-sixteenth, one-thirty-second, and so on. The ratios of parent to daughter isotopes for these are 1:7, 1:15, 1:31.

Despite seeming like a relatively stable place, the Earth's surface has changed dramatically over what Scientists claim is the past 4.6 billion years. In that time, they say, mountains have been built and eroded, continents and oceans have moved great distances, and the Earth has fluctuated from being extremely cold with ice to being very warm and ice-free. They also claim that these changes typically occur so slowly that they are barely detectable over the span of a human life, yet even at this instant, the Earth's surface is moving and changing. Further, the claim is that as these changes have occurred, organisms have evolved, and remnants of some have been preserved as fossils—which can be studied to determine what kind of organism it represents, how the organism lived, and how it was preserved.

However, by itself a fossil has little meaning unless it is placed within some context. The age of the fossil must be determined so it can be compared to other fossil species from the same time period. Understanding the ages of related fossil species helps scientists piece together the evolutionary history of a group of organisms—as long as the age is accurately determined. 

As the parent specimen progresses through time, the parent item diminishes as the daughter grows

 

So assuming that when a rock forms it contains an unstable isotope and none of the daughter isotope (or a well-known amount), and assuming that over geologic time the rock remains a closed system (no parent or daughter enters or leaves the rock), then that rock can be accurately dated by determining the ratio of parent to daughter atoms—what science has called “Absolute dating,” which is the process of determining an age on a specified chronology in archaeology or geology.

Some scientists prefer the terms chronometric or calendar dating, instead of the term "absolute,” which implies an unwarranted certainty of accuracy (Susan Toby Evans and David L. Webster, Archaeology of ancient Mexico and Central America: an encyclopedia, Garland, New York, 2001, p203; Winfried Henke, Handbook of paleoanthropology, Springer, New York, 2007, p312).

As an example, Scientists claim the oldest rocks known on the Earth are about four billion years old. The oldest samples from our solar system (moon rocks and meteorites) are 4.5 to 4.6 billion years old. Radiometric dating of igneous rocks contained in sedimentary sequences have enabled geologists to arbitrarily assign ages to the geologic timescale that was originally based entirely on relative geologic time.

A system is either closed or open depending on whether external influences are able to act upon it

 

A closed system is a physical system that does not allow transfer of matter in or out of the system. An example of a closed system is a frying pan on a stove when its lid is tightly closed. In this configuration the frying pan receives heat (energy) from the stove, while no mass enters or leaves the pan, thus making it a closed system. Another similar example is a pressure cooker on a stove, with tightly fitting closed lid. On the other hand, and open system can exchange both matter and energy with an outside system. They are portions of larger systems and in intimate contact with the larger system. As an example, a frying pan or pressure cooker without a lid. Again, an open system would be a glass of water (juice, milk, etc.), whereas a closed system would be a bottle of water that has a tightly fitting lid to help ensure that the matter inside its system will remain constant.

Behind all this dating process, which Scientists tend to ignore, are seven initial assumptions made about time dating through carbon-14 radiocarbon dating techniques and time clocks, that need to be clearly understood for any accuracy to exist within the clocks, or our belief in them. That is, each of these assumptions must be accurate and must always have existed for any specimen tested and dated. In order to use scientific dating methods to determine accurate dates of past events, that is atoms of a parent radioactive isotope randomly decay into a daughter isotope. Seven of these fragile assumptions are:

(See the next post. “The Fallacy of Scientific Dating – Part II,” for these seven points)